I’m have heaps of trouble doing this, since I assumed that if I cut and pasted my existing mp3 files appropriately they would fit on a 700MB CD-R blank disk. But when I try to burn my newly cut-and-pasted files (using CD Burner BTW) I get an error message saying there isn’t enough room for both (yes, only tow) files. If you can help I’d be eternally grateful.
Is there a possibility that those 2 MP3 files exceed 700MB when converted to 16-bit/44.1k stereo?
If don’t want to make a “red book” audio CD disc, make sure your burner application is configured to make a “data disc” to directly burn the MP3s in their existing format.
Or, you might have a bad blank disc or some other problem.
What kind of CD are you trying to burn?
An “audio CD” which can be played in any CD player
An “mp3-CD” which can be played in any computer and in some CD players?
A CD in “audio CD” format has space for a bit more than one hour of music (or whatever). See this Wikipeda entry.
An “mp3 CD” can hold much more because MP3-files are compressed and much smaller.
So depending on what you want to use the files for, you need either to cut down the playing time or change the format of the CD to be burned.
Thanks for your response. They are Verbatim CD-R 700 MB disks. I am burning mp3 files, being burnt by CD Burner XP. I am using the files to play music in my car CD player (local radio sorta sucks) which works fine, but I wish to fill the remainder of my 700 MB’s up with music. I am recording online radio using audacity, which is also how I am maniuplating the resultant m3 files.
Well, I don’t know, but I doubt it, since I look in the properties tab at the individual files and they don’t add up to 700 MB, thought not a whole lot less, but my burning software (CD BurnerXP) continues to tell me I don’t have enough room. What is a good program to investigate both the state of a blank CD and the state of a file, I wonder I mean using M$ Windows ought to work, but I’m a bit skeptical about what it says. Oh and thanks for the response.
I’ve never used CD BurnerXP but Create Data Disc should copy the MP3 files to the disc just as you would copy Word or Excel files to a CD.
The MP3 file size won’t change.
If you burn an audio disc it’s going to convert audio files to the standard uncompressed format and they will be at least 5 times bigger. And of course the audio CD won’t contain any “computer files” and you’d have to “rip it” if you wanted to copy the audio back to your computer.
Hmm, I’m sensing that this is a LOT more subtle than I’d been thinking. I was picturing something not unlike cutting and pasting characters in a text file, but nothing like what you’re describing here, ‘on the fly’ conversion of music files, yikes! What I am trying to do is to fit both parts of a 2 hr. long radio program onto 2 80 min. CD-R disks with only minimal blank spaces on the disks. I’d been cutting the 2 hr. long (aka 120 mins) shows into an 80 min and a 20 minute long bit, but that was wasteful of the space on the disk (actually, more like 75 mins plus watever was left for the second disk, but lots of slop at the end.) Is that a fool’s errand? Was I just as well to ‘waste’ the space on the blank CD as just the price of of admission? I’m gathering that I was naive in what I was trying to do, but I could use some guidance to steer me in the right direction. Maybe digging more deeply into audacity?
Maybe I’m making it more complicated than it is…
You never really said if you wanted a “standard” audio CD that will play on regular CD players, or a CD with MP3s that you can play on a computer, some car stereos (and some other CD players), and most DVD & Blu-Ray players.
An audio CD can hold about 70 minutes of audio. I think you know that. (CD audio is about 10MB per minute.)
You also never told us how big your MP3 files are but I assume that they are less than 700MB together. (If you are making an audio CD that won’t matter because they will be converted.) If they are less than 700MB, of course they will fit. The size of an MP3 depends on the playing time and bitrate. You can fit 4-hours or more on a CD with MP3, depending on the bitrate-quality setting.
We should add a couple of more words in here. A Data CD is a shiny plastic hard drive. It follows all the file structure rules. That’s the one you can jam billions of hours of compressed MP3 files onto. The burner doesn’t care if they’re music files.
The catch is your player has to know how to deal with a Data CD.
The legacy Audio CD player in my truck will hold its sides with laughter if I try to play a Data CD. I may not be able to eject it.
An Audio CD always has 44100/16-bit Stereo Sound. Full Stop. But it’s not standard file format. To get the maximum music on the disk, they prepare it streaming, with no gaps or holes. There is a file at the center of the disk with all the beginning and endings listed. The disk starts at the center, not the outer edge.
