Using CDs for Square Dance calling

Everybody knows what CDs are (does everybody?), so I want to concetrate on aspects regarding using them for calling.

Commercially made SD CDs

There are not (yet?) many companies publishing SD music on commercially made CDs (I heared about one but need more information!). The main reason is the high costs for mastering a CD. These high initial costs make pressing SD songs onto CD rather uninteresting, taking volumes of 500 to 5000 into account. Combining several songs onto one CD would be possible (you could theoretically press eight songs (called and instrumental) onto one CD), but as musical taste varies, only one company has taken the risk of doing so.

Selfmade CDs

CD writers have become a rather popular mass product. With these units is it possible to 'burn' your own CDs.

These CDs are fully compatible with standard audio CDs (if the writing system does it's work right) and hold up to 60 minutes of music in 'CD quality'.

The writable CD is, technically speaking, a WORM device - Write Once Read Multiple. The bit marks that are pressed into a commercial CD are here cut with a laser into a gold foil. Once they are there, they can not be altered (as opposed to minidiscs which can be rewritten multiple).

Most CD writers are used in conjunction with a computer. The sequence is like this:

  1. Record all songs into the computer
  2. Edit the songs (cut lead-ins and trailers)
  3. Create a CD image of the songs
  4. and write it onto the CD.
This works well, but is time-consuming.

Once the CD is made, it can be played using any CD player. So instead of carrying 45 records, you have three CDs and probably a portable CD player. Speed-adjustable CD players are available.

So this technology is interesting for callers, but it has some drawbacks:

written by H. Niemann , last change: 1999-12-23