Replicated discs (often referred to as pressed discs) are created in a manufacturing process that starts with raw materials like polycarbonate, and involves physically pressing your data into the surface of the disc. Duplicated discs (often referred to as burned discs) encode your data onto a specially manufactured disc by burning microscopic holes into the dye layer of a recordable CD or DVD. Replicated discs are the standard for major commercial releases; however, duplicated discs have lots of advantages, too.What is Glass Mastering?
Glass mastering is the first stage in the CD and DVD and Bluray replication process. As CD, Blu-ray and DVD replication involves ‘pressing’ the data into polycarbonate discs, an aluminum ‘stamper’ must be made to do this. This stamper is made from a glass master. The glass master is a glass CD, DVD or Bluray disc made from a ‘pre master’. The ‘pre-master’ could be a CD-R, DVD-R,BD-R etc.

Should I get replication or duplication?

Quantity and turn time is often the defining factors on this decision. Replication is most cost effective on orders of over 500 discs. Duplication is most cost effective on orders of fewer than 500 discs and can be significantly faster than replication on shorter runs.Will duplicated discs play in all players?
A small percentage of older players will not play a duplicated disc. The best way to ensure that you will get maximum compatibility is to use our Premium Grade DVD and CD duplication.

What is a Red Book CD?

Red Book is the orginal standard created for CD audio. This is a disc no more than 74 minutes in length with a dynamic range of 16bit with sample rate 44.1kHertz. It must have a table of contents or TOC and a PQ track that is suitable for audio CDs. This must include track marker timings, gaps between tracks, disc time elapsed, track time elapsed, countdown modes for the disc and for tracks etc.

How does album, track, and artist information show when a CD is played?

CD Text is a extension of the existing audio CD standard (“Red Book”) which will add the ability to store text and graphical information such as titles, artist name, and song title on the CD. This information is stored in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with the normal operation of any CD players or CDROM drives. This is often a confusing part of creating a CD. If you create a CD in Itunes, often you can see the CD text in Itunes, but not in other application like media player, or in your car stereo.
To get the CD Text to show up, you will need to have a TOC added to your CD during mastering. We cannot add this at the factory.
If your audience has internet access you can rely on Gracenote. If you register your titles with this free database service, your audience will have access to CD text if their player has internet access.
More information can be found at the following websites:

CD-Text

http://www.dvdcopycat.com/blog/2010/11/showing-cd-audio-text-for-cd-replication/

Gracenote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracenote

http://www.gracenote.com/

Disc Capacities

DVD5:

This is a single sided, single layer DVD. It can contain up to 4.38GB.

DVD9:

A single sided, dual layer DVD disc. A DVD9 can hold up to 7.95GB of data and is typically used when more than 120 minutes of high quality video is needed, or a larger amount of data is required over a standard DVD5.

CD:

Maximum length is 79:45 minutes, however, Red Book standard recommends 74 minutes. For programs over 74 minutes total time, you must submit a signed disclaimer form with your order waiving any quality or playability problems that may arise from extending the length past recommended times.

BD25:

A single sided single layer Blu-ray Disc. It contains 25GB of data.