XO Wave: Create CD Mastering Session Wizard

The Create CD Mastering Session Wizard is an easy way create a new session and set it up for CD Mastering. Whether creating a mix CD, producing a master for mass-producing your own commercial release, or burning off a few demos, the wizard helps get your tracks onto CDs.

The wizard lets you select the songs to include in your mix and the amount of time between songs, and it can even scan the songs and adjust the volume levels for you automatically. Once the wizard is done you can burn the CD immediately, or you can edit the session manually just as you would any other session. For example, you may want to add a smooth fade-out to one track, or put an extra long gap after one of the songs -- it's up to you.

For more about masters and pre-masters, see our Guide to Home CD Mastering.

Starting the Create CD Mastering Session Wizard

To create a new CD Mastering session, simply click Create New CD Mastering Session in the Select Task window, or select File:New CD Mastering Session.

Using the Create CD Mastering Session Wizard

The wizard walks you through the steps needed to create a new session for CD Mastering. It presents a simple interface that collects the information needed to make sure your CD sounds the way you want it to. The wizard consists of four steps that you advance through by clicking the Next button. Each step is explained below.

	Step 1: Introduction
	The first step of the wizard simply provides an introduction to the CD Mastering session creation processes. Read it and then click Next.
	Step 2: Create Session
	Here's where you decide where your session will saved and what it will be called. All you need to do in this step is click Select Output File and chose a name and location for the file before clicking Next. For more info on what a session is and how they are organized, see Understanding Sessions. For now, you just need to understand that a session is a folder with your stuff in it.
	Step 3: Select Source Files and Setup Session
	The third step is where you really configure your session. Start by selecting the song files you want in your session by dragging and dropping them from the Finder into the white area above the buttons. You can also use the buttons labeled Add Single File..., Add Multiple Files..., and Add iTunes Playlists.... Add iTunes Playlist is particularly convenient if you already have a suitable playlist in iTunes.

Once you've picked your songs, you can drag and drop them into the correct order, remove unwanted songs, or keep adding. If you like the song order, the rest of this step's defaults are usually fine, but here's an explanation of the remaining options:

• Pad CD Track Markers: automatically positions the CD Track Markers a little before the audio starts. This helps to make sure that CD players don't skip the beginning of the track. Note that this padding shifts the CD Track marker in time, but (with the exception of the first track) does not create new silence or change the total amount of time between the end of one song and the beginning of the next.
• Seconds of added silence between tracks: sets the amount of added silence between tracks. This is distinct from the inter-track pause required by the CD specification, where the CD player counts down instead of up. See the tutorial for more info on CD Track pauses.
• Create Volume Automation: Automatically creates volume automation to scale the volume of each song. This option lets you either scale the volume of each song so that all songs sound equally loud, or maximize each track so that so that each is as loud as possible.
• Add Extra Volume for Automation creates an extra Volume effect for scaling the volume of each song. With Create Volume Automation, this checkbox allows you to control volume scaling through its own effect, so you can adjust the overall volume separately, without altering the automation. If you are familiar with automation editing, you may want to uncheck this box.
• Determine Automation Fast allows much faster computation of automation used to scale the volumes of each track, with a minimal reduction in accuracy. Unchecking this box will slow down creating the session, and only sometimes produces better results.

When you're done with this step, click Next to go to the next step.

	Step 4: Import Files
	This is your chance to sit back and relax while XO Wave imports your songs and prepares your session. When the import is done, your new session will be automatically opened. From there, you can either edit your session as described in our XO Wave Quick Start Guide or burn your CD by selecting File:Burn CD:Create CD Master, to launch the Create CD Master Wizard.