If you want to play cut five, the drive has to play the index track in the middle to find out where in that mess cut five is.
Do Not manually Label the Label side of the disk. That coating is really thin and the music data is right underneath. One scratch and that’s the end of the didididididisk.
I usually write carefully along the outer edge of the label side. Or prepare sticky paper labels. I have a printer which will carefully print CDs which I buy with matte white label sides.
As a rule, once you burn a disk. It’s burnt forever. There is no going back and adding music.
There are CD-RW (Read-Write) disks. You can put stuff on those and take stuff off. I don’t think you can make Music CDs out of those. Someone will correct me.
Enjoy,
Koz
One more note. The dye layer is a cousin to the dyes used in color photography. Don’t leave your home-burned CDs in the sun. Keep them protected in the car/truck.
Koz
Thanks for your responses. Yes, I would like to write the files for use in a “standard” CD player, such as an automobile CD player might use (cuz I play them in my car), and I’m gathering that I was correct in discovering my naiveté (sp?) in the cutting and pasting of the files from Kozikowski’s post (and thanks to them as well). Now I’m NOT super sophisticated in this stuff, but I would still like to be able to mix and match music tracks, is there a free of at least inexpensive software version that will allow me to do this? CDBurnerXP was the closest I found once upon a time. Is there some simple directions on how to do this in existence anywhere? Thanks for your help.
I think you can still use CDBurnerXP to do what you want.
Mark B
Yes you can, and I do - frequently, to test before I commit to a Read-only CD. Then I erase and re-use the CD-RW.
(N.B. ‘Erase’ will erase the whole CD, always. It’s not possible to erase one file - assuming a Data CD.)
This is the gospel according to ChatGPT:
There are several free programs you can use to create a music compilation CD on Windows. Here are some good options:
- ImgBurn – A lightweight but powerful tool that can create audio CDs from MP3, WAV, and other formats. It’s primarily a disc-burning tool but works well for music CDs.
- Download: https://www.imgburn.com/
- CDBurnerXP – Despite its name, it works on modern Windows versions too. It allows you to create audio CDs from various formats like MP3, WAV, and FLAC.
- Download: https://cdburnerxp.se/
- BurnAware Free – A simple and user-friendly program for burning audio CDs and MP3 discs.
- Download: https://www.burnaware.com/
- Ashampoo Burning Studio Free – A full-featured burning tool that supports audio CD creation with an easy-to-use interface.
- Download: https://www.ashampoo.com/
- Windows Media Player (Built-in) – If you’re using an older version of Windows, you might still have Windows Media Player, which can create audio CDs from your library.
I think you’re good now that you know you can’t exceed abut 70 minutes. The CDBurnerXP website seems to have lots of detailed information.
Some extra-unnecessary information just to keep things complicated…
It would be best to use WAV files (unless your original files are MP3s). Since regular CDs are uncompressed it’s best to avoid lossy compression.
The format (as I think Koz mentioned) is 16-bits, 44.1kHz, 2-channel stereo. The underlying CD format is identical to WAV but it’s not in a “WAV package”. The file size on the CD will be almost the same as the WAV. If you have a mono WAV file, the information will be duplicated on left & right and it will take-up twice the space on the CD. (CD is the only format I know of that doesn’t support mono.)
CDBurner supports Cue Sheets. That allows you have an hour-long file (or whatever) and you can put track markers anywhere you want, up to 99 tracks on a CD. (I do this with “live concert” recordings where there are no gaps between the songs.)
I don’t know if they tell you how to use a Cue Sheet (and I don’t use CDBurnerXP) but I assume you just drag-in the cue sheet instead of the audio files.
The Cue Sheet is “picky” and if you get something wrong you might get an error, or the files in the wrong order… So you might not want to mess with it right now. It’s a regular text file and I usually start with one of the examples (or a known good one) and edit it with Windows Notepad.
The title, performer, and some other information is optional. It may not get written to the CD (It’s called CD-Text and I don’t know if CDBurnerXP supports it) your car player may not be able to read it. If you don’t normally see that information when you play a CD in your car, there’s no reason to have it in the Cue Sheet.