[mikhael]

The Boombox CD Player cannot read Data CDs. It cannot read MP3s. It is an old 1994-ish audio CD player with no, zero, nunca, jamais special features.

The CD player in my car cannot read Data CDs. It cannot read MP3s.
It is an 1996-ish audio CD player with no, zero, nunca, jamais special features.

Burning a data CD is NOT going to work.

Sorry to be a dick. I just need to make it clear that the files must be burned as audio tracks to an audio CD here.

[Admiral LSD]

80 minute CD-Rs can cause problems with some hardware (I've witnessed this myself on a number of occasions) but they generally *always* play in computer CD players (at least) which didn't explain why Winamp refused to play it so I didn't think of it as a possibility, particularly when mikhael mentioned that previous audio CDs he'd burned had worked fine.

[WMCoolmon]

Have you tried decoding the mp3s to .wavs and then burning the .wav files?

[mikhael]

Windows Media Player will NOT burn MP3s to an audio CD. It keeps telling me that they're of an invalid file type.

Converting these to wav is going to suck, but I'll try it now.

[DragonClaw]

Then why were you even trying to burn mp3s to an audio CD? If your CD Players can't read mp3s, its pointless...

[mikhael]

Okay. Maybe the concept just isn't getting across here.


WHAT I AM NOT TRYING TO DO:
I am not trying to burn a CD full of MP3s. That's trivial and easy and works with no errors.


WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO:
I am trying to burn an audio CD. That is a CD with audio tracks. The good old fashioned kind that they invented around the time The Empire Strikes Back was in theatres. You know the ones, I'm sure. ]

Nero, like many programs, supports using MP3s as the SOURCE of the data that ends up in the STANDARD AUDIO TRACKS. Many programs also support using WMA, WAV, RAW, PCM, AIFF, AU and other formats. Me, I just want MP3s as the source and STANDARD AUDIO TRACKS ON THE CD as the target.


I really do hope that gets the point across. I would have thought when Sandwich mentioned Redbook Audio, that the point was well and truly clear.

[karajorma]

I've burnt audio CDs previously with Nero and mostly it worked well. I did find that my mum's CD player wouldn't play them (which was most annoying as she'd asked me to burn her a CD which therefore made it worthless). Every other CD player I could find would play the CD fine but that particular one wouldn't.

*Wonders if he can get Murphy's law repealed*

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by DragonClaw
Then why were you even trying to burn mp3s to an audio CD? If your CD Players can't read mp3s, its pointless...

It doesn't matter what format the files were in when they were burned to an audio CD, they're converted to the Redbook audio format (or whatever it is).

You could try DbPowerAmp for converting the files. It looks like they have a CD burner version out, too. It's easy to use, but it also weaves itself into Explorer through context menus and file info popups. Not that it's a bad feature, but it might cause a bit of slowdown. I think said features are optional, too.

Edit: Added info to wrong paragraph

[DragonClaw]

Originally posted by mikhael
Blah blah blah blah

Well, when you are burning an "audio CD" in Nero, all it is doing is generating .cda files for play information, that certain players require, its still burning the actual mp3 files to the CD. This is not the same as the standard CD audio format.  I'm sure there's a way to make Nero convert the mp3s  to the "redbook format" while its burning, but thats not the way you were doing it. So what you were ending up with was a bunch of .mp3s and .cdas, nothing that could be used without an mp3 player.

Coolmon; thats not the way Nero works. At least not mine.

[WMCoolmon]

Burning MP3 files (.mp3) with Nero

MP3 audio files (extension .mp3) have become one of the most common file formats of the Internet community if compressed audio data is to be transmitted. That's why Nero now supports burning of MP3 files. These files can now be dragged and dropped into Nero audio compilations just like wave files (.wav) or audio tracks (.cda).
Nero is able to burn MP3 files on the fly, which means that you do not have to convert them first in wave format, or to store the uncompressed audio data into a cache file before burning them. The maximum burning speed for MP3 files depends highly upon the speed of your processor, since uncompressing MP3 files requires a great deal of floating point operations.

^ Directly from the Nero 5.5.4.9 help file.

[DragonClaw]

You also ommitted the last part...

"Nero's MPEG3 library currently supports only standard MP3 files (that means ISO MPEG 1.0 layer 3, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo)."

Anything else won't work...

