How to verify an Audio CD is burned correctly?

[tedyun]

I was wondering what the easiest method to verify that a set of wav or aiff files are burned correctly when making an Audio CD, aside from carefully listening to the whole CD.

I am downloading FLAC files, convert these to wav files, then make Audio CDs that I can send out to other people as trades. Or, I will be a branch on a tree where I make copies and send out to 5-6 leaves. This can amount to 10-12 CDs and I can't listen to all. Once in a while (maybe 1 in 50 discs), the receiver reports that there was an error in CD, and I have to reburn it for the person.

When burning data files, I can create and verify checksum files, but with Audio CDs, there doesn't seem to be an analogous method.

Is there a way to compare Spectral Analysis or Frequency Analysis of wav files to show that they are identical?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Ted

[gsmyth79]

You can make an md5 for the .wavs or .aiffs and then check that against your burned files

[tedyun]

Thanks for the reply!

I've actually been experimenting with various strategies of making checksum files from the original, the burned copy, re-extracted copies, etc., and I can never get them to match.

For example, if you rename the original wav or aiff file to whatever will be burned on the CD (on a Mac, it is "# Audio File.aiff", where # represents the Track number), make an md5 of it, then make an md5 of the burned track, it is always unidentical.

[ffooky]

Originally Posted by tedyun

For example, if you rename the original wav or aiff file to whatever will be burned on the CD (on a Mac, it is "# Audio File.aiff", where # represents the Track number), make an md5 of it, then make an md5 of the burned track, it is always unidentical.

That's explicable by the fact that no burning application for the Mac is capable of compensating for the burning offset of your drive.

Don't sweat it, however, it's very, very likely that your disc has burned correctly and you'll never notice any uncorrected offset. Just make sure you keep the original FLAC/SHN set for trading.

[ColinM]

Why not send out compressed files instead of audio?

That way, you can easily check the .md5 after you burn the copy.

[tedyun]

That's explicable by the fact that no burning application for the Mac is capable of compensating for the burning offset of your drive.

Don't sweat it, however, it's very, very likely that your disc has burned correctly and you'll never notice any uncorrected offset. Just make sure you keep the original FLAC/SHN set for trading.

Yeah, for the most part I don't have a problem with it, but I just started thinking about if/how it can be done, and it's been a bee in my bonnet over the weekend.

Why not send out compressed files instead of audio?

That way, you can easily check the .md5 after you burn the copy.

I deal with a lot of old-schoolers, and non-torrenters who prefer to receive an audio CD. I will probably start pushing the FLAC versions because I never realized it was such a problem to verify the integrity of the file. The other problem is if I'm a branch on a tree, and the seed sends me an audio CD. Then I have to extract and burn the wav or aiff files.

Thanks for the replies, guys!