best way to create extended CD with track info

[Knightmessenger]

Using the regular windows media player setting, it won't let me put more than 80 minutes of audio files on a CD regardless of how much space that is actually taking up. I thought there was a way to burn a mp3 CD that can store much more songs, display the track info and will play in a regular CD player if it's new enough to be mp3 compatible. (my 2012 car is)

I'm pretty sure this means all the files have to be burned as mp3 on the CD but I don't know much else. Plus most audio files from my own ripped CDs are not in mp3 format, I used a windows media format. And now I've gotten a bunch of CD's that I'm preparing to rip and add to my music collection. But should I rip them as mp3 for compatibility reasons? Rip the file twice, one mp3 one wma to be safe?
10+ years ago, mp3 files never sounded that good to me so I always associated them with bad quality. But in more recent years I've heard mp3 files that sounded perfect so those bad quality files could have just been the quality of the encoding or bitrate. But still, I figure that windows media audio with a variable bitrate setting is much better than mp3, but hardly a bigger file size. And almost as perfect as a full quality lossless but without being a huge file size. And these totally burn fine with the regular settings but don't have the previously mentioned features I want.

I've heard that Windows Media Player does let you now make a CD with track info but I've never gotten it to work. I would probably have to only try to burn mp3 files for one.

But is there a better program out there that can do this? The ideal thing would be to let me copy the playlist over from Windows Media Player so I don't have to rerate and sort everything again. And then in the burn list automatically convert all the audio files to mp3 on the CD. So that even if they're stored on my computer as WMA variable bit rate, what ends up on the CD is something that will work with the extended playing time and track info.

I would rather not have to rerip any WMA files as mp3 duplicates just to pull this off and then worry about sorting more audio tracks.

So can this be done? Would it still be a good move to rip my new CDs in the variable bit rate mode?

[davexnet]

You can certainly write the mp3 files to CD as data; you can put on there as many as can fit into the 700MB

I believe the ID3 info within the files is used by the player to show artist info, album, etc, etc.

[Knightmessenger]

But if I write them as data, will it still play as a regular audio CD?

[hech54]

But if I write them as data, will it still play as a regular audio CD?

No guarantee. The player will need to have the ability to read MP3 files burned to a CD. Not all can do this.

[Knightmessenger]

Ok, I'm sure the cd player will read the mp3 data files fine. I assume any that have the mp3 logo on them feature this compatibility.

But then what about something that could take a .wma file and write it to a CD as an mp3 data file?

And apparently windows 10 now lets you rip in FLAC which is lossless. But then I heard it won't let you make any kind of an audio cd with those files. So am I better off with that?

[hech54]

An audio CD consists of .wav files burned in a certain way.....anything else burned to a disc(flac, MP3, wma) is just a data disc.


The best "burning software" is ImgBurn and it's free. It does create audio CDs from various types of audio files(MP3).....not sure if it
can do it with wma files.
WinFF and Handbrake are also free, handy audio converters too....maybe those can get you to your required 44.1 wav files for audio CDs.
Honestly though....most computers nowadays come pre-loaded with software to create a simple audio CD.

[Cornucopia]

But if I write them as data, will it still play as a regular audio CD?

No. A data Cd (Yellow/Orange Book) is not an Audio Cd (Red Book), nor vice versa.
E.g.: Red book uses the full 2352 byte sectors for data, Yellow/Orange uses only 2048 bytes out of those same 2352 byte sectors (for Mode1 or Mode2, Form1 - the kinds used in regular data disc burns).

A data cd with audio FILES on it in a file system is much more like a data cd with picture files. It needs a file system reader and a file format parser and decoder and rendering/playing app. This means it needs more smarts than a true Audio CD player, which for audio Cd just has to read the raw LPCM streams in tracks with no filesystem, and needs no parsing or decoding (other than buffering & L/R assignment).

As mentioned, Audio Cd playback is guaranteed with an audio CD player (and by extension, a DVD or Blu-ray player). Audio files of various compressed formats on data discs have no such assurances of universality.

Either way you go, if I were you, I’d drop WMP as your cd ripper/burner, and use something like EAC as your ripper/converter and ImgBurn as your burner. You will have more accurate and high quality rips, better and more flexible options for conversion to data files (including addition of id3 tags, etc), as well as better quality burns (both data & audio).

Scott

<edit>Also, those 2 suggested apps will allow you to create audio CDs with cd text (aka extended info, like you may have mentioned in the OP).

Also, IMO, mp3 may have started out as slightly worse quality than wma (at similar bitrate*), but LAME, etc has advanced mp3 encoding quality greatly while wma has just stayed still. So mp3 can now easily beat wma. Plus, wma is proprietary, deprecated, mainly only supported by MS, and sometimes wants to go the drm route, so should always be avoided. If you want better than mp3, go with aac/mp4, or opus (or flac for lossless).

*lossless wma is an exception but still not preferred over Flac, Alac, etc.

