mastering after mastering help

[Fandus]

sorry for the confusing title, and sorry if this has been covered, my searched didnt get me what i was after (this could be due to me using the wrong terms)

so my problem is this;

i am oh so very close to having the current bands EP finished. in terms of sound i feel i am pretty on top of what i am doing. the mix is nice and balanced and i'm hitting at least -9.5db rms, so i'm happy with the audio side of this project.

now being the first release i've ever done that wasnt just to upload onto facebook or the like, i am a bit out my element with the task of putting it all to a CD.

Is it acceptable/appropriate to just make 5 track.wav files at 44.1khz/16bit and burn them with their track names? eg
01 balls
02 more balls
03 balllllssss
etc

or is it slightly more involved than that?

if anyone can fill me in or point me in the right direction to some information i would really appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[SawdustRecordings]

There are kinda few things to be care of when doing such things. At first you need a quality CDR. No discount stuff. Don't touch the bottom of the CD, and of course take care of scratches. Then you should use the slowest burning speed possible. About 2x or 4x are ok. I guess the most important thing is to turn on "Disc At Once" in your burning tool.
And CD Text (like labeling the tracks) should be turned of. This can cause trouble in the late cd master process. Means that you can label your tracks as you like, but it won't affect the final cd.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Depends on what you want to do with the disc. If you intend to burn some copies yourself to hand out to friends and such, you can pretty much just do it like you said.

If you intend to duplicate the CD's and sell them online or such, you should consider proper mastering, which indeed is slightly more involved as you put it

Then you should use the slowest burning speed possible. About 2x or 4x are ok.

This is a pretty common misconception, but it's not exactly true. Different drives work best (=produce the least amount of errors) at different speeds, and the slowest option is not necessarily the best one. With modern, quality drives, you can pretty safely burn the discs at reasonable speeds.

Once again, I whole-heartedly recommend reading Bob Kat'z Mastering Audio if you're interested in the craft.

 

[waltz mastering]

If they plan on getting the cd replicated use a program that is compatible with the red book standard (most of them are these days - but good to check)

Use quality media. Taiyo Yuden/JVC are widely used by ME's. Use a quality burner and do a listen through or QC (quality control) check through the production master disc once it's burnt to make sure everything is in order before sending off.