Types of CDs

Let’s look at a few of the types of CDs that burners can create. Currently available CD burning software varies in the approach it takes to get you from start to finish, but there are two main categories of CDs that can be created – music/audio CDs and data CDs. To be truthful, all CDs are data CDs. Every CD that is created by a CD recorder is made up of digital data. It is simply easier for the creators of the CD burning software to break things into a few broad categories. We’ll talk about the types of music/audio, data, and other types of CDs next.

Audio and Music CDs

As we mentioned in our introduction section, the audio CD has been around the longest, so that’s where we’ll start. Known as Compact Disc – Digital Audio or CD-DA, it is a CD that is made up of high quality audio files. The software that writes the CD then packages up the disc so that it works nicely in our portable boom boxes, car stereo CD, or home audio CD/DVD players. The audio CD is also easily recognized by a computer CD-ROM drive, and will get played automatically by the computer in a CD player program. It’s worth noting that the audio CD you buy in the record store is pressed, while the audio CD you create on your computer is burned. The CD recording software does its best to make it function exactly like a pressed CD so it works in a multitude of playing devices.

There are other types of CDs that contain music that may or may not play in a standard audio CD player. These are really data CDs (which we’ll get to shortly) that have compressed audio files on them. They can be made up of MP3 audio or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. More and more of the new portable CD players, car stereo CD, and home DVD players recognize MP3 audio and, to a lesser extent, WMA audio files.

Data CDs

Data CDs are compilations of many kinds of computer files – programs, picture files, sound files, video files, databases, word processing documents, etc. The data CD is generally used to backup files from a computer, and for two good reasons. First, the discs hold approximately 650MB of data. That’s a good chunk of files from a hard drive (though in comparison to some hard drives, it’s getting kind of puny). Second, once the data is on a CD, the data is very safe. It’s written once and you can’t erase it (unless you use a re-writable CD). The disc itself is also quite durable, at least relative to other forms of media storage.

Duplicate CD or Disc Copy

This type of CD is used to backup commercial CDs that you own, just in case the original gets destroyed. The manufacturer of the CD will usually grant the creation of a backup for just such an emergency. CDs are generally not copy protected, but many software companies are starting to put some form of copy protection on their CDs to keep them from being illegally copied (pirated). Some companies, like Microsoft with the Windows XP software, require you to activate installed software through the Internet. A person could make as many copies of the CD as they wanted to, but only one installation of the software would be usable.

Video CDs

Another category of CD that most of the current recording software supports is the Video CD. The Video CD, or VCD, can be played in most modern home DVD players. It is just what it sounds like, a CD with video, and in most cases audio too. It is different from a DVD in many ways. First, it is recorded onto a standard CD-R or CD-RW. Therefore it doesn’t hold as much as the DVD which is a disc with almost 5GB of space versus the CD which has 650-700MB of space. Second, the quality of the video is lower than the DVD. It is roughly equivalent in quality to a VHS video tape. VCDs can also be used to create picture slideshows that includes background music.

Disc Images

It’s worth mentioning that you can save an image of a CD-ROM that can then be duplicated later. As an example, you can actually download the installation CD for the Red Hat Linux operating system. The file is well over 600MB and is in a form called an ISO file. Most CD burning software can load a disc image file, but it is used by more advanced users.