Yet another CD burning problem/question

Factual Questions
1

2 things actually:

  1. My brother is using EasyCD to convert 160/192 mp3s to cda format and burning them. The trouble is that he sometimes is only able to fit about 45-55 minutes worth of tunes onto cd before EasyCD tells him that the to-be-burned cd is “full.” (We’re talking a Dell pc w/a 8X writer)

What gives?

  1. I don’t think this forum was intended to be the “Computer Problems” forum. Can anyone direct me to a message board where I can post questions such as #1 above and get answers/suggestions? The higher the traffic on the site, the better (obviously)

Thank you very much!

2

Just a WAG here because I’ve never seen this happen…

Possibly EasyCD is looking at the encoded MP3 files and taking a guess at their size before the actual decoding begins. If your MP3’s are encoded to higher standards than the usual 128 data rate EasyCD might be assuming that the bigger file means a longer song.

That doesn’t sound very good to me but try a test. Take the pile of songs he wishes to convert but won’t fit and convert them to WAV files in their own directory. Now try and burn a CD from the WAV files and see if you can fit more music. You’ll need 650+ MB of free space available on your drive to do this but you can delete the files when you are done.

3

Another possibility - you may have to change some setting to make the writer write the CD sequentially with no gaps. If it is putting gaps in you could lose some data space. I remember from my burning days an option called ‘disk at once’ or some such, which made all the tracks butt up against one another. This was the only way to get decent copies of a CD where the songs blended one into the other, like ‘The Wall’.

4

I don’t know about easyCd, but the sofware I’m using gives the option of writing Music Cd’s, data CD’s or hybrids. If I try using hybrid or data to burn music tracks I lose a lot of space somewhere. The Music Cd option allows the full 74 minute play time, but doesn’t allow multi-session recording.

5

I’d try but I don’t have some info. Number 1 is what version of Ezcd is it? There are a lot of them.

Number two: What size cd are you using? Why not try a 700mb cd? Arent’ those 74 minutes or something??

6

We’re using the standard 74 minute cdr’s that everyone uses, rated correctly for the burner speed.

EZCD is set to “music” files.

I don’t know what version of EZCD it is.

Thanks though.

I don’t think this is solvable by anyone else than someone who’s experienced this exact problem.

7

dietrologia, for a board where I’m pretty sure you’ll get a correct answer try:

I use both Easy CD and Sony HotBurn. FWIW, I’ve found that if I add data using Easy CD to a partially filled CD that was originally written to w/HotBurn, the original data becomes inaccessable.

I am unsure about the 700 MB (I think they say 80 minutes, handy) CDs.

8

Originally posted by dietrologia:

and then quoted by Jeff_42:

Perhaps the problem lies in using the EasyCD to convert the mp3 files to wavs. I tried an experiment by downloading two songs from Napster… the same song, but one encoded at 128 kbps, and the second at 192 kbps. I then used WinAmp to convert both files to wav, and I found that both files, despite their differences in encoding, both came out the exact same size when in wav format.

Perhaps you should try using the built in WinAmp DiskWriter plugin to convert the files to wav, and then add the files to EasyCD Creator to create an audio cd.

I use this method all the time, and I’ve never had a problem creating music cds. BTW, I use Adaptec Easy CD Creator v4.02a.

I hope this helps.