[arcticsid]

My "new" computer has like 1300 mp3 downloads(music) on it, and its taking up alot of space, I have the space to spare but know little about converting them to a new format. Would like to know if these files can be burned onto a cd and played on a regular cd audio player, like in my car for example. They'll play through media player but I'd like to take them with me. I dont have an Ipod or an mp3 player but would be tickled to save them to a cd and play them on my home stereo. Any ideas or suggestions?

Thank You

Arctic Sid

[mphenterprises]

Hi ArcticSid. Okay, most modern car receivers recognize mp3 tracks; however, that information may not help you so let's begin.

Audacity works wonders on converting files from one format to another. As to whether or not your car receiver or home theater system can recognize these files is based solely on the model of the receivers. For a base, can you please provide the manufacturer and model numbers of both your car receiver and your home theater system?

[arcticsid]

By audacity is that a brand name or a tech term? I havent tried to burn one yet and try it on my lil dvd player, though I know its a cheap 20 dollar player, a gpx I believe, I'm actually remodeling my lil cabin and about the only thing left in here is my computer a sleeping bag and a couple cats, I do remember however on the dvd player it did say what it would play but don't remeber offhand if it mentioned mp3 files. I was successful on playing mpeg files(SOME of them on it) but not all, thats probably a question in itself. Don't know much about the whole file conversion stuff, I'd like to beable to record videos off the net and play them on a standard dvd player. I understand what you're saying. If I wanted to use a decent converter program any you would point me too? The free ones just don't seem to have it, they are limited in many ways. Its not something I have looked at in a few months. Your further help on my question is appreciated.PS, I do remeber I was able to play WAV files on it without a hitch, although I never did try to play a cd with WAV files on a home or car steeo cd player. Just seems like alot of music to disregard, I'd sure like to beable to keep some of the music on here, someone went through all the time to download them.

Thank You Arctic Sid

[piyushsingh]

CD players wont just play burned mp3 files when the disc is burned as data discs. Burn as audio disc and it should recognize the songs. You can do that through windows media player. There is an option of burn disc there, use it and add the songs from the player library .

[arcticsid]

Thanks for the tip piyu, I'll give it a try in a bit. But I am still confused, is media player actually converting a mp3 file to a new format? I was always under the thought that mp3 meant for a portable iPod, etc. While were on the subject of conversion, can media player do the same converting an mpeg video file into something that can be played on a home dvd? I realized its outside of the original post and Ill probably get yelled at but what about all the funny videos I have downloaded? Can they be just as easily converted to send to my buddy to play on his DVD? He has no comp and probably never will. Can media player accomplish this? Or is there a better way. Please advise.

Thanks

ArcticSid

[piyushsingh]

It converts them into cdda format as far as i know.
As far as creating video DVDs is concerned, you need a dvd burner software capable of format conversion to the dvd format . There are a number of free tools for this but i dont know about any as i use very less 3rd party applications for all my tasks. Some other member may tell you more about these tools. Vista comes with a very good dvd maker that does all for me. btw - nero, roxio suites all are capable of doing this dvd video burning.

[mjd420nova]

To be able to play these selections on your regular CD player, you need to convert them back to .WAV format files. Use PCM, 16 bit stereo with 44KC sample rate. This should allow you to play them on any CD player. Be aware that they may not sound very good after being in the .MP3 format which is a compressed format. Audio CD's are in the .WAV format and for saving space, many users and web sites convert them to MP3 format. This process compresses the music, it does this by discarding part of the music that it determines is not needed. The decompressing then restores it back to the .WAV format but that part of the music that was dicarded in the compression formula can never be restored as it isn't present in the MP3 file so that part will be missing. You can try this out, by taking a .Wav music file, rip(convert) to MP3 and then rip back to the .WAV format and compare the sound of the original to the compressed/decompressed cuts. I know you'll hear the difference. There is no such thing as a LOSSLESS compression format and it is only meant to save space, not maintain the integrity of the music. Good luck

[mphenterprises]

arcticsid said:

By audacity is that a brand name or a tech term?

