[GeneticKiss]

OK, I'm behind the times. I know you need a special CD player to play MP3 CDs, but if you burn MP3s to a disc using a CD burner, will they play on any CD player?

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by GeneticKiss

OK, I'm behind the times. I know you need a special CD player to play MP3 CDs, but if you burn MP3s to a disc using a CD burner, will they play on any CD player?

no, when you use an MP3 CD player, you create Data Discs of the mp3 files, and the disc player reads them as data files. I used these for years before they finally made an iPod nano with 16gigs, and I loved it! You get like 100 hours of battery life, and you can fit about 10-15 albums on an 800mb CDR so you can really just carry around one or two discs on you and have a plethora of music..

This is the process which first got me converting all my music to mp3 and then sending them to my iPod eventually..

[ilduclo]

CDEX converts well, but not from Calvinism...

http://www.mp3-converter.com/cdex.htm

[SuperCreep]

i haven't had problems playing mp3s on a cd from a cd player quite literally ever.

also, converting mp3 to wav is a lossy to lossless conversion and the end result would sound like crap.

[terminal pharmacy]

Originally Posted by GeneticKiss

OK, I'm behind the times. I know you need a special CD player to play MP3 CDs, but if you burn MP3s to a disc using a CD burner, will they play on any CD player?

if you burn it as an audio disk yes, if you burn it as an mp3 disk no.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy

if you burn it as an audio disk yes, if you burn it as an mp3 disk no.

the best answer to the confusing question which I seem to have entirely misread.

[GeneticKiss]

Maybe I should clarify what I'm planning to do. I have 12 songs for a mix CD I want to make. Six of them are audio tracks from albums I've got, the other six are MP3s. I have a blank CD-R and my computer doesn't have a bulit-in CD burner, but I have an old external CD burner. I'm asking if I can just burn all 12 tracks to the CD-R and have it work in an average CD player.

[SuperCreep]

Originally Posted by hipster_bebop_junkie

"Lossy to lossless". Ain't that a contradiction?

Technically speaking, the MP3s are already lossy. The audio files became "lossy" the moment they were encoded to MP3s, which means certain information was lost in the process. By converting them to .WAV, their properties won't change. The resulting WAV files will sound just as bad (or good) as the original MP3s. If these WAV files are encoded to MP3s once again subsequently, then another quality loss will occur. This means that, if you rip the files from your CD-R that was made from MP3s, and encode the ripped WAV files to MP3s to listen to on your i-pod or whatever, then your new MP3s will have worst quality than the ones you used in the past as the source for making your CD-R. Only then, the quality of those will be degraded.

Someone with more knowledge than myself might prove i'm full of bullshit, though.

i've just A/Bx'd a few mp3s i converted to wav and it seems you're correct. i was under the assumption that converting them to wav would further distort details that weren't present in the mp3 file before, much like taking my avatar and blowing it up to 500x500 pixels or whatever.

[ilduclo]

certainly hasn't been my experience, I don't think they get any better, but I don't think they get any worse. My car has an mp3 cd compatible player, but my old truck does not, so I do convert some things from mp3 to wav to listen in the truck, which has a pretty nice 6 speaker set up and those discs sound good. YMMV