Audacity Forum

I just wondered if anyone here burns their own CDs for use in your car after editing tracks with Audacity? I listen to Shoutcast internet radio and use Streamripper via Winamp to cut individual tracks as mp3 files. I then import each track into Audacity for some final clean-up (cutting voice lead-ins, adding fade outs and setting proper amplification). The next step is to export the track as an mp3 file (using Lame v3.98.3 add-on) where I add Metadata information such as the artist, song name, genre, etc (I press the Add button then OK). The Metadata is stored properly with the track (when I re-import it, the data is still there.) The final step is to burn the tracks to a CD for use in my car.
Here’s my problem: I can’t get the Metadata to show up on the car’s CD player as it just comes back as “No Title” even though the music is fine.

Here’s what I’ve tried to no avail:
Burning the mp3 files using Windows Media Player with burn setting of WPL
(Tracks play fine but “No Title” is displayed even when pressing text button on my car’s player)

Burning the mp3 files using Windows Media Player with burn setting of M3U
(Tracks play fine but “No Title” is displayed even when pressing text button on my car’s player)

Doing a direct copy of the Audacity mp3 files to a CD
(Player would not recognize tracks)

Has anyone had success doing this with Metadata showing on a CD information display? If so, please give details.

Thanks - Nooberman

Note: I have access to Nero Suite if that gives recognizable Metadata on CD burns.

Does your car support playing Data CDs with MP3 music files? Many older cars (like mine) don't. If you use your software to create a Standard Music CD (not Data CD), then the car will play the music perfectly with no metadata at all. Standard Music CDs do not support song titles or anything else.

This usually is selected in the Burning / CD Authoring Software.

Koz

I use MediaMonkey to do this with mixed results: http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/. I am using the MM4 beta which might be the cause of my mixed results. I suspect I was also having problems with using appropriate settings.

A Data CD appears to the system as a shiny, flat hard drive. I think there is an ISO standard for it that I can't remember. Literally, you can put a Photoshop picture, two spreadsheets, a Publisher wedding invite, and three WAV music files on there and about anybody with a modern computer will be able to get all that back off later. If you put MP3 files on this disk (in place of the spreadsheets), some very modern disk players will "know" how to play them. I think my sister's newer car can do that. Mine, like I said, can't.

Using that shiny disk as a base, the Red Book Standard was written to create Music CDs. In order to get as much very high quality music on the disk as possible, all the fancy-pants file formatting and meta-data was stripped off. The format for Music CD is very strict and fixed. You can't get any more than about 79 minutes of music on the disk no matter how hard you try. If, oddly, you do succeed, you no longer have a Standard Music CD and it won't play in my car.

The ability to switch between the two formats is usually at the burn step...

Thanks everybody who replied here with suggestions. First off, I have a newer Prius that can handle the Metadata which will display in a panel the artist, album and song. The guys on the Prius forum suggested using Nero for the burn with the following settings: One member also suggested lowering the write speed to 8x (lowest possible). Oddly my burner just died so I need to replace it and I will post back with my results when I get a successful compilation.
I'm a noob when it comes to tweaking music tracks but would like to experiment with cross-fading sometime. I'm gradually getting better with Audacity!