When you installed the program on your computer you were automatically asked to enter the configuration information for your system. If you skipped this step you must complete it now. Even if you entered the information when you installed the program it's a good idea to check it through now to make sure that everything is set up right.
Start the program by selecting the AudioCD MP3 Studio 2000 option from the Programs directory in the Windows Start menu. Then click on the Options menu and select Settings to display the Options dialog box. This box contains four tabs, Recorder, Source Drive, Track Directory and ASPI Option. We'll go through them one by one.
Recorder: If you have a CD recorder, select it from the list of drives in the Recorder: field.
The values you set here for the following options are the default settings. They can all be changed for individual recording sessions in the Write CD dialog.
Write Speed: If you want, you can set this option to your recorder's maximum speed, but remember that faster recording speeds result in a slight reduction in sound quality. Most audiophiles say that single-speed (1x) recording produces the best sound. Double speed (2x) is generally a good compromise between speed and quality. See Write and Read Speed Issues for a detailed discussion of this topic.
Write Simulation Mode: When this option is checked the program only simulates writing the audio CD without actually burning any data to the blank CD-R. This saves you from destroying a CD-R unnecessarily if anything goes wrong (if an error occurs during recording the CD-R is useless and must be thrown away). Once you're sure everything's working okay you can uncheck the option and record your first CD.
Normalize: Check this option if you want the program to automatically adjust the overall volume of all the tracks you record to the optimum average level. This prevents annoying differences in average volume between tracks from different sources. This function is performed on the fly and uses a fair amount of processing power, so it's a good idea to perform a test with Write Simulation Mode activated before actually recording a CD with Normalize.
Source Drive: Select the CD-ROM drive you want to use for reading tracks from audio CDs from the list of drives in the Source Drive field. If you only have a CD recorder in the system you can use the same drive for reading and writing, as shown here.
Read tracks at Single Speed (1x): Some CD-ROM drives, particularly older models, are unable to read tracks well from audio CDs at speeds higher than playback speed. If you experience problems or if the extracted music sounds bad try activating this option. See Write and Read Speed Issues for a detailed discussion of this topic. Setting the option here activates it by default, but you can also activate it for individual reading sessions in the Read CD dialog.
Path: This option sets the default path to the directory where you want to store the wave files you extract from audio CDs. You can also choose an individual directory for each track you extract in the Read CD dialog. You can enter the directory path manually in the Path: field or browse to the directory by clicking on the ... button, which opens the standard Windows Open File dialog.
If you plan to extract a lot of files you should choose a directory on a drive or partition with enough free space. For example, the wave files for a 60-minute CD take up around 600MB in uncompressed format and around 150MB in compressed format (see Save as: below).
Save as: If you want to save wave files in compressed format select this option in the Save as: field. This option is also active for the Convert to Wave function -- when it's selected MP3 files that you convert to wave files will automatically be saved in compressed (1:4) format.
ASPI is the software interface used for communication between AudioCD MP3 Studio 2000 and your CD recorder and/or CD-ROM drive. The Microsoft (Adaptec) version is selected by default. Only change this if you experience problems with your CD drives. Please see The ASPI Interface Layer for more details on this subject.