Burning CD's question

[Leaffan1976]

Ive been hearing there is way to burn several songs on to one cd. I know how to get around 20 but would I get the same sound quality to burn many songs?

Can I use CD-r's to do this or do I need to get another type of CD? Is it the setting on my CD burner that I have to change to allow me to do this?

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[xarir]

Standard CD sound quality is defined in the CD Red Book. A standard CD track uses something called AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format). The size of a CD track is fixed because of the technical definition of AIFF.

Most CDs now can hold up to 700MB of data. This generally translates to about 20 or so songs. If you want more than that on a CD, you need to use something other than AIFF. This is where MP3 comes in.

If you have a player that can read MP3, and if you don't mind the sound quality then you can encode all your songs in MP3 and you'll end up fitting much more onto a CD. From a theoretical perspective, MP3 sound quality is lower than AIFF, but most consumer-grade stereos won't sound that much different MP3 vs AIFF. You will hear the difference on a higher end setup though.

 

[Leaffan1976]

so i guess the cd's I have made now use AIFF. How do do burn several mp3 files onto one cd. If the sound quality isnt that much different i may try doing it that way. Plus i guess this is a way to save on buying blank cd's.

 

[sp free]

Well, it all depends.
If you have a cd player that will read mp3's, you are in luck.

.AIFF is generally a mac format, PC's are usually .WAV files, which is uncompressed audio.
If you want to convert them to mp3's, you'll need a program that can do that. Sound Forge is a good one for this.

As for the burning, burn it as a data disc.

Also, use the highest quality mp3 bitrate you can. 320 kb is virtually indistinguishable from an uncompressed file unless you are an audio engineer, and believe me, those guys are hard to please.

It all depends what you want. If you are getting these files off of a cd, using 192 kb will give you pretty good results and obviously a smaller file than at 320.

 

[Leaffan1976]

well the files i got on my pc were from filesharing programs and most of them are 128 kb so i dunno if burning those files as a data file on disk will sound right i can certainly give it a try. I've just heard this can be possible and will save me going thru discs!

 

[Gentle Ben]

burn them as a data CD, it will preserve the MP3 format, which is a data file basically,thus you can get 10 to 12 hrs of music on a CD, if you burn as an audio CD, it converts them back to wave files, and you're only good for about 70 minutes of music.
But as others have mentioned, you need an MP3 player to play thm back, or of course your computer will play them

 

[Leaffan1976]

right. and im not sure if my cd walkman or stereo will play them i could expereiment and see what happens. If i want to listen to some tunes while at the computer i know that will work lol

 

[Gentle Ben]

right. and im not sure if my cd walkman or stereo will play them i could expereiment and see what happens. lol

sure, worth the cost of a CD, but if the players don't have the MP3 insignia on them, likely won't work.

 

[Leaffan1976]

well ill have to check my players and see if they have the insignia on them before i try this but for when im browsing terb or whatever good to have some tunes at my pc here lol

 

[xarir]

In the same vein, if you really want to carry around a lot of tunes with you, just go out and buy an iPod.

 

[Leaffan1976]

yes i heard music lovers have ipods. how much do they cost? so thats an mp3 player right?

 

[Leaffan1976]

thanks winston for the link I will check it out

 

[Leaffan1976]

yeah good point smiley. they make things convenient now lol gonna have to save up for an ipod cant afford it now hehe

 

[Leaffan1976]

Well when I'm going up north or on a long trip I dont wanna be lugging around a lot of cd's so I can take my ipod with me. Well ill start saving my pennies now lol

 

[Leaffan1976]

oh yeah they look neat. having an ipod, dvd player, x box or play station in the car ur definitely the envy of friends lol