Burning audio CD’s with Toast

“I’m wondering what format audio should be in when you put it into Toast set to burn an Audio CD? I’ve been dropping them in as SDII files (freshly bounced from ProTools), but they are converted to Apple Audio Player documents during the burn. Does this adhere to Red Book Standards? What is the best format to have the Tracks in when you drop them into Toast prior to burning a CD-ROM master for duplication (SDII, AIFF)? Can Toast even burn proper Audio CD-ROM Masters (not Glass Masters of course) for Audio CD duplication (Say 100 or 200 copies)?” Hey! That’s a bunch of questions (not counting all the other ones I edited out). You guys keep cheating and sending in these very innocuous looking e-mails, but by the time I finish reading them I have 15 questions to try to answer. If I didn’t love it so much I would whine a little more about it.Anyway, Toast pretty much does what it does regardless of the source file type. If it can read your audio files and will let you burn an audio CD then it is putting the files on the media in the appropriate way to make a CD play. You can put any working audio CD into your Mac and the tracks will show up as Apple Audio Player documents, so no big magic is going on there. That’s just the way the Mac shows them. Either file type you mention will work. However, the real question you get to is in regard to Toast’s ability to make Red Book audio CD’s. The regular version of Toast does not make Red Book CD’s, but will make Orange Book compliant discs that will play on most CD players. These can be duplicated to other CDR media, and “some” CD manufacturing facilities can work with them also. It is more desirable to make a Red Book compliant disc for large duplication runs because you can avoid extra charges and ensure compatibility. This is where programs like MasterList CD, or Jam come in to play (yes, we know there are others, no need to remind us what they are), as they do make Red Book discs. For the limited runs you mention you are probably going to be fine to continue doing what you are doing. If you ever want to get serious about making glass master ready CD’s then you should get MasterList CD.

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