DAO with Nero 5.5

[dmbfan]

I'm new here and this may have previously been answered, but I'll ask anyways...

I'm real big into trading Dave Matthews Band shows and people are real picky on having their shows DAO instead of TAO. Now, on Nero, you can pick DAO at the stage before you click on "Write." Now I've done this, but it still seems to create the cd using TAO and has the normal 2 second skip before each song. Am I missing something here or is there a special "click" I have to do in order for the DAO to take place??

Thank you...

[cfitz]

If you checked DAO, then you probably are writing in DAO mode, and have just been fooled by the two-second gaps into believing that you are writing in TAO mode.

Are you doing a one-to-one disk copy, or are you assembling individual tracks in an audio compilation and then burning it? If you are doing a disk copy, Nero shouldn't introduce the two-second gaps and this bears further investigation.

If you are compiling individual tracks into an audio CD (by selecting "File"->"New..."->"Audio CD", then dragging audio tracks into the "Audio x" compilation window), then what you are seeing are the two-second pauses Nero inserts, by default, at the beginning of each track when making a compilation. You can see in the "Pause" column of the "Audio x" window the length of the pause (skip/gap - call it what you will) associated with each track.

To change this value, select each track, double-click the title, and then set the "Pause:" value to 0 on the "Track Properties" tab of the "Audio Track Info" dialog that pops up. You may be warned when you actually attempt to burn the compilation if you set the pause for the first track equal to 0 because some burners can't support a zero-length pause before the first track. If so, let Nero readjust the pause for the first track, or don't set it in the first place. The length of the pause before the first track doesn't really matter since the music hasn't started playing at that point and you can't notice any pause.

You may also wish to play with the "Cross fade with previous track" setting in the same "Track Properties" tab in order to make smooth transitions for live concert tracks or any situation in which you want the two tracks to blend together rather than abruptly switch.

I don't know of a way to change the default setting for the pause to zero (or any other value than 2 seconds), but you can change the setting for multiple tracks at once by shift- or control-clicking to select multiple tracks, right-clicking, and then selecting properties. This will call up the "Audio Track Info" dialog mentioned in the previous paragraph, but under these circumstances the changes you make will apply to all of the selected tracks.

cfitz