CD burning

March 24, 2005 1:17 AM

Is there a way to stop XP's built in CD burning tools (I'm currently burning stright from Media Player) leaving a small gap between tracks? Failing that, cheap/free software that will?
posted by monkey closet to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

The way I do it (XP Home) is to import the songs into iTunes as WAV (not AAC or mp3), put everything onto a playlist and burn away. No gaps.
posted by transient at 6:48 AM on March 24, 2005

Best answer: You can set the length of the gaps between songs in iTunes.
posted by arco at 6:50 AM on March 24, 2005

Exact Audio Copy should do this, either as a direct burn, or if you create a CUE sheet with zero second gaps between tracks. CDex might work too.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:50 AM on March 24, 2005

This is free, give it a shot.
posted by shepd at 11:09 AM on March 24, 2005

I second iTunes. Booo media player.
posted by sdrawkcab at 11:18 AM on March 24, 2005

iTunes is a resource hog on Windows, just so you know. I prefer Winamp, resouce-wise. You can burn CDs from playlists but you're speed-limited to about 4x unless you go for the pro version ($15, I think? Also enables more CD ripping options.)

The crappy free Roxio software that comes with some CD burners you ought to avoid at all costs: I have at home a stack of about 50 CDs I burned in my lab for a road trip, and every damn track has a gap at the end. Not as in "space between tracks" gap, as in "Roxio deleted the last two seconds of each song to artificially create a gap". I was absolutely pissed when I discovered this. Both burners I have now (and anything I will ever purchase in the future) came with Nero, which was the deciding factor in buying them.

(Nero has a free trial, by the way. I think 30 days. Not sure if you can keep reinstalling it after the trial period ends or not, but it's damn good software.)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:04 PM on March 24, 2005