Get whatever updates you can for WL and check in the manual about "fooling" WL into recognizing your drive.

Don't take a chance with delivering a non-compliant disc - It's not worth it.

When it comes down to it, you're lucky the plant checked. I know a lot of bands that burned their own (non-compliant) production masters and sent them to short-run plants that didn't check.

I'm sure you can guess the situation after the release party.

You really need to know the kind of error to determine what the problem was.

red book question

i have a separate red book question

i always thought it was 74 mins audio, minimum 4 seconds per track.

question is: is red-book spec 78 mins or 74 mins??

mike i'm sure you know why i am asking this

It depends on how much on the edge you like to live. You can get away with 80 min but you normally have to sign a waiver releasing the plant from any problems. There really is no set time for redbook. Basically it just lays out where the pits should go and if you go right to the limit, it's 79:57 or so. But this doesn't allow for any manufucturer wiggle room + or -. So they came up with 74 min to allow for this. If the Plants equipment is within spec, it should come out to be 77 min of time, this gives a touch of wiggle room within spec. If The plant has their equipment really tweaked, then 80 can work good. Then you have the problem with some of the consumer players, but I haven't run into any so far.

I don't think the spec was ever changed from the "650" days... Many plants still require a signed waiver if you go over 74 minutes.

Never went over 74 min yet. I worked on a compilation last week and it was over 76 minutes. I informed the client about this (risk and the waiver) and he decided to edit the cd too make it at 73 min finally.

CD's are almost never the same exact width and consumer burners are rarely consistent, which is why they rate them so low. I've got an 80min CD-R that I burned a compilation on and got away with 87:52. Burned another copy for a friend and ruined the burner because the next disc couldn't handle it and/or the burner was incosistent. It's still fun popping it in to CD players and watching the bugged eyes when they see the time.

Yeah you can burn very long CD's but they won't be red book complient. From what I understand, what a burner can produce and what an LBR can produce are different. We crank out 79min CD's about 1 per week. So far no problems at the plant or consumer complaints to the label. But I can say that the error rates go up for the last 10 min of audio so if you really want to make a master at this length, I would recommend DDP or 1630 to deliver it on.

Re: red book question

twenty4 wrote: i have a separate red book question

i always thought it was 74 mins audio, minimum 4 seconds per track.

question is: is red-book spec 78 mins or 74 mins??

mike i'm sure you know why i am asking this

I don't believe the current Red book standard addresses the total length of a CD.

An interesting tidbit though on why 74 minutes was chosen by Sony/Phillips:

http://