CD Burning Guide
So you've ripped your CDs and perhaps downloaded some other people's rips, but there's one last step involved in getting your nice 1:1 copy of your downloaded communism. The burning process is just as important as the ripping process, if your goal is perfection.
To burn a 1:1 copy from a properly ripped CD, there's one program you can use: Exact Audio Copy. It is the only program that can read (its own) non-compliant cuesheets and utilise write offsets. There is another program, Burrrn, which can read EAC's non-compliant cuesheets, but it CANNOT make use of a write offsets. (Hopefully, in the future, it will support this, as it is slightly more user-friendly.)
Create Offset CD
- To start, select the CD/DVD drive you will be using to burn your CDs.
- EAC > Drive Options...
- Click on the Writer tab
- Enter a value of 0 in the Write Offset Samples field, click OK
- Insert your blank CD-RW or CD-R now. Keep in mind you will be writing to this CD, so take note of this in case you do not want to waste a CD-R on
- EAC > Drive Options...
- Click on the Writer tab
- Click on Create Offset Test CD. ! After the burn is complete, the CD-tray should eject and close again. If it doesn't, do this manually.
- Now click on the Offset/Speed tab and then click on Detect read sample offset correction...
- You should be left with a sample offset. Click on OK, not Apply, as you should already have your actual read offset configured.
- Your correct Write samples offset is the number you just obtained minus your drive's Read sample offset. For example, +66 - 48 = 18. +18 is the write samples offset value. Keep in mind your value could be negative.
- Return to the Writer tab and enter that value in the field accordingly.