Burning WAV files to CD on iMac

Can’t get my iMac to burn a CD with WAV files. Keeps burning AIFF format. Finished new album needs to be in WAV format to upload to music sites. I don’t want to run through iMusic because it changes audio levels. CD is mastered and finished. Can someone tell me how to get this done? I’m running Wavelab 9.5.

Why not just render WAV files directly from WaveLab to your hard disk and upload those for digital distribution? There is really no need to involve a CD in this scenario.

When it comes to audio CD, WaveLab doesn’t really burn WAV or AIFF specifically, it’s just that your Mac sees the CD tracks as AIFF instead of WAV.

Thanks so much for the reply. I tried that already. Guess I did not do it correctly. The album has 14 songs, but all I got was a single montage file. If I do the songs individually, I will not get the audio leveling that I need. I’ll look into it, though! Much Thanks.

Are you using WaveLab Elements or Pro?

WaveLab Elements 9.5

I think I got it. Set markers for each song in montage and exported WAV files as regions. Did one at a time to be sure. Looks like it worked. Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction. Looks like volume levels were preserved. If I missed something, please let me know.

No problem. WaveLab Elements has some notable rendering differences compared to Pro, and I don’t really use Elements so I can’t say with certainty what’s best, but it sounds like you got it.

The other good thing about avoiding using a CD-R in this process is that unless you use CD Baby for digital distribution, most digital distributors like DistroKid and TuneCore can accept 24-bit WAV files at higher sample rates so with the exception of CD Baby, there is no need to reduce your masters to CD quality for the streaming services.

1 Like

Should one worry about bit depth conversion as much as people get into sample rate conversion? Or is there nothing to it other than a numerical rounding?

It depends what is your final resolution. If this is 16 bit PCM, then using dithering is important.
If this is 24 bit PCM, then it is recommended but not as much important.

2 Likes