well, what can i say - for my regular readers, major apologies for the delays in updates of late. i have been busy and, if truth be told, not had all that much to post here. well, yes, colleagues at verk, as it were, i will get around to posting those pics and those stories "soon".
in the mean time, though, i have at last solved a problem that no doubt many others have. no doubt they too have struggled with google searches to get it fixed, but hopefully google has brought you here.
with regards of the fine art of "burning" CDs on a computer ("taping", my Dad would say), Nero tends to be the best software. it has been for years the most user friendly and indeed does what you want. sadly, with regards to audio CDs, that stopped being the case at some point after version 7 of their software. i recently upgraded to 12 (platinum, no less) and found the same problem.
what problem? well, once upon a time you could burn a CD without the default 2 second pause between tracks and still play it as a "normal" CD. this was useful when making copies of "concept albums" (Misplaced Childhood, Tommy and so on) and live albums (The Who Live At Leeds and, well, any other live album that is obviously lesser than that) where there are supposed to be no gaps. you could still skip from track to track, though, if you so wished.
not so after Nero 7. if you removed the 2 second gap you got a strange effect. although the CD still came up with the number of tracks, in fact only track one had any music on it, and all the files are merged into one long bit! highly annoying.
adding a few things together, and after wasting a few discs experimenting, i have at last found out how to do it. here's how.
first off, use Nero Burning Rom. this is with all Nero versions. don't be fooled by the offers of "Nero Express", it is useless for this.
on the setting screen for new compilation, tick the "no pause between tracks" box. do not just remove the gap on the track screen later.
i am, by the way, using as an example here the rather excellent recording of the band Metallica doing a concert in Johannesburg recently. i purchased it from the ace Live Metallica website, mostly for the benefit of my chums Sinbad and Jason the "shorty dwarf" (don't ask) who attended the gig itself. i thought it would be best to record it as a free-flowing no pause disc, and yet allow for one to skip tracks if they wished. shorty dwarf shall no doubt do this in the hope of finding "the bits that they sound like the Pet Shop Boys", but that is another story.
right, phase two, and this is the most important part. there are warnings not to do this which we will discuss, but no harm shall befall your disc or computer by doing this.
on the burn tab, you must select "Disc-at-once/96" as the write method. want another screenshot? OK.
and then carry on as normal, selecting the tracks you want and so forth. simples!
so what does "Disc-at-once/96" actually mean? no idea, and i have not found much on the web. i can only guess it's meant to imply for 1996 standard disc recording? anyway, whatever it is, it works!
why are there warnings not to do it this way? well, the info i have seen suggests that although the CD produced on it will work on a stereo, it might not work on a PC, in particular the one you recorded it on. well, maybe, but the discs i have recorded work fine on both the PC i recorded on and indeed on one of them laptop things.
and for those of you wondering why one would bother making an actual CD when you can just shove mp3 tracks onto an iTwat or similar, go away, this is not the website for you.
it's odd that this advice does not feature anywhere (that i have found) on either Nero's official site or on any of the help forums. hey ho, the advice is here now, and if it helps you out, nice one!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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