Audacity Forum

Newbie asks: How do I make an audio CD from a recording from my MP3 player?

I have an inexpensive MP3 player that lets me record sound with a sampling rate of 8 kHz which I can play on my computer in a WAV format. I realize that this will be low quality due to the sampling rate, but it does play on my computer speakers and sounds pretty good. (I am recording singing from a small choir.) All I want to do is burn an audio CD so other people in the choir can hear how we sound.

Windows Media player plays the recording, but can't burn it to an audio CD. Audacity gives me a promp to Import RAW but I have no idea what options to click on. I am very new to this and would like some help. I read some of the tutorials but if someone could give me some guidance as to what sections to read, that would be a great help!

Another Question: If I am going to record music from choirs and soloists on a regular basis and make audio CDs, what portable equipment should I use? (I can ask in another post...)

Main Question: How can I convert my uncompressed WAV recordings with a sampling rate of 8kHz onto an audio CD?

Thanks in advance,
Mary

I'm pretty sure Windows Media Player is capable of burning your sound file onto a CD. Insert an empty CD in your CD-burner and, if you're using the Windows XP operating system, a dialouge box should come up asking you what you want to do with the empty CD, one of the choices is "Burn an audio CD with Windows Media Player" I believe. If you choose that Windows Media Player should start up in Burn-mode allowing you to choose which files you want to burn to the CD.

Actually, I doubt WMP can burn that disc for you.

The files you have are probably ADPCM, not regular wav files. Right click on the files and click Properties. You'll need some info from this menu to open those files. The info you need is probably in the Summary -> Advanced menu. Check out the format it's in. And yes, you'll have to use Import Raw.

Once you figure out the format, set it in Audacity, ignore the Endianness for now, set the correct number of channels (Windows will also tell you what that is, it's probably mono though), and set the sample rate to 8000. Ignore the other two settings.

Does that import? Do you get a mess of craziness? If so, try changing the Endianness setting.

Once you get it imported, it's a simple matter of exporting to a regular wav file and burning the disc however you would normally do it.

If you can't get it to import, let us know everything you can find out from the Windows menu and we'll look into it.

I'm having essentially the same problem and have been trying to import for awhile now. My sound sample comes from a small voice recorder as well. It would be great it the audacity team could support this natively, but I'm sure there are plenty of other higher priority issues to deal with. I'm on the beta (1.3.3 version).

RAW import didn't work for me so I used the following technique to get the sample into Audacity.

1. Open Accessories --> Entertainment --> Sound Recorder
2. Open the problematic .wav file
3. Make sure sound recorder can play the file. If it can't this won't work.
4. File --> Save As
5. Change "Save as type:" to "All Files (*.*)"
6. Just to the right of the format information, click on the "Change..." button
7. In the pop up window, use the format drop down box to select "MPEG Layer-3"
8. Click OK to close out the pop up
9. Click Save

The file should now be converted to MP3 format which audacity can read.

format is as follows:

Bit Rate: 32kbs
Audio Sample Size: 4 bit
Channels: 1
Audio Sample Rate: 8kHz
Audio Format: IMA ADPCM

I've attached my sample file here if the developers get the urge to work on it.

Mike

mikef,

I think the problem here is that it's a 4-bit file. I've tried fiddling with Import Raw, but all I could ever get was alot of static and a clip of someone (you?) saying "hello there". The voice was intelligible, but of incredibly low quality. WMP was able to play the file just fine.

My guess is that Audacity expects ADPCM files to be 8-bit, but I'm not certain of that.

The other option is to re-record the file by setting Audacity up to record streaming audio and then playing the file with a different piece of software. That worked just fine for me. That's not nearly as nice as having a software converter though. Maybe your voice recorder comes with ADPCM -> Wav conversion software?

I believe the compression format of that file is called G.726. So look for software that can deal with those files.