Chance wrote:Well, he needs access to a DVD burner if he's going to pass a copy along to the next person in line.
That's only if he passes a COPY. He can do any one of the following:
- Copy the files onto his HD
- Back the files up onto CD
- Burn Audio CDs
Also, converting to MP3 for the purpose of burning a regular CD is JUST STUPID (unless you're burning an MP3 CD*, obviously). Audio CDs can hold 74-80 (you can actually "overburn" up to in the 90s I think) minutes of music, PERIOD. People think that they have to convert to MP3 because of their burning software, but the reality is that when you burn MP3s YOU'RE BURNING SOFTWARE UN-CONVERTS THE MP3.
CD-burning programs are just as compatible with WAV as they are MP3.
The most conveniant way to burn is with the FLAC plug-in for Nero as you can just burn FLACs directly to disc (Nero does the converting automatically, and no, it doesn't affect the burn integrity.)
THe music data on a CD is in a format called CDDA (no, it's not WAV). No matter what file format you're burning, it's converted to CDDA. CDDA is, of course, just as lossless. CD-players don't read WAV, etc. - they read CDDA. That's just the way it works.
MP3 - Lossy
WAV - Lossless
FLAC - Lossless
SHN - Lossless
CDDA - Lossless
Most people can't really tell the difference between MP3 and lossless anyway, but whatever. ONE issue is that everytime you encode a file to MP3 it gets worse. So, I can burn someone on this forum an MP3-sourced CD and he can rip it as an MP3 and he passes that on to the next person and on and on and on and the quality will go down each time and eventually it'll sound like an internet stream.
*A novelty CD that can be played in special CD-players that say MP3 on them. because the music is in the form of MP3, they can hold more, but they're not as compatible (not to mention the fact that they're in MP3 form).