Burning a DAO CD

Linux MP3 CD Burning mini-HOWTO
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# 4. Burning a DAO CD

DAO, Disc-At-Once, is as of now the only method for burning a CD without a 2-second pause between the tracks. It's useful for burning party mixes. The program for burning CDs in DAO mode is cdrdao, available from SourceForge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdrdao/.

The cdrdao program uses description files called TOC (Table Of Contents, of course). There are two ways to create such file. First is to use a shell script, distributed with cdrdao source (in `contrib` directory, called generate_toc.sh. It takes a list of `.wav` files as an argument and produces a `cd.toc` file. Second way is to simply create such file yourself in a text editor of your choice. Here is a self-explanatory example:

    CD_DA

    TRACK AUDIO
    AUDIOFILE "mix-01.wav" 0

    TRACK AUDIO
    AUDIOFILE "mix-02.wav" 0

    TRACK AUDIO
    AUDIOFILE "mix-03.wav" 0

    TRACK AUDIO
    AUDIOFILE "mix-04.wav" 0

    TRACK AUDIO
    AUDIOFILE "mix-05.wav" 0

The 0 (zero) after the wave filename means start from the beginning of the file. There can be a second number providing the length (time) of file to record. The xcdroast creates similar TOC files, there are also examples in `testtocs` directory of cdrdao source.

The cdrdao by default uses the device `/dev/cdrecorder`, which should be a link to the cdwriter device. Assuming your cd recorder device file is `/dev/scd0`, create the link (as root) as follows:

    ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrecorder

Then, assuming that the TOC file is named `cd.toc` the command to burn the cd is simply:

    cdrdao write cd.toc

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