Directions for Burning Audio CDs on Windows Systems

These directions will tell you how to burn an Audio CD on a Windows system, and were tested on a Windows XP system running SP3. They tell you how to install and use the ImgBurn program to make a CD from a list of files, such as those you have downloaded from Innersong. The directions assume that you are familiar with downloading and installing software; if you do not have experience doing this, we suggest you find someone local who is familiar with this process to help you install the necessary software. (It is possible to use other burning software, including Windows Media Player that comes with the operating system, but we have found that some of this software will often burn CDs that are not like the original ones that we used when creating downloads.)

• Download and install the ImgBurn program.

• If your files are in the Windows Media Lossless Format you will be able to proceed without installing any additional software.

• If your files are in the FLAC format, download and install a FLAC CODEC for your system.. (You can tell if this will be necessary by attempting to play the files using Windows Media Player. If it can not play your files you will have to install the CODEC.)

• If you want to burn files that are in the MP3 format you can do so, but this is not recommended, as the resulting audio CD will be of lower quality.

• If you want to burn files in some other format (e.g. Apple Lossless) you will probably have to convert them to a supported format using a utility program such as DBPoweramp.

• The remaining steps assume that the files are in Windows Media Lossless format, or some other format that can be played by Windows Media Player on your particular system.

• Insert a blank CD-R into the CD drive of your computer.

• Open the ImgBurn program and from the tools menu, create a CD CUE FILE that lists the tracks that you want to burn onto the CD. You can browse to the folder containing your files and select the desired tracks using the browse icon near the top right of the window. When you are done the folder containing your audio tracks will also contain a cue file which you will use in the next step. Exit Imgburn.

• Using Windows Explorer, browse to the folder containing the cue file that you just created and right click that cue file. Select BURN using ImgBurn from the menu. This will activate Imgburn in the burn mode.

• Select Verify, clear Test Mode, set Write Speed to 8 and Copies to 1. Click on the icon at the lower left that shows data going from disk to CD.

• ImgBurn will burn a CD and then verify that it did so correctly. When done, exit Imgburn.

You will be able to play this CD on a computer or a CD player. (There are a few old CD players that will not play CD-R disks, but these are rare.)

"Difficulties can never be greater than your capacity to solve them."
P. R. Sarkar