Re: CD Production Advice

[Matt Ion <soundy -at- ROGERS -dot- WAVE -dot- CA>]

On Tue, 9 Sep 1997 13:17:53 -0700, ckime wrote:

>     Techwhirlers,
>     One of my co-workers (our QA person) is assessing the feasibility of
>     shipping our cross-platform software product and doc on CD. The first
>     release is likely to be very low volume, perhaps even on-demand type
>     of production.

Okay, consider the cost difference of production runs vs. "on-demand" CD
burns.

A CD writer costs anywhere from $400 to a couple grand.  The blanks cost
anywhere from $5 to $25, depending largely on quality.  The time to burn
will depend on the speed of the writer, but figure that a full CD, at
~650MB capacity, holds 70 minutes' worth of music, which plays at the
equivalent of "single speed".  A 2X burner (the cheapest models) would
take around 35 minutes to do a full disc.  A 6X will drop that to 10-12
minutes, but cost significantly more.

On the other hand, many plants will do a "limited run" of as few as 300
discs.  I don't have a reference for data discs, but an ad I saw today in
a music rag for audio CDs was CDN$999 for a run of 500, including
mastering, label printing, and jewelbox insert.  That's $2 per disc and
very little of your time (even burning at 6X, you're looking at 100 hours
just sitting in front of the thing to churn out 500 units, and that
doesn't give you the label or jewelbox either - even if you just pay some
shmoe $10/hr to sit there and swap blanks and click "Begin", that's $1000
right there... forget the >$2500 for the media!).

Subsequent runs are generally much cheaper because they already have the
masters for everything, and it's just a matter of stamping more discs out
- you're probably looking at production costs of <$1/unit at this point.

>     I haven't been involved in the production end of things since CD-ROMs
>     have become a common distribution method. In searching the archives I
>     found reference to using CD-ROM labels that can be printed and then
>     stuck on the CD, but our QA person has seen those and doesn't think
>     they look very professional. What are the mechanics for burning a
>     graphic image on CD--can you do that in quantity and then burn in the
>     "contents" (doc and software) on an as-needed basis?

You can also buy special printers for printing CD labels, but they range
from moderately expensive for less-than-mediocre results, to
sell-the-Beamer expensive to get at least a professional-appearing
outcome.  If you bought a large enough bulk of blanks, you MAY be able to
convince the manufacturer to pre-label them for you (for a nominal extra
charge, of course)... but again, you're pushing up your per-unit
production cost to the point where it would be cheaper to farm out for a
run of 500, than to do 50 one-offs.  In that case, by the time you've
passed out 60 discs, you've better-than broken even, and even if you have
to toss the other 440 finished discs, you still come out ahead.

>     If any of you
>     have been on this wave I'd appreciate any ideas, tips, or research
>     pointers on economical ways to produce a professional looking CD.

Being involved in music production, I've done a fair bit of pricing on
audio CD pressings.  CD-ROMs aren't much different (in fact, they should
be cheaper, because mastering costs should be lower - no need to re-EQ,
do any A/D conversion, etc.)

I'd strongly recommend doing a cost-comparison of one-offs vs.
manufactured production runs - I expect you'll find the break-even point
to be very low (YMMV depending on local prices and accessability of a CD
manufacturer).




 Your friend and mine,
 Matt
 <insert standard disclaimer here>
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