MP3 music files are great when you are sitting at your computer. If you have one of the portable MP3 players, it is also easy to carry MP3s with you and listen to them through headphones. But if you want to play MP3 files in your car and your car has a CD player in it, or if you want to play them on your home stereo, then what you need to do is move your MP3 files onto a CD.
To create a CD from MP3 files, you need to do three things:
- You need to download the MP3 files you want to listen to onto your computer. You can get MP3 files from places like mp3.com.
- As described in How MP3 Files Work, an MP3 file is a compressed version of a CD track. You therefore need to expand the MP3 file back into a full-size CD track. This process is known as decoding, and you need to have decoding software on your computer to do it. You can purchase a decoding package or download free or trial software from the Internet.
- You then collect all of the CD tracks together in a directory and write them to a writable CD. Your CD-R drive normally comes with software for doing this. When you write out the audio tracks, you have to be sure to tell the software that you wish to create an audio CD rather than a CD-ROM.
Since MP3 files can be easily downloaded from the Internet and your CD-R drive comes with software for writing audio tracks to a writeable CD, the main thing you need is the decoder. Two good places to look for a decoder include:
- Winamp
- MP3 Software
Download your songs, decode them and write them to a CD. Then you can pop the CD into any CD player and listen to your songs anywhere!
Here are several interesting links:
- How CD Burners Work
- How do CD-RWs rewriteable CDs work?
- How MP3 Files Work
- How CDs Work
- How Napster Works
Frequently Answered Questions
Why won't my MP3 files burn to a CD?
There could be a few reasons why your MP3 files won't burn to a CD. One reason could be that the files are not in MP3 format. Another reason could be that the files are too big to fit on the CD. Finally, the CD burner might not be compatible with MP3 files.
Can I burn an audio on CD-R?
Yes, you can burn an audio CD on a CD-R.
127 127 people found this article helpful Store several albums on one MP3 CD for hours of nonstop digital music
What to Know
- Go to Burn and set the burn mode to Data disc. Drag MP3 files into Burn list. Insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW and choose Start burn.
- Change the burn mode: Select the Burn options drop-down menu and choose Data CD or DVD. The mode changes to Data disc.
- Erase data on a disc: Right-click the drive letter in the left panel associated with the optical disc and choose Erase disc.
If your computer has a CD-RW drive, you can create MP3 CDs containing hours of music. Here's how to burn MP3s to a CD data disc in Windows Media Player 12.
How to Burn an MP3 CD in Windows Media Player
To burn audio CDs with Windows Media Player, follow these steps:
Launch Windows Media Player and select the Burn tabin the upper-right corner.
Set the burn mode to Data disc. If it says Audio CD, it isn't ready. To change the burn mode, select the Burn options drop-down menu in the upper-right corner and choose Data CD or DVD. The mode should change to Data disc.
Locate the MP3 files you want to copy to the CD in the left pane of Windows Media Player.
Drag and drop single files, complete albums, playlists, or blocks of songs into the Burn list on the right side of WMP.
To choose multiple tracks that aren't next to each other, hold down the Ctrl key while selecting tracks.
Insert a blank CD-R or rewritable disc [CD-RW] into the optical drive.
To erase the data that's on the disc, right-click the drive letter in the left panel associated with the optical disc and choose Erase disc.
Select Start burn in the right panel and wait for the burning process to complete.
Some CD players can only read audio discs, not data discs. Check the documentation for your sound system to see whether you can play MP3 CDs.
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