About CD's

The CD format includes some limitations which may effect your project.

The original CD format allowed for up to 74 minutes of stereo audio. Since the format has now been adopted by the computer industry for data storage, recordable CD's are now available to accomodate 80 minutes and, recently, 90 minutes. It is now almost impossible to buy the traditional 74 minute format CD/R's. The extra recording time has been achieved by making the tracks slightly closer together. Most modern CD players are quite happy with 80 minute CD's, though many struggle with 90 minute ones. Early CD players will sometimes simply not play CD/R's, particularly of more than 80 minutes.

The format can accommodate up to 99 tracks and it is usual to allow a 2-second pause between tracks. It's not essential to have 2-second pauses, either because of space limitations or for effect, but this is what listeners normally expect.

CD's can be reproduced in two ways. The ones you buy in the shops are "pressed" from what's called a "glass master". The cost of setting this process up means that it is only viable for quantities of 500 or more. I don't have the facility to do this in-house, but I'll be happy to arrange it for you at a commercial pressing plant. I'll normally use a DAT (digital audio tape) master of your work for this. For smaller quantities the reproduction process involves 'burning' the CD's, which i certainly can do for you.

A word about copying CD's. Most people have computers at home with facilities to copy CD's at high speed. Unless you own the copyright of the material, this is in fact illegal. If you do go ahead, here are some things to remember. First, all CD players can't play the CD-R's made in this way. Old players and some in-car CD players may have trouble. It's well known in the music industry that record company A&R men play many of the demo's they receive while in their car. Wouldn't it be awfull if he put yours in and it wouldn't play? You only get one chance. . .

No-one, not even ME(!) can guarantee that their CD will play on every player, since the format invariably contains errors. However, at LCD we take great care by using professional audio CD/R's not available in shops and record them at optimum speed. This is why buying copies of your work from me is more expensive than doing it yourself. Given the comments above though, this could be a good investment.

However, if you must, then buy decent blanks and record them at a maximum 4x speed. You might be lucky. . .

Copyright

If your work is original, I can advise you on the steps to take to protect it from piracy.  Our industry is riddled with stories of people who compose music and hear it, perhaps years later, under a different identy, on the radio!

If, on the other hand, you have recorded your version of someone else's music, you are obliged by law to license it.  For small quantities, this is not expensive and I can help you with it.  Be assured that no music leaves LCD Studios without appropriate license cover.