789 Megs Onto A 700 Meg Cd?

[bengedlow]

Years ago I made a music CD that had 74 minutes of contiguous music (one piece). The AIF file was 789 megs. I burned hundreds of copies for friends, using Toast Titanium 6.x Easily. I've decided to market the beast, finally, and am informed by CreateSpace, Lulu.com, CDBaby et. al. that the largest file I can use has to be 700 megs. Which means I have to cut a hole in this already tried and true piece of music (designed to put people to sleep).

 

I can't open my Toast 6.x anymore, as I'm now on Snow Leopard (I'm assuming I'll have to upgrade to Toast 11). My Mac Disc Utility WON'T burn the 789 megs to the 700 meg disc. Naturally.

 

So I'm wondering why I was able, all those years, to burn the 789 megs to a supposedly 700 meg disk, using Toast 6.x? I have this vague memory that one could buy slightly larger CD's, but I doubt I would have used only those, all those years, as I burned hundreds ... on whatever blank CD's I could find; some that were certainly only 700 megs.

 

 

A mystery.

 

 

All ears,

 

 

Ben

[d_deweywright]

I'm not a Toast user (being on the PC side of the fence) but an Audio CD is an Audio CD, with well defined standards.

 

A 700MB/80 minute CD will actually have 846,720,000 bytes of music information on it. As a "Data" disc, it will hold 737,280,000 bytes. So, your 74 minutes of music should fit with no problem. (The difference is that each sector on a Data CD holds 2048 bytes of data, and 304 bytes of error correction code, where each sector on an Audio CD holds a full 2352 bytes of music (2048 + 304)).

 

So, it sounds to me like the folks where you're trying to send this to have no idea what they're talking about. As for burning it with your Mac utility, assuming it can make both data and Audio CDs, make sure you've told it you're trying to make an Audio CD. As a Data CD, your file will not fit, as an Audio CD, there should be room to spare, about 60 MB.

 

Good luck.

 

(P.S. I'm rounding up in my above numbers. An 80 minute CD will typically hold only 79 minute 58 seconds and a few sectors of music. Each sector is 1/75th second of music.)