in germany … there’s a tricky but good way to protect your stuff from thievery/rippery.
finish the song. burn the project wav files onto a dvd. put it into an envelope, go to a notary and let him
put a seal onto the envelope to ensure that it really is from you. then send this envelope to yourself.
this way nobody can rip your music and claim that they have written it because you have the original project
and wav files, burned on dvd and sealed by a notary in an envelope. you will win any case with this!
Wow! Interesting point. Have you got some research to point towards to support this idea? I’ve always operated under the advice of slower burns are better due decreased risk in buffer under-runs. I still burn CDs so it would be interesting to know if this debate has been re-opened up.
Now that sounds totally RAD! I love it though. No surprises about Germany there anyhow, been living there for a while. surely the undisputed masters of bureaucracy!
I doubt the mailing of package has much legal value on any developed country. The signature of solicitor or notary on the printout of the hash of the zip file containing your project files will probably be decent evidence in all of these countries.
If I could find my old university notes I might have a chance but I’m having problems even finding the exact CD physical specifications on the internet. This is from memory and as such may be a few incorrect figures on it…
A typical CD is 1.2mm thick with a reflective layer 0.8mm from the read side. Under the surface there are Pits and Lands used to store data, with the depth being 1/4 of the wavelength of the laser light used to read it. With a speed to high you may not get adequate depth to get correct wave alignment/cancellation on the pits but the same is true for too slow, where you may burn too deep. Especially on cheaper disks where the quality of the substrate may be questionable…
Pit Depth for a CD is ~200nM (1/4 of 780nM wavelength of a red laser, although it’s actually a fair bit smaller as should use the wavelength through the plastic substrate and due to its refractive index this will be a fair bit shorter than in air. 120-150nM is possibly more correct.)
Don’t forget these Pits and Lands (bumps and dips) are being burnt into the metal (aluminium?) layer towards the top of the CD/DVD. Not only can too deep not give correct cancellation (interference) but it can damage the metal layer itself, create a real hole.
If I remember recommended speed for DVD was 2-4 and CD was 4-16 times speed.
As far as I knew Buffer Underrruns were usually caught by most burning software these days and you should never really get a disk that fails due to this without being warned at the end of burning the disk. Maybe not true for bulk copiers though…
Not directly related but thought I’d include it here for people who might be interested:
I can’t remember the name of the data representation but it’s not your normal Return To Zero Logic, where a high might be a 1 and a low 0, neither is is Non-Return To Zero such as Manchester Logic, where you need a clock of twice your data rate but get a waveform which averages in the middle, thus more immune to jitter and other transmission problem. On a CD a steady state, whether a Pit or a Land, represents a 0, a change in state represent a 1. On any flat the waveforms from current and last point will be in phase with each other at the sensor, at a change they will travel 1/4 waveform down, 1/4 waveform up (either extra or less) giving a full half waveform, of 180 degrees, thus arriving out of phase at the sensor and cancelling each other out.
I sort of scratched my head at first, also. But when you consider that DRM does, in a sense, deprive the consumer of his property rights, it makes sense. It is so hard to argue politics though, because while theories/philosophies might look quite discrete on paper in the real world they are just marks on a spiral. What i mean to say is, what if in a free and fair democratic election a people vote in a dictatorship because that is what they truly want? Are they or are they not then living in ‘freedom’? Who knows, and really i don’t even care. What it boils down to concerning DRM is… uhm… now i’m too confused to know what my opinion is. But i do have a gut feeling that it sucks eggs.
Yeah man, totally agree. DRM isn’t what I began this forum to discuss. What do you guys mean when you say ‘notary’? (Concerning mailing it to yourself) I live in the UK.
Get back to me on this Red Book Guidelines business. I checked it out but I was reading gobbledegook and then other forums talking about the best red book software, I trust Renoise poeople more if I’m honest
Interesting information, but the ideal speed for a burn completely depends on (1) the drive make and model, (2) the drive’s firmware, (3) the brand and speed rating of the media. It’s certainly true that with modern drives and fast media, significant under-speed writing can cause problems, but it’s not because of the wavelength of the laser or other fundamentals of CD technology because this would have been the same back when only 1x CD-Rs were available. My understanding is that it is more to do with the lack of (decent) firmware write strategies for lower speeds in the modern drives, which are optimised for high speed writing (and maybe the increased laser powers too).
It also applies to significant under-speed writing too; you can write a 16x DVD at 8x but you really don’t want to write it at 1x.
Although I wasn’t trying to say it’s due to the wavelength of light or similar but using it to explain how small the tolerances are before your writing will fail. Power control to the laser for difference speeds isn’t usually implemented well, if at all, although I must admit I didn’t think about the different speed rating disks are sold as being. Still doesn’t change the fact that burning slow is as likely to give a defunkt disk as burning as fast as possible, if not more so as most disks are designed to be burnt at the highest speeds possible these days. Already mentioned them being different in their substrate, which is probably one of the main things that gives them a different speed rating, plus probably different qualities on aluminium layer.
I looked at the link, its actually very interesting. That is a really good find… I’m not sure if it is something I’ll use, but it is a really useful tool.
For creating a CD master on OSX, your options are:
Wave Editor (Audiofile Engineering) - This is what I use. The price is right, and I like their unconventional Photoshop-style “layers” approach to non-destructive audio editing. In addition to doing a proper Red Book CD, this will do PQ sheets, DDP files…all the little extras you need if you’re sending your disc directly to the manufacturing plant instead of using a mastering engineer.
Waveburner (only available as part of Logic Studio) - Very basic, but arguably the most intuitive interface for disc sequencing, assembly, and burning. NOT a full-blown audio editor, which many of these other options are. But hey, if you own Logic, you already have it for free.
Peak (BIAS) - Very capable audio editor. The latest version copped a lot of the easy-disc-assembly usability from Waveburner, so it’s quite nice now.
Sonic Studio soundBlade - Hella expensive, but is the king of them all. If you’run a mastering studio, this is probably what you use.
Sonic Studio PMCD - The light version of Soundblade
Some of these options may also exist in Windows, but I have zero experience there so I’ll let others chime in. For OSX, I recommend Waveburner if you already own it, otherwise try Wave Editor. Switch to Peak if you don’t like Wave Editor’s way of doing things.
