How should I burn cd for djing? Questions about burning cd's

[Astral_Traveller]

Hello people,

I'm more into vinyls. But now I will have to use cd again. I used to burn cds though but it happened that several times before, my cds started skipping while I was mixing.

Could someone give me an advice how to decrease the chance of skipping a cd by burning it properly?

At what speed should I burn cds and what format? I heard that it is better to use wav format than mp3? So should I convert all my mp3s into wav?

Also, on beatport you have the option of choosing either mp3 or flac, whichone you recommend for djing?

How do ou usually organise the tracks on the cd? How many tracks? Do you make a copy just in case? I guess you burn tracks on one cd that you would never mix together. (?)

Please reply to me, I would need some people's opinion/feedback who are really into it.

Thank you for answer in advance!


Laszlo

[djmickyk]

i personally get 320 bitrate mp3s from beatport etc..i put 10 tracks per cd as i find that suits me best...maybe then introduce a color coded system for the folders ..e.g..tracks that will go good together in a set...as for burning i find that Nero is the most reliable..ive never had any problems with it.

[JackStalk]

Burning one track per cd is very wasteful, but I've found that it's also more durable. The information is only written on a small part of the inside ring of the CD, so it's harder for that area to get scratched. If you have a full CD, there's much more surface area to get scratched and foul up in the CDJ.

On the other hand, if you burn a bunch of tracks to a CD, you'll save a lot more CDs and you'll be able to reburn CDs every few months (or whatever) so they never become damaged enough to start skipping. I personally burn 12 tracks per cd, each track is in a different key on the Camelot Wheel. Therefore you'll always know what key you are in when glancing at the CDJ. It's also easier to jump keys because you see a whole page of tracks in your CD wallet as opposed to just having a whole CD of "8a" and "9a"

[Astral_Traveller]

Thank you for both the replies.

I think I will go for burning less tracks on 1 cd. Because as Jack said, there's less chance for skipping and also gives me more option to mix more tracks together.

One more question, at what speed do usually burn your cds for djing?

Obviously the less speed it is burned the better quality you get.

Thanks

[JackStalk]

Mine is setup for 12x speed and I havent had any issues.

[Nigelshaw]

Hi

I am thinking about writing an application to help manage cd burning for dj's. Being a dj myself, I am finding the initial set up for cd's very long winded. My thoughts were-

Choose the amount of tracks per disc
Select artwork or colour
Browse you collection by genre, artist or album
Burn disc and print a track list at the right size for the cd insert

Any thoughts?


Cheers

Nigel

[JackStalk]

It would be nice, but most of us CD guys have our own way of doing things that we are used to and prefer. Plus there is a growing number of digital DJ's that wouldn't need the application. Your project may have worked years ago, but the current market of CD DJs is too small in my experience.

[Tommy D]

I burn about 8-10 tracks per cd and burn at medium speed and have 2 copys of each cd so i can mix 2 tracks together off the same cd. This saves me about 8 cds for my 10 tracks over the method you use of 1 track per cd. Maybe use the money you could save from using far less cds and buy quality cds, that might help with the skipping. I use Taiyo Yuden watershield and never have issues. Also looking after cds and keeping them in a good quality wallet like slappa or udg will only help matters.

[Connor]

I just put random tracks on CDs I burn, some CDs have 20 tracks some have one to four, I have around 20-22 happy/UK/freeform hardcore CDs at this point and I know which tracks are on which CDs and which track number, I personally cannot find a reliable method of labeling what tracks are on each CD.

[broshades]

from a suggestion here i have singles set up on my cds. i like being able to physically flip through a wallet and see what is in front of my quickly on each disc