Recording Hypnotherapy CDs (actually any audio CD)

Like many other therapists I record CDs to give away to clients as part of the therapy process. In my case these were recorded in a professional studio and then edited on my PC to produce the final mixed audio track.

These are burnt to CD-Rs as needed and in the past I have always used the free version of Nero I got with my DVD burner to do this. These are audio rather than MP3 files I'm talking about.

I'm not sure why but I started getting more CDs that would skip tracks and sound distorted when using this process. Sometimes clients would report that a CD would be ok up to a certain point and then sound distorted. Not good.

It only seemed to happen to audio CDs, data style CDs always played on every PC I ever tried them on so I figured it had to be some odd combination of media and software.

After much head scratching and plenty of trial and error, here is what I found.

Most modern CD players that have a motorized drive to load the CD will play just about anything. They seem to tolerate all kinds of media; sadly most of my clients had older style manual load CD players.

Lesson 1
Stick with 'silver' style CDs. Take a look at the disc on the spindle in the shop. (I usually buy spindles of 25 CDs). Look at the track side of the disc; if this is blue, green or gold reject the CD. It's not that they are no good, its just that these dye based surfaces do not get read easily by older CD players. Save them for data discs.

Lesson 2
Give your PC a break, if you are recording a CD, shut down unwanted applications that are using CPU time and memory. I frequently have multiple browser tabs open plus outlook and a bunch of other programs to. Shut them down and have open only your CD burner software. In this way the burner software can have plenty of memory and CPU cycles to play with. The older the PC you have the more important this is.

Lesson 3
Select some software that works. I am now using Image Burn which is free for personal use and you can download a copy from this link. The software is great but the interface has more features than you are likely to need. To avoid frustration, take 30 minutes or so to read the online 'how to' guides. It will as the name suggests burn ISO images to a disc but it will also burn a bunch of tracks to a CD; as long as you remember to create a CUE file first. Like I said read the online guide first (I didn't and wasted some time and discs).

Lesson 4
Do not try to burn the CD at maximum speed. When you load a CD Image Burn will check the CD to see what speeds it can be written at. It may well say that it will burn at 48X speed but I recommend that you choose the SLOWEST speed that the disc reports it will work at, typically 8X these days. Once again it's about given your system an easier time of it so that you get the best possible CD at the end.

Burn your CD and then wait for the happy jangly song that Image Burn plays when it has finished. Job done.

Since switching to working this way I have had no rejects after the CD has been written.

If you record your own CDs for music or therapy work I recommend you try these tips, they may save you some headaches later.

If you would like to hear my therapy tracks then go to www.gift4life.com where you can buy the MP3 or CD online.

Gift4life.com Web shop & Actinic

My own e-commerce web shop (www.gift4life.com)was set up for me using Actinic 8 software. It handles everything from didgital downloads to shipping costs.

It's not perfect though, or possibly I have been doing something wrong. I was first alerted to this by a lady from Switzerland who wanted to buy an MP3 hypnosis track but found that the web shop added £10 for post and packing! Not surprisingly she decided not to buy but thankfully she did let me know.

The digital download parts of Actnic seem to work well but I'm not sure how fully integrated it is with the rest of the sytem. There is a system setting tick-box to say don't apply shipping to MP3, this was ticked. So far so good, however I had not defined a shipping zone that included Switzerland, it therefore dropped into a default 'rest of world' class with a default shipping charge of £10. This is potty, this seems to take precidence over the global don't charge shipping setting!

I resolved the issue put putting every single country into a zone even if that zone was 'rest of world'. It feels like a messy work around but it seemed to fix the issue.

Back off holiday and wanting to change

As is usual at this time of year things go a bit quiet on the personal one to one work as people go away on holiday. There is nothing to do except maintain the web site and wait for the phone calls.

The first of the 'post holiday' calls have now started and is sometimes the case, a husband will call on behalf of a wife (or vice versa). I always do my best to assist people in this situation by providing information but there is a limit on what can be achieved until the person in question contacts me directly.

I am always aware of the potential for one partner putting pressure on the other to make some kind of change. That does not make for positive results.

Take part in a happiness experiement today

Would you like to take part in an experiment to raise the happiness of the whole country?

Great!

Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire is conducting an experiment that aims to measure the change in happiness possible by doing a short, easy excercise.

If you go the the web site (in the link in the title of this post) you will see a short questionnaire and a short video.

The idea is to fill in the questionnaire to measure the before and after effect of the experiment.

Professor Richard Wiseman, who is leading the study, has high hopes that it will, if enough people participate.

"It's well known that happiness is catching," said Prof Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire. "We hope to spread happiness around the UK. No-one's ever tried cheering up a whole country before, and it's the right time to do it with everyone feeling gloomy from the recession.

"Whether or not it will work depends on how many people take part. I've no idea what the tipping point is. Potentially somewhere like London, which is densely populated, you might find people smiling a lot more. It's a mad idea but it might just work."

For the experiment to succeed, at least 10,000 people need to take part, said Prof Wiseman, adding: "We're hoping for more than that."

Let me know how you get on!