Do CDs have to be formatted for mp3s?

[Sherman Willden]

I tried to write several short mp3s to CD as music format. I recieved a message saying that there wasn't enough room. The mp3s were approximately 200 MB. I wrote the mp3s as data and it took. The mp3s play on both the computer and an mp3 CD player I have.

So back to the question. Why couldn't I write the mp3s as a music disk?

Thank you;

Sherman

[Dave Alfstad]

Sherman,
When you told the program you wanted to make a music cd it assumed you wanted it to convert the mp3's to WAV on the fly while burning. 200mb of mp3's would be WAY too much for a music cd converted to WAV. If you want to store mp3's you need to burn as a data cd or an mp3 disc.
Hope this helps.

Dave Alfstad

[Lou[NE]]

Hi Sherman,

CDs do not have to be formatted, unless you are using a re-writeable CD and want to wipe it clean.

As you found, mp3 files are burned as data files, not music files. I suspect the "not enough room" error message was just your burning software's way of saying it couldn't burn them as music files.

What David said - I forgot it would try to convert mp3 to wav.

I hope this answers your questions.

Lou<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Lou[NE] on 27 April 2004 at 10:29 AM.]</p></FONT>

[Ray Minich]

There are actually 3 (three) formats being discussed here, and we gotta keep track of the three flavors.

.mp3 is the ripped format that can compress a 3 minute tune into about 1.5 - 2 megabytes. It's a data file that can be played by an MP3 player.

.WAV is also a data file format for sound, that is typically used by editing software and players, but not the CD player in your pickup truck. A 3 minute tune will usually be about 30 megabytes in size.

The audio CD's you buy at Walmart are "Red Book" CD's.

The fundamental data structure on a (data) CD/ROM is organized differently than with the CD-audio disk. You can check out [url=http://www.ee.washington.edu/cons ... m/95x8.htm [\url] for the details.

When you use a program like Roxio EZ-CD Creator or Nero to create an "audio" CD it burns the disk in "Red Book" format. These you can play in an "audio" CD player.

Some newer systems now have the brains to recognize if you've given them a true RedBook audio CD, a .MP3 CD, or a CD full of .wav files.

Hope this doesn't add to the confusion.

[Bobby Lee]

So an MP3 CD is just a data CD with a bunch of .mp3 files in its root directory?

[Lou[NE]]

b0b,

yep...also subdirectories. Same directory structure as a hard drive