What is a CD-R? Why do I care about disk-at-once vs track-at once?
CDs were initially intended as a mass produced play-only media. Recently, recordable CDs (CD-R) have become affordable. The cost of adding a CD burner to a computer is now down to around $300, so for small runs that may be an advisable route. [Joe] [9/98] CDs are written or burned in the CD-R recorder in either one of two modes, disk-at-once (DAO) and track-at-once (TAO). With disk-at-once, the entire CD is written in one stream starting with the table of contents. This is the preferred format for sending a CD-R to a duplicating plant, because you can make a CD-R DAO master disk of which the pressed CD will be a bit-for-bit clone. If you want to record additional tracks at different times, this might not be practical, so track-at-once operationis also offered. This has problems too, because a short burst of digital errors are generated at the place on the disk where the laser turned on or off.
