[grrr223]

I own a 400 disc CD player, so I would like to burn a copy of the CDs I listen to a lot to listen to in the car since it takes a day and a half to eject CDs from my CDP. I got fed up with just writing on them with a Sharpie, it looked so unproffesional.

So I bought Avery's CD/DVD Ink Jet Labels Design Kit . It has it's pluses and minuses. The software SUCKS, and isn't compatible with a Mac. If you want to do anything cool with CD labels, all that you really want is a template you can just open in Illustrator or another real graphics app. So I created my own templates and I can use them fine. They have the cool feature that the labels have guides on them to perfectly center the labe on a CD if you place it in the jewel case first.

If you want something that works right out of the box and don't own a better graphics program, I would recommend CD Stomper. I wish I had bought it to begin with, but I'm satisfied with the Avery one for now.

What are you going to put on your CD labels you ask? Well, just putting text on them looks boring, so I found a few websites that have the actual CD labels as well as front, back, and inside artwork for thousands of CDs, I can't believe these sites haven't been shut down yet. Try these:

CDcover.cc
Cover Universe

And lastly, I have found that good CD-Rs are important to good-sounding recordings. I have had great luck with TDK's Certified Plus 80 min CD-Rs which happen to be on sale for $9.99 after rebate at CompUSA (sorry my international friends). Check out the info here:
TDK CD-Rs at CompUSA

 

[grrr223]

The sale is good until 8/18 and you actually have to bring the ad in with you to CompUSA. I forgot to bring the ad with me, but they were very nice about it. The guy even printed out a copy of the rebate form for me. You're limited to 1 rebate per household/family/receipt/etc. but you can buy as many 50 packs as you'd like for $20 if you bring in the ad. So I bought 2 50 packs, paid $42.43 or something like that with tax and I'll get $10 back, so it's about $30 for 100 very high-quality CD-Rs, you can't beat it.

 

[Odeen]

Just use decent (branded, with thick top surface) CDR's, as the glue on those labels is rumored to eat through the top layer (under which your DATA is!) in only a year or two.

/me likes Sharpies. Seriously. Cheap, easy, plug-and-play, PC, Mac, and Unix-compatible, and never a software conflict.