On the issue of burning playable CDRs, some words to the wise from our wise readers:
William Mericle advises burning CDRs with an Emagic Waveburner, a dedicated mastering software package, and claims that the resulting cds are more reliably played than when burned on I-tunes. Michael Robinson, an extremely prolific Los Angeles composer with massive experience in CDR burning, highly recommends Mitsui Gold inkjet printable CDRs (not Mitsui silver!, he adds) as being the best in terms of sound quality, compatibility, and longevity. He also strongly recommends recording at 1X speed, claiming that the result is warmer and less digital than at faster speeds. He learned all this through being entrusted to commit rare ethnological recordings to CD for the UCLA ethnomusicology department, and found that musicians could tell the differences in quality in blindfold situations. I’m willing to try it.