[mikhael]

Ah, now THERE is a useful tidbit. I missed the 16bit myself. These files I've been using for test have been all of them VBR mp3s.

This still doesn't explain why WMP can play them--if they are being converted as if they're 16 bit then they'll be mangled by the transform--nor why my FreeBSD box can play them as a standard audio CD.

At no point are these files ending up on the CD as mp3s in any shape fashion or form. They end up there as standard Redbook standard audio tracks, that ARE readable in certain circumstances by certain players.

[DragonClaw]

Well, then I'd like to have an explanation as to why, when I burned an Audio CD of mp3s, about 50 of them, they only took up 1/7th of the CD... and not gone completely over it. The standard format for Audio is extremely large and there's no way the 50 songs would have fit on the CD. I could have still burned more songs onto it if I wanted to.

[mikhael]

You did something odd.

When I burn the mp3s of my Evanescence CD back to a (non-functioning) audio CD, the CD is about 2/3rds full (IE about 45min). this shows both in Nero AND on my FreeBSD box.

I believe you are burning a data CD with MP3 files on it and your CD player can understand MP3 files as tracks (many can). My CD player CANNOT do that.

[Stealth]

hey try a program called "Adaptec CD Creator".  it's always been my 'last resort'  and if it doesn't work, then you know you have a hardware problem.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by DragonClaw
Well, then I'd like to have an explanation as to why, when I burned an Audio CD of mp3s, about 50 of them, they only took up 1/7th of the CD... and not gone completely over it. The standard format for Audio is extremely large and there's no way the 50 songs would have fit on the CD. I could have still burned more songs onto it if I wanted to.

Audio CD = CD with a maximum of 74 or 80 minutes of Redbook format audio (commonly mistaken as WAV format among computer users).

Data CD = CD with 650/700/800/etc MB of data, in CDFS format (as opposed to FAT, FAT32, etc.) CANNOT be read by standard Audio CD players. Meant only for PC use, although many discmans and CD players now support reading MP3 data files off these CDs and playing the audio encoded therein.

5 minute MP3 @ 128kbps 16bit stereo = ~5MB data file. Can be converted into WAV (an uncompressed format), where it will take up approx. 50MB. Redbook audio is also uncompressed, and therefore also takes up the equiva;ent of 50MB on Redbook audio CDs.

Hope this explained things. Nero can and does convert MP3s into Redbook audio before (or during) an Audio CD burn process. If you burned 50 songs and were left with 6/7th of a CD left, you were burning to a data disc compilation, period.

[Darkblade]

I have a relatively old cd player in my car and a strange thing is that cd's which I burn with Nero Burning ROM do not play normally on this player (spits out almost immediately) but cd's made with Easy CD Creator work perfectly.

I do not know the reason even if I use similiar burning methods on both programs.

They use some kind of different ASPI protocol, Nero its own and Easy CD Creator the Native 2k/XP ASPI protocol. Not sure if that affects in any way though.

[Stealth]

yeah Sandwich, not many people have even heard of Redbook.  but because it's common for people to think of Audio CDs being burned as multiple WAV files, because Redbook CDDA and WAVs are so similar (i.e. about 10 MB per minute) ... that explains the hype about WAV files considered an audio cd

But yeah Dragonclaw... while new CD players and such can read MP3 format, some people think burning 80 MP3s on a CD is still considered an audio CD, but only Redbook CDDA (high quality 44khz 16bit stereo) is really an Audio CD

Nero, like many programs, supports using MP3s as the SOURCE of the data that ends up in the STANDARD AUDIO TRACKS. Many programs also support using WMA, WAV, RAW, PCM, AIFF, AU and other formats. Me, I just want MP3s as the source and STANDARD AUDIO TRACKS ON THE CD as the target.

Mikhael:  Have you tried specifying what kind of CD you want to burn?  When you start up Nero, it should say "What kind of CD do you want to burn:  Data CD, Audio CD, Other Format", and it should have the "Wizard", unless if you've disabled it, but try enabling it and going through step by step.  i dunno, that seems the most obvious explanation

[JC Denton]

Just some random info from me that may or may not help:  I do have several VBR mp3 files, which I have burned to cd (as an Audio CD), and have not had any problems in playback.  So I'm of the opinion that the format of the mp3s is of no consequence.

And on the hardware end:  You do have an audio cable running from the analog audio port on the CD burner to the CD Audio jack on the soundcard, right?