[linux-help] Re: Burning music CD's

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 09:34:36PM -0500, James Lancaster wrote:
> Actually as I understand the term, multi-session typically means multiple=
> =20
> data tracks.

Correct.  (I'm not sure if they are actually multiple tracks in the
traditional sense, though.)

Multi-session generally means that you can add more data to a CD-R even
after it's been burned already.  Multi-session is a lot less common on
CD-RWs.

Multi-session requires support in the reading device (all modern CD-ROMs
have this support) since the disk actually gets fixated more than once.
Fixating is the process that finalizes a CD session.

> Audio cds are almost always written (well they used to be, as I recall, h=
> ence=20
> a 2 sec gap) as multiple track sessions. Now they are mostly DAO=20
> (Disc-At-Once) mode.=20

This is confusing two different issues:

1. The format of the data on the CD

2. How that data gets written

An audio CD does have multiple tracks but rarely, if ever, multiple sessions
(I am unsure if this is even possible with audio CDs).

Normally, when one writes data to a CD-R, the burning program tells the
drive, in essence, "OK, I'm going to put down an audio track on the disk" or
"OK, this session is done, fixate the thing."  The drive then is smart
enough to know what it needs to do to put down an audio track or fixate the
disk.

In disk at once mode, the burning program takes over more control over the
burning process, and essentially gives the drive a much lower-level
instruction set.  This lets you do things like duplicate odd features of an
audio CD ("hidden" tracks, tracks with no 2-second pregap, etc).  For
general-purpose burning, this is not required.

-- John
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