Classically Oriented Jazz

18 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Free Jazz, EASY LISTENING: Mature



Details:
ALL IS NOT WELL IN CDBURNERLAND

The CDs you buy in the record store are made in a factory. The first step is to make a glass master. From this master, stampers are made, and these are used to press out the actual CDs, much like the older vinyl LPs were made. These are called Replicated Discs.

The discs that you can burn on your computer are called Duplicated Discs. They are made using a different process. Instead of having the pits that hold the information pressed into the CD, a laser burns small holes in a layer of dye. The dye is usually thalo green or thalo blue, the same colors that are used in modern paintings. These dyes are pretty lightfast, but obviously if they were absolutely colorfast, like yellow ochre or burnt umber, the laser couldn't burn a hole in them! Kept away from sunlight, it has been estimated that duplicated discs will last seventy five years or so.

Obviously replicated discs are superior, but you have to order a thousand of them, and it will cost you $1500! In addition to that, I have over 50 CDs worth of music to produce. Where would I ever find the space to store 50,000 CDs, costing me $75,000! No, replicated discs are not practical for a small time composer like me.

However in spite of the fact that you can do the exact number of CDs that you need, CD burning is not a fail-safe process. Things go wrong- mysterious things! I bought my first burner in the year 2000, and at first it worked beautifully. Then I noticed that after my CDs were about a year old, they wouldn't play any longer- ONE YEAR! Instead I got a "no disc" message. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NO DISC! THERE IT IS! ANYBODY CAN SEE THERE'S MUSIC ON IT." Years later I finally figured out what was happening. I was using the burner as a playback machine and the burner was gradually erasing the music. Lesson No. One: Don't use your burner to play back your discs.

Then I saw an advertisement for a stand alone duplicator that ran at 56X Wow! That will save me a lot of time! I bought it. It did terrible things. It would start out with "ticks". Then each note would be followed by 50,000 ticks. Then it would stop and flip back to the beginning. I called tech support. He told me that audio CDs cannot be burned reliably at speeds faster than 4X! But nobody told me that. Lesson No.Two; burn at 4X.

This past summer was HOT in New York City, and the voltage got down to below 100, at times. One of my machines burnt out. Lesson No. Three. Check your voltage.

Lesson No. Four. CD burners have a limited lifespan, and it costs a lot to repair them. However the cheap ones seem to burn just as well as the expensive ones. I have already had two very expensive machines go bad; they were nice though.

Lesson No. Five. I have found from sad experience that it is best to listen to every CD before it is sent out. Obviously I can't listen to the whole CD, that would take an impossible amount of time, but I have an old boom box and I listen to part of the first song and part of the last one. That covers most of the problems, and I figure if it plays on that boom box, it will play on anything.