Burning music files to a CD
From Audacity Manual
Audacity does not burn CDs directly but audio files created with Audacity can be used with a CD burning program to create an audio CD.
Audio CDs
There are two main types of CD that you can create with CD burning software; it is important to burn an Audio CD (Music CD) and not a Data CD. A data CD containing for example MP3 or WAV files will play happily on your computer but is unlikely to play in a standalone CD player or in-car CD player.
Audio CDs are limited on a 650 MB ("Red Book Standard") or 700 MB audio CD to 74 or 80 minutes playing time respectively.
When buying blank CDs for burning, it is strongly recommended that you purchase good quality CD-Rs (that can be burnt just once) and not the rewritable CD-RWs.
Audacity setup
Audio CDs always contain high quality uncompressed PCM stereo audio at 44100 Hz sample rate, 16-bit sample format. So to burn an audio CD, export the file(s) you want to burn as a 44100 Hz 16-bit stereo WAV or AIFF file.
To configure Audacity for this:
- At the bottom left of the Audacity window, set the Project Rate to 44 100 Hz.
- If your Project does not already contain a stereo track, click . It does not matter that this track is empty, its purpose is just to make Audacity export your recording as a stereo file. This step is not needed if you are burning to CD with iTunes.
- Click and choose "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM" in the "Save as type" box.
If you are exporting a long Audacity track that contains multiple songs, please see "Splitting a recording into separate tracks" for how to export multiple files for each of the songs.
Burning software
In order to burn an Audio CD you will need a CD burning program. Most computers already come with media player software that can burn CDs. For example, you can use Windows Media Player built into Windows or iTunes built into Macs. In either of these programs, drag the files you want to burn from the location you exported them to into a "playlist" ready for burning.
You can also use a standalone burning program like CDBurnerXP, Nero or Toast to burn your exported files. In this case, open the files from within that software.
Most Linux distributions include Brasero or K3B.
Don't forget to select the setting to burn an "Audio CD" or "Music CD" as explained above.
Gapless burning
By default, many CD burning programs add a two-second gap between CD tracks as part of the standard for Audio CDs. So be aware of CD track gaps when placing labels between album tracks for Export Multiple and consider deleting excess silences between tracks.
However most CD burning programs have an option to burn the CD with no gaps between tracks. This is useful for recordings such as live concerts, allowing the CD to play continuously if the player supports gapless playback while still permitting skipping to individual CD tracks. If burning a gapless CD, you will need to place the Audacity labels exactly where you intend the burner to mark the track splits.
Some CD burning programs (for example, older versions of Windows Media Player) have no option to burn without gaps. Gapless burning is also only available if the optical drive supports Disc-At-Once (DAO).
Additionally, make sure you don't export MP3 files for burning to your gapless CD, even if you're burning a "data CD", because MP3s have inherent silence padding due to a restriction of the MP3 format.
Note you may still hear the most momentary gaps between tracks even on DAO burned CDs, unless the CD player supports true gapless playback. Many CD players do not support gapless playback properly because the hardware simply doesn't buffer the audio data properly. However quite a few computer-based media players can use DSP effects when playing back audio to give proper gapless playback, even of CDs not burned with DAO. An example of such a player is Apple's iTunes.
Cue Sheets
An alternative and recommended solution is to not split the track up at all in Audacity The best way to get apparently gapless playback of a live concert recording or live album is to burn as one WAV file with with DAO and a "cue sheet" that marks the starting times of each CD track. Cue sheets can be created as simple plain text files. Audacity currently has no direct means of creating a cue sheet from the track labels, however if you use Audacity's command, you can export track starting times and label name data as a text file. This file could then be edited to make a cue sheet.
Each track in a Cue Sheet is of this format:
- TRACK (number) AUDIO
- TITLE "(name)"
- PERFORMER "(name)"
- INDEX 01 (start time) in the format minutes:seconds:frames with the first track always being 00:00:00
Audacity cannot currently export Cue Sheets but it is possible to use the command to export a text file representing the label positions, then on Windows and Linux use label2cue to convert the minutes and seconds data in the text file to minutes, seconds and frames data laid out in cue sheet format.
You can read more about cue sheets on Wikipedia here.
