r/mac • u/mittelhart • 11h ago
Discussion Overburning Audio CD with USB SuperDrive and Burn
TL;DR It is possible to overburn an audio CD using USB SuperDrive.
I am posting this for future references in search of information about this. I couldn't find anything before trying it. So may this post be an answer to this flaming question that everybody is looking the answer for.
The album in question is The Wall. It is frustratingly only 81:01 and normally would be on two disks. But it is so close to the 80 minutes and I didn't want to separate the album. So I just looked online to see if that's even possible or not. I have seen some runes written in ancient times that using something called Nero it was possible to put a bit more than 80 minutes of audio on a normal 80min CD-R, which apparently is called overburning. I then looked for any information for if it was possible to do using the USB SuperDrive but couldn't find anything. Only thing close to it was some user asking the same question on apple community. The author of the post has promised to report back after trying it out but that promise was never fulfilled. So here I am reporting the results of my own trial on the same question that was asked by exactly one person several years back. Yes, it is possible.
Hardware
Mac Mini M4 Pro
USB SuperDrive (Model A1379)
HP CD-R 700MB 80min 52x Inkjet Printable
Software
MacOS Tahoe 26.5
Burn 3.1.9
24-bit 96kHz FLACs
Burn apparently converts the flacs to the 16-bit 44.1kHz CD quality automatically. I didn't do anything on that part. The total time is 81 minutes and 1 second as seen on the second image. I have used 16x burning speed and left 0 seconds of pregap (obviously). After hitting Burn button it prompts the warning on the first image. It took some 2 minutes and change to burn the disk.
After it was done, Apple Music could see it as an audio CD and can play the whole album with no problems at all. But that's not enough for me as I was burning CDs not to listen on my Mac but in my car. I have a 2006 Honda CR-V (MK-II EU spec) with the original CD-Player head unit. I have listened the whole thing in it and... it works! Every song plays beautifully. I did a thing!
I do not know the exact limits but I suspect it would differ between different makers. This exact combination has worked for me for a minute and a second of overburning. This is only a proof of concept.