The subtitle of this book is 'An easy introduction to burning your own music CDs' That is a very good description of this book. The authors provide a well-balanced mix of technical information and practical advice.

As this review column is for programmers, I am not going to go into any great detail. However, many of us now have CD-R or CD-RW capable drives on our machines and modern hard-drives are well capable of providing the support that mastering requires. Quite a few of us have favourite music on vinyl (or even pre-vinyl) or cassette tape that we would like to enjoy on our home audio systems, or take out with us on our bi-weekly exercise run (my wife will tell you that that is pure fantasy for me).

This book tries to steer readers to stay legal as regards copyright issues. I have no ethical problem with burning a copy of a vinyl disc to CD for personal use when I own, and continue to own, the original. On this issue, I think we as parents and educators of the next generation should be placing far more emphasis on the concept of ethical behaviour and far less on ways to squeeze past the laws of whatever country we live in.

If you want to burn CDs from your collection of music, this book will prove a great help.