I’m not really all that familiar with MP3 technology, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.
I want to make a CD for my hubby of all of his favorite songs. Can I burn the MP3s onto a CD that will play in the CD player in his car?
MP3’s are compressed files that must be uncompressed by a software program before it can be coverted into sounds. Recording MP3 filed directly onto a CD will only allow someone to play those songs through another computer with MP3-playing software on it. Such a disc will not play on your car CD player.
You can use software to uncompress an MP3 file into a CD quality .wav file. You can then record these uncompressed .wav files onto a CD which will play in most ordinary CD players.
I don’t off the top of my head know a program that will do this for you, but I’m sure other people do. What system are you using-- PC or Mac? It also helps if you know a little bit about the CD burning process, since it’s easy to make simple mistakes in the recording process that will make an audio CD unplayable.
Actually, you can use winamp to change .mp3s to .wavs! Go to the options, and look at the codecs. The current one will say out_wave.dll. Change it to out_disk.dll. Then hit the configure button to set the directory it will output to. 
“…the dark side of the mirror always threw our malice back…”
Crap, didn’t mean to hit submit. Anyways, after you set the directory, close that options window, which takes you back to the main player. Then press play. Your mp3 will show as playing really fast, and you won’t hear sound. Then you have your .wav!
“…the dark side of the mirror always threw our malice back…”
As has already been said, if you burn the MP3 files onto a CD as Mp3 files then they won’t play.
The current version (4) of Adaptec CD Creator allows you to burn a working audio CD from MP3 files without having any idea of what’s happening. You just start an audio CD layout and insert MP3 files.
Other burning software may do the same thing.
jrf
Lissa,
What kind of computer do you have that you plan on using to burn your CDs? Also, what software do you plan on using to burn? These questions will help us determine your best course of action.
Nurlman wrote:
This is not correct. You can use software to uncompress an MP3 file into a CD FORMATTED .wav file. MP3 is a lossy compression and there’s no way to recover all of the CD quality data that’s been squeezed out. The good news is that for CD “Walkman-like” players and most car audio, the average listener can’t hear much of a difference.
BTW, there is a new genre of CD players that are just starting to hit the market that can play both CDA and MP3 formats.
Woa, little disinformation going on here. MP3’s are not simply compressed wav’s. They are a completely different file type. Basically you take a wav file, and remove all of the audio information that is unhearable by the human ear, and you get an MP3 (simplified explination)
It is correct to say that current music CD players cannot read MP3’s.
Kinooning it up for 20 years and counting
Hmmm. It is true that MP3s are compressed in a manner that is designed to be very close to lossless (i.e. they ‘remove unhearable audio info’). However, it is still compression. Here’s a link that gives some detail.
Hoo boy, this sounds a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. I’m running Windows 98 and my CD burner program is called Adaptec. Other than that- I’m kind of lost. Thanks for all of your help, guys.
Lissa wrote
Wait, come back! Many folks (me included) have rambled way off topic here.
There are many recipes to your dish. Here is one that I use which is very simple.
Download CDEx. Install it. Run it.
Press the “MPEG->WAV” button.
Choose the MP3 files you want.
It’ll make WAV files.
Now take your Adaptec program, and select those WAV files to burn on the CD.
Nice one, man! I’ve been trying to figure out how Winamp could convert these for a long time!
The Prince: “Did you kill Jahamaraj Jah?”
Lady: “Yes.”
The Prince: “My Gods! Why?”
Lady: “His existence offended me.”
Glad i could help! Here’s a tip by the way… Make a playlist of the songs for a cd you are going to make, load the playlist with out_disk.dll set as the codec, and it will go down the list and convert all of the mp3s for you at once.
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