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Yes, Audacity is a multifunctional(sp) application that will convert various audio files. You can learn about Audacity by clicking here. Most modern CD players, regardless of cost, support .wav files. That should at least take care of both your car and your home systems. If you decide to use this application, I can walk you through how to convert all of the files at once. I do need to let you know that .mp3 files are one of the smallest audio files (average about 4-5MBs). Conversely, .wav files are large (average about 40-50MBs). That being said, if you want to do this conversion, at least from .mp3 to .wav, you will need a good amount of space.

piyushsingh said:

CD players wont just play burned mp3 files when the disc is burned as data disc.

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Hi Piyush, if I may clarify the quotes statement. CD players will play a data CD as long as the CD player indicates that it recognizes .mp3 files. If it does, than any CD, data or audio, can be played through that specific CD player. If the CD player does not support .mp3 files, than the only choice would be to either convert a format that the CD player does support or, as you stated, burn as an audio CD and let the application do the conversion.

[piyushsingh]

I always thought that data discs cant be read by cd players as i havent seen any cd player play data discs containing mp3 files. Maybe the newer ones are capable of doing that if they support mp3 format. Thanx for the update. :-)

[mphenterprises]

With Pleasure. :D The reason I know that is because way back in the day, I used to use CDs as my external backup option. I would sometimes take a backup CD and play it in my car (pre-custom system). As long as the player recognizes .mp3 files, burning a data CD is just like burning an audio CD.

An even bigger benefit is that you can put between 150 and 160 .mp3 on one CD. At the time, I had almost 20 CD full of music. I would grab one CD, take it into the car, and have literally hours worth of music at my disposal.

(160 tracks average 4 minutes a track = 640 minutes divided by 60 minutes = about 10 hours)

[piyushsingh]

mphenterprises said:

(160 tracks average 4 minutes a track = 640 minutes divided by 60 minutes = about 10 hours)

hmm, maths.
160 tracks on a 700 MB cd gives 4.375 MB per song , 1024 KB in 1 MB and 8 bits in a byte and 4 mins for a song gives about a bit rate of 150kbps. hehe
That will produce a little buzz if sound is increased too much . ;-)

ps - hope you dont mind, i m just not feeling good today, need to ease up my mind a bit.

[mphenterprises]

LOL Good calculations. Actually, I use a standard 128kbps bitrate. I have found that, personally, that gives the best mix of sound quality and size of file. I do not have any hissing or distortion. My collection is well over 65GBs and every track is edited for any irregularities.

[smax013]

piyushsingh said:

I always thought that data discs cant be read by cd players as i havent seen any cd player play data discs containing mp3 files. Maybe the newer ones are capable of doing that if they support mp3 format. Thanx for the update. :-)

As noted, most modern CD players can play MP3 disks (which are basically data disks with MP3 files)...as can most modern DVD players. Getting a new car will likely result in having this ability (not all, but it is fairly standard). Older CD and DVD players will generally NOT have this ability and thus you would need to make it a "music" CD that uses WAV files (most commercial CD players will play CD-R with songs recorded to them as WAV files...aka "music" CDs...but some might cough a hair ball at a CD-R and only like commercial CDs... but they are rare).

[smax013]

piyushsingh said:

hmm, maths.
160 tracks on a 700 MB cd gives 4.375 MB per song , 1024 KB in 1 MB and 8 bits in a byte and 4 mins for a song gives about a bit rate of 150kbps. hehe
That will produce a little buzz if sound is increased too much . ;-)

ps - hope you dont mind, i m just not feeling good today, need to ease up my mind a bit.

Personally, I rip my songs to MP3 at 160 kbps. That is near CD quality. You have to be listening on a really good system and have really good ears to really notice the difference between it and the original CD. Yes, if you turn it up really loud, then you will start to better notice the difference...but then if I am listening to it that loud, then I have other problems! ;)



The real advantage is that with about 100+ songs per disk and a 6 disk changer in the car AND the fact that the stereo will display the MP3 tag information, I have hours of music that I can leave sitting in the car that can be rather quickly navigated through to what I want (the stereo has a menu option to list the "folders" on the disk, which corresponds to artists and albums). I was originally going to look into getting a hookup for my iPod for the car stereo, but this works so well that it is not really needed.

[piyushsingh]

Sometimes a bit more bits are needed to get going, but only sometimes . The sound settings and the equalizer setings also have an effect on the buzz at low bit rates. Although high treble isnt a good choice for music , some type of music is set-up for that only. The buzz is pretty significant at high treble in low bit rate songs.Rest goes fine.