[pandy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_Mode_CD

Only very old Audio CD players may face problem and play data part as audio, since 20 years this should be not a problem.

[teodz1984]

There are several guides how to burn mp3s on a data CD
https://www.easytechguides.com/burn-a-mp3-cd.html

I may add that you should make sure burner software is set to burn on ISO 9660 Joliet, which will limit how long your files can be and what letters cannot be used.

Most (and new) DVD players “ignore” the ISO9660 altogether and read the UDF file system.

Most portable players, including car systems, use ISO9660 Level 2, while some of them can read Joliet.
If you want to use the disc you will burn in such a system, to be certain Read The Manual of the device. The devices shouldn't be confused by the use of other file systems, in addition to the one they can read.
In general, UDF is most comfortable to use because of the very few restrictions it imposes on your disc's file system structure and is compatible with a broad range of devices and software. Sometimes however, UDF might not be supported by a device (or for other purposes than DVD-Video), in this case you need to use ISO/Joliet.

The best way to test this out is to make a cd and see what works for you.

For more info consult this guide
https://cdburnerxp.se/help/Appendices/filesystem

ISO9660: This is the oldest format, used for discs and has many limitations. First and most of all it only supports Roman characters (ASCII). There are three different variations for ISO9660: Level 1 (8+3), Level 2 (31) and ISO9660::1999 (Unrestricted). The numbers within the parentheses, are the maximum characters allowed for each file's name. A more detailed explanation:

• Level 1: File names are limited to eight characters with a three-character extension, using upper case letters, numbers and underscore only. The maximum depth of directories is eight.
• Level 2: File names are not limited to 11 characters (the 8.3 format) but may be up to the maximum allowed by the 1 byte counter in the dir entry and the filename length byte counter. Typically, this is close to 180 characters, depending on how many extended attributes are present.
• Level 3 (ISO9660::1999): Unrestricted.

Restrictions for all these levels are:

• All levels restrict filenames to upper case letters, digits, underscores (“_”), and a dot.
• File names shall not include spaces, start or end with the dot character, have more than one dot.
• Directory names shall not use dots at all.
• 4 (or 2) GB limit for file size.

Joliet: A file system, specified and endorsed by Microsoft, which bypasses most of restrictions above and accomplishes this by supplying an additional set of filenames, up to 64 Unicode characters in length. This means that you can use any language, for file names.
UDF (Universal Disk Format): The newest file system format available which continues to be updated. While DVD-Video media use UDF version 1.02, Blu-ray media use UDF 2.50 or UDF 2.60. CDBurnerXP will use version 1.02 for CDs as well. Notable features:

• supports media and files up to 2TB size
• file names may be as long as 255 bytes (that is, 254 8-bit or 127 16-bit Unicode characters)

[Cornucopia]

@pandy, I was only mentioning the sector size to show that the 2 beasts are different and should be approached differently. But while data cd support is now common, and mp3 support is common for basic encodings, vbr and very low or very high bitrate, or lower samplerate encodings (those that make up the mpeg 2 - layer 2 part of the spec) are still much less supported. As is id3 tags, as is wma, aac/m4a, flac, etc.

@teodz1984, good tips for newbies to remember: use bridge filesystems & make your disc as cross-compatible as possible.

Scott

[Knightmessenger]

When I said, will it play as a regular audio CD, I meant 'does it have the capability to play CD audio as a regular CD does in compatible players.' When I hear data disc, I think of burning pictures, videos or other files similar to copying to a flash drive. Are these actually the same? Because they couldn't be in a bunch of different folders like they are on my computer. I've always assumed playback of any CD has to be linear (like laserdisc) and can't do menus and branching like DVD can.

Among those guides linked by Teodz, are any recommended for making an mp3 CD from non mp3 audio files?

[Cornucopia]

Most all mp3-files-on-data-disc burns are fully capable of storing with multiple folder levels, and many (most?) player apps & devices have no trouble reading them.

Playback of any REDBOOK Audio CD proceeds linearly (not counting skip keys, shuffle mode).
Playback of data cds (encompassing audio, photo, or video or whatever, alone or in combination), depends on the app/device, and possible settings such as flat folder vs recursive, sort options, file & folder named vs artist/album/title setup.

And yes, your idea of data cds is pretty close to accurate. Though not Audio CDs.

If you want cross-conversion to mp3, possible LameXP would work well for you, though you will likely cannot avoid encountering generational loss.

Scott

[teodz1984]

Regular CD players (like those in stereos, diskmans or old car audios) only accept 1 format and that is the redbook format. and that play max of 80 minutes of music.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio.. if you throw a data disk in it it will show "disk incompatible' error

A mp3 cd can only be played by compatible hardware.. and the burning process should adhere to certain standards (filsystem, bitrate and channel count).. Otherwise it is similar to burning mp3 files on a data cd. There can be folders but make sure the files and folder lengths adhere to what the hadrware can read..
Yes LAMEXP will do the job of converting non mp3 files to mp3s