How to create CD's containing MP3's playable on car CD player

Factual Questions
1

How can a create a CD that contains MP3 files that can be played on both the CD player in my car, a 2009 Toyota and my house DVD player. The players can both play MP3’s, I just do not know how to create the CD properly.

I copied, as data, using Windows Explorer on Windows 7, a bunch of MP3 files to a blank CD, the files are visible and can be played on my other computer but both the CD player in the car and my house DVD player cannot see the files. I get a “No Music” response.

JPEG files copied to a different CD can be seen from the house DVD player, that CD was created some time ago, from my XP machine, probably using Easy-CD-Creator, unfortunately, the CD burner on that machine is now not functioning.

Should I be using a different tool or should I be able to create this by only using Win 7, do I need to somehow close the CD after creating it, I did do the right-click and eject thing but maybe I missed another step.

Anybody familiar with this process.

Thanks

2

Some players are very picky about the file structure of an MP3 disk. The best thing would be to look in the owner’s manual for the expected directory layout.

3

I wondered about that after the fact, the owner’s manual for my house DVD player does say that filenames should be no more than 12 characters, there is no such mention concerning the car CD player. Most of my filenames are certainly longer than that.

Could it be only that, I would hate to waste too many blank CD just experimenting.

4

Finalizing the disc might also be important, but I don’t know the steps to do this in windows 7

5

In windows 7, Windows Media Player should do this (I have done this many times in Vista.) It even rips for you as well. Press the “burn” button and it should lead you through the steps.

6

I believe I have done this successfully directly from Windows Media Player and by copying the files directly to the blank CD in the MacBook OSX operating system. I’ve used this CD in quite a variety of rental cars as well as our own Toyota.

7

I believe that some disc players are fussy about the format of the MP3s they play as well–they have to be the right smapling rate, etc.

8

Have you tried burning the disc through iTunes? I’ve never had a problem with that.

9

I just copied the MP3’s to a CD like any other file and my stereo was able to read it.

If your stereo has an MP3 port you can plug one of these in and just leave it plugged in as a hard drive. With an 8 gb chip you’ll have 6 days worth of music time available.

10

Have you tried burning it as an audio CD instead of as MP3s? Both of your players should be able to play an audio CD without trouble.

11

If the OP did that they’d be limited to a little over an hour of play time vs putting over 100 mp3s on a data disk. Building on what others have said, Windows Media Player is your best bet. My last CD player would only acknowledge data disks made with it.

12

The cd’s I made with media player worked on a boombox cd and a dvd player. The one I used with my car I burned with the Nero package.

13

Everytime I’ve had a reading issue like the OP it’s been due to the disk not being finalized.

14

Ok, I’ve had partial success.

I created a second CD, this time using Media Player. I had to look around some to figure out how to make it write a Data CD instead of an Audio one. That CD is now usable in the car but NOT in the house DVD player.

At this time, I’m assuming that the failure with the house DVD player is due to my filenames being longer than 12 characters.

I’ve also found the section in the car owner’s manual that says filenames can be up to 32 characters in that player.

Thanks to those who posted some help.

15

I use XP to make a data CD of 10 MP3 files every week, and all I’ve ever done was select the files I wanted, right click, choose “Send to” then “CD” (or whatever it says) from the list. I tell it to record as a data CD, and it goes.

The only times it doesn’t work, it fails right away and I know it’s failed because I don’t get the usual “Adding files to CD” message that pops up right away.

16

:smack: That should read: if your stereo has a USB port.

17

It would be really odd that a modern DVD player doesn’t recognize file names longer than 12 characters. Are you sure it reads MP3’s and not just music CD’s?

18

The DVD player ( a KOSS KS4112) is 5-10 years old. The owner’s manual mentions that it can read MP3’s and that names should not be longer than 12 characters, it also says ISO 9660 or Joliet format.

19

Wow, color me surprised. You have to wonder where they pulled a limit of 12 from. My first thought was the old DOS limit.

Does your car stereo have a USB port? If so, click on the link in my post above. I keep an 8 gb micro-sd plugged into the reader which only sticks out 1/4 of an inch. It looks like another button on my car stereo.

20

From looking at other older CD players it seems that 12 characters is actually 8 characters plus the file extension. The file extension could simply be implied (i.e. the player treats all files as MP3s as they are all it can play) which leaves you with an 8 character limit for the filename which fits nicely in the power of 2 binary structure.