Couch this with the fact that I know almost little or nothing about MP3s.
I asked for, and got, one of those portable CD players that come with a tape that you can put in your car cassette player that allows you to play CDs in cars without CD players, but with tape decks. But she said she also paid extra money for this device because it supposedly plays MP3s. The box even advertises “40-hour (MP3) playback”.
Now, here is my impression of how MP3 players work: they hook up to your computer, and you download MP3 files/songs into them, and you play them back on your MP3 player; OR . . . there’s these little tiny MP3 disks that you can load into your computer’s CR-Rom drive, download songs, and play them back on the MP3 player.
I see NO sort of software or USB cable for this thing, so my guess is that there is a disk.
But here is my fear: the so-called “Mp3 playback” means that it plays MP3 files that you burn off Grokster or another file sharing service onto a CD . . therefore, to me, it would not be anything special, since I can playback MP3 files burnt onto CDs with ANY CD player I have in my house!
MP3 experts. please stop your laughing, and tell me exactly what my wife bought me, and tell me if it’s special or if she got smooth talked at the local electronics store!
There’s different types of sound files that you can burn onto an audio CD. The standard one is CD-audio. Any regular audio CD player can play that one. It allows about 74 minutes of sound per CD. If you made a CD and only got around 74 minutes per CD, then the burning software you used probably converted your MP3’s to CD-audio files automatically.
And there’s MP3. That means burning MP3 files to the CD, directly, without converting them to CD-Audio files. You can get about 120 hours of MP3 sounds onto one CD, depending on the compression used and what the player supports. More-heavily compressed MP3’s sound worse, but then there you go.
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The cd’s you make on your computer that allows you to listen to them on any cd player is converted to cd-audio. You can probably only get about 15-20 songs onto one cd. MP3 players can actually play the MP3 files without having to convert. With a cd full of mp3’s and not cd-audio files, you can have more then twice as many songs on one cd.
First, MP3 is a lossy compression formats; meaning that it takes an original sound source and cuts out some information (that usually can’t be detected by the average human ear) and compress.
Yes, you can usually transform your MP3 you downloaded off the net in audio CD, but this usually means it has to be converted back to a lossless compression format that are much bigger in size and possibly a process that takes a while depending on your CPU.
(damn DougC beat me to it…)
Now, you can just burn the MP3 files on CD and put them in your new nifty CD player. Faster and many more files!
So, what I have been doing is buringing MP3 files onto a CR-R by converting them . . but there is a way to fit more music onto a CD-R by NOT CONVERTING THE mp3 FILES?
Depending on what program you use to burn them to the cd. Usually when you chose to make an audio cd, the program will convert them itself. If you chose to make a data cd, it will keep them in MP3 format and will fit more on the cd.
Sort of. If it’s a real, professional disk, it’ll play. But if you burn it yourself, a lot of older CD players will refuse to recognise it. (I have one. Quite annoying.)
MP3 is not just for sharing files. It’s a way to compress audio data so it takes up 1/10 as much storage space.
To take advantage of your MP3-capable CD player, you need a computer with a CD-R drive. You use a software like MusicMatch Jukebox[1] to create MP3 files from audio CDs. Then you burn those MP3 files onto a CD-R disk. That way you can fit over 100 hours of music on a single CD-R disk. You can also pick and choose which songs to include on the disk.
Once you have obtained or have created the mp3 miles, to put the mp3 files onto the CD use a standard CD buring program and just burn them to the CDR like data files. There is no conversion necessary.
Scr4, what bitrate are you encoding your mp3’s at to get a 100 hours on a single disk. I normally encode at 128 or 160, and I get maybe 10 hours on a disk- still and inprovement over a standard CD’s 70 minutes, but still.
Also note that not all MP3 encoders are created equal. Some produce better results than others at the same bitrate. LAME has always been considered one of the best.
Since they are mono recordings with a fairly limited frequency range, those suckers can be compressed like mad. Typical to get 48 hours of entertainment on one disc.
Music, of course, you don’t want to compress so much.
Another advantage to MP3 CD players is that, on almost every model, you can see the song titles and artist names. Regular CD players that display CD-Text are hard to find.
One more benefit from a new CD player: they will probably be able to recognize and play CD-RWs as well as CD-Rs - so if you have that recording of the Christmas greetings from the in-laws that you don’t plan to keep for all eternity, you can play it in the car and keep your spouse happy. :rolleyes:
Ripping all of your LEGAL songs to MP3 has other advantages too. I have more than 250 CDs in my house, and I tired of them getting lost/broken/whatever. So I ripped ALL of them to MP3, put them on a big-ass hard drive on a multimedia server on my home network, and now any PC in the house can play any and all songs I own. Hook up a decent set of external speakers, and it’s like giving a 250-CD jukebox to every room in the house.
Just copy on about 650 or 700 Mb of mp3 files to the blank CD… that would be over 100 mp3’s. Then make an ordinary data CD. (like one that would have program files or pictures, etc, on it).
Not really. Your choices are PCM audio (“standard” CD audio format) or MP3. You can buy larger capacity CD-R discs (you’ve probably seen the 700MB discs in stores next to the “standard” 650MB ones) but some players (and burners) have issues with the 99 minute CD-Rs.