Converting mp3's to Data files question

Dear Friends;
A friend of mine sends me disks of music, and such. He is able to
send many hours of music on a single disc ( not just the 70 mins usual). Can someone recommend a (hopefully free) program that I can download to do this magic? He tells me he converts files to data files and so is able to do this. Beyond this, he gets into geek-speek, and looses me. Thanks.

MP3 files are data files. The term “data file” refers to files that are read by programs on your computer, and can refer to anything that can be stored on a hard disk, floppy, CD, etc.

You can convert regular music CDs to data files (MP3 or WMA files) using any computer with Windows XP and Windows Media Player. (Earlier versions of Windows may work, too, but only if you can upgrade to the newest version of Windows Media Player.) Insert the CD into your computer’s CD drive, and allow it to open with Windows Media Player. Then click the Rip tab at the top of the player, select all of the songs on the CD (or only the ones you want to save to your computer), and click the Rip button. The files will be saved to the My Music folder in your My Documents folder by default, usually in WMA format. Those files can then be written to any media you wish.

However, you should be aware that not all typical CD players can read this kind of music file. If you want to take the music with you, make sure that you have a player that can read them.

I guess I need to clarify. How do I convert these files so that I can make CD’s that have much more than the typical 70 or so minutes. I have, for instance a CD that contains 8 or so CD’s of music. Help! What’s the magic?

Depends. If you open that CD with Windows Explorer (My Computer; right click the CD icon; click Browse), what kind of files are on it; specicifally, what are the filetypes–.CDA, .WMA, .MP3, something else? Can it play in your standalone CD player?

Do you mean you want the disc to be playable on a regular CD player that does not support MP3? I do not think such a thing is possible.

Your CD with 8 CD’s worth of music is likely a CD-ROM with MP3 files, and whatever you have played it on supports MP3s.

I suspect that converting the files is NOT what you need to do. Instead, you want to put the MP3 files onto a CD-R without converting them.

Generally, when you tell a CD burning program that you want to make an ‘audio CD’, it will automatically convert your MP3s into CD-audio format. This makes them take up a lot more space… 72 to 80 minutes per disk max.

However, computers, and a bunch of fancy audiodisk players, will recognize a disk that has unconverted MP3 song files on it, (data files) and use an MP3 player engine to read and play them. Those are the kind of disks your friend has given you… I’m 97% sure.

So… in your burning software, look for a ‘burn as Data CD’ option as your first choice - the same as you would use to back up several megs of data so that you can read it back onto your computer later. Then tell it that the data files are your mp3 files that you want to be able to play. That should do it. (You might want to experiment with creating folders on the data CD and renaming files to get songs to play in a certain order, but that’s more advanced.)

Some burning software has a specific ‘burn as MP3 disk’ option. This does mostly the same stuff as the data CD, however it might check that the files you’re loading are mp3 files of fairly standard types, that they haven’t been corrupted somehow, and give you a running total of playing time. All of this is luxury and not required for the specific task.
I hope that this has been helpful reply.