I do not have any form of hand-held MP3 device, or I’d have answered this by now.
If I have a laptop with CD/DVD (or just CD) burner and an audio-in jack, relavant (and obvious patch cord(s), and blank CD’s, do I have all required to burn a .WAV format on a CD (it’s 1995 again!) of a tune I have on my Ipod or whatever cheap-ass MP3 player?
Assume the laptop is less than 5 years old.
My guess is, even if I can’t just configure the MP3 player as a hard drive and specify it as input to my .WAV image for my burning sofware burner, I could at least copy the MP3 to hard drive, convert that copy to WAv, and then burn that WAV to the CD.
It would seem obvious that the latter would work, and, furthermore, anyone who is computer-literate enough to send an email should be able to see how to do this in a matter of minutes.
Am I correct, or is there some obscure gotcha involving the formats.
Any chance that such a laptop would be unable to convert the mp3 TO wav without additional software.
I completed my conversion from tape, vinyl, MP3, etc, to CD 10 years ago, and haven’t looked at the stuff since,
I’m just wondering if a person is too stupid to figure this out, or has simply never thought of doing so.
I don’t know what it’s like in your country, but I have yet to find a CD or DVD player that won’t play MP3 files from a CD/DVD disc. I just burn them as data files and they play fine.
But I suspect I’m misunderstanding the OP.
I assumed the 2-step (copy MP3 to HD, then convert to WAV) was stone simple - can (most, a few, none) MP3 players be configured as a hard drive (at least read-only)?
Audio CDs – the kind you buy from antique music stores – don’t use WAV files. Their format is called Redbook, and it’s what Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc. will adhere to if you ask them to burn a music CD for you.
You can also choose to put data files directly onto the CD, burning them as a data CD-ROM and not a CD-Audio disc. Some players, like Duke of York mentioned, will be able to play them. Older ones likely will not. It’s likely that any player that can data discs can play MP3, so there’s no reason to convert to WAV first (you’d just be wasting space).
But seriously, man, spare yourself the pain and just buy a cheap MP3 player. Between the price of CDRs, batteries, and the time you waste burning all those CDs, it’ll pay for itself in a week or two.
Since I haven’t burned CDs in years I haven’t tried it, but it would make sense that Windows Media Player (WMP) and iTunes would be able to burn a CD direct from an MP3 player. See my links in post #2 for more info.
If not, then you have to copy the music to the HD first, then burn the CD.
It’s actually not that simple. iPods can’t do this without additional software. iPod files also lose metadata (like their names) and show up as a bunch of random numbers, making it difficult to manipulate them without iTunes or other software designed for iPods.
Even other MP3 players are hit-and-miss. The feature you’re looking for is specifically called “USB Mass Storage” or “UMS” – this makes the MP3 player show up like any flash drive. Without that, many Windows-compatible players use something called MTP mode, and depending on their copy protection scheme, it may or may not be easy to drag files off of it.
My opinion: In general, players in MTP mode tend to transfer very slowly and unreliably.
Ironically, it’s usually the craptacular generic Asian MP3 players that skip the bullshit and give you players that function like simple flash drives.
Your other option is an Android phone with a SD card. Take out the SD card and put your music files directly onto it, like you would a flash drive. Otherwise, your Android will try to connect via MTP as well, though some models will let you switch over to UMS.
I’m also really confused about your actual situation. You said you don’t have a MP3 player, but then you want to burn CDs from your MP3 player…? Do you or don’t you have one? Where is the music currently stored?
And you shouldn’t need audio cables for any of this. It’s all digital – you’re moving files around – not playing back the music and recording it. Don’t do that, because it’d take forever and you’d lose a lot of quality along the way.
We send radio salesmen out with commercials on CD all the time. I just right click on the MP3 and one of the drop down choices is “Copy to CD or Device.”
It copies as a .wav on the CD.
I have a roomie who is a drummer - and hearing just the drum track of anything is generally crap.
I not only gave him room to set up his drums in the FR, but installed a an old Goodwill-type receiver, speakers, and CD player. And a patch cord (dual RCA to 1/8" mini stereo). It would not play his crap MP3 player, but I thought the exercise should have been enough to give him the idea of playing the rest of the group so we all could hear.