The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92336   Message #1763582
Posted By: Scrump
19-Jun-06 - 08:46 AM
Thread Name: Tech: How to record my own CD?
Subject: RE: Tech: How to record my own CD?
I'm not quite clear whether you intend to make the actual CDs on your PC or not? In any case I guess you will probably want to produce a CD-R 'acetate' copy on it.

As Leadfingers has said, you need some suitable hardware to record the sound with - this could be a tape recorder, cassette, minidisk, etc., or you might get away with recording straight onto your PC using a mic plugged in to the sound card. However the sound quality will vary depending on what you use. It sounds as if you have a low budget in mind, so it's probably best to experiment by recording a few tracks using the different options available to you, and see which sounds best to you. A mixer would be better if you are recording voice and guitar, but if you experiment with the relative position of these in relation to the mic, you should be able to get an acceptable level if you're careful.

You will need some sort of recording software on the PC - you should have something basic in there already, but if you want to be able to edit the tracks you'll probably need something more sophisticated (and therefore expensive). Again, you need to do some research to find out what you have, what you can get, etc., and how to do basic edits such as 'topping and tailing' to remove unwanted sounds before and after the track, or changing the volume if the recording level is too low in places. It can be a very complex subject so I'm just trying to keep it simple!

Then, you'll need a CD-R writer and some software to go with it, to allow you to write the tracks to the CD.

This is just the very basic outline, but I hope it helps you get started - as I said, you need to try a few things first, to get a better understanding of how you can go about it.