How many MP3s will fit on a CD?

[Stephen Vakil]

How many MP3 songs can you get on a CD?

Stephen

 

[Harry]

In mp3 format? Or converted to wav files as a standard CD would be?

 

[Stephen Vakil]

Hi Harry!

I might shortly be getting a CD player which can play MP3 files as well as normal CDs.

Stephen

 

[Harry]

It can hold a lot of songs in mp3 format, of course dependent on the sampling rate of the file. The higher the bit rate, the lesser number of songs would fit. Consider that a standard 80 minunte CD holds 700 megabytes of data, so if a song is 5000 kb, then the CD would hold 140 such songs.

Harry

 

[Stephen Vakil]

Thanks Harry! That's answered my question.

All the best

Stephen

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Thread title edited to make it more clear what the thread is about.

 

[Stephen Vakil]

Thanks Mike

Apologies

Stephen

 

[PartyRico]

If you "rip" the songs at 128 KBPS, you can fit about 180-210 songs average per disc. That's been my experience.

 

[Sonic_Eccles]

Gosh, what if you ripped at 96kbps? Or for those long trips away, with some tweaking software rip at 64kbps and never hear the same song for over a week.

I'd just rip at 192kbps and call it a day.

 

[aymnostalgico]

That's why I have moved to buying a car stereo interface with a jack that I can attach my iPOD or mp3 player to it. I think this is the way to go now and forget about CD changers. Besides you can take your complete library with you

 

[Harry]

My car player accepts mp3 CDs and just the other day I discovered it also accepts and plays wma discs. Just for the fun of it, I ripped all of the Herb Alpert Signature Series discs to wma format and put them all on one disc. Then I set the CD player to "mix" and it's been really interesting hearing the random song selection from virtually the entire classic TjB discs. (I left off the CHRISTMAS ALBUM, but included the LOST TREASURES disc.)

With the Windows Media Player set to rip these files at 192 kbps, they all fit with plenty of room left over, so theoretically I could add in SUMMERTIME, YOU SMILE, and CONEY ISLAND to a future version without too much difficulty - all on one disc. The files are obviously compressed, but in the car, it's not noticeable at all.

Next I think I'll do the A&M Brasil '66/'77 library, then Carpenters...

Harry
...having a ripping good time, online...

 

[Mike Blakesley]

That sounds like a fun idea. I might try that.

I think for Sergio, I would leave out the "reprise" version of "Stillness" and I might also leave out "The Circle Game" since that song requires such a time commitment to listen to.

Carpenters would be more of a chore. Their early albums contain so many segues that would sound odd if "chopped" at the wrong spot. I wonder if you could group such tracks, like "Crystal Lullaby/Road Ode/A Song For You (reprise)" so they would all play as a unit?

As you can tell I haven't done much with WMA!

 

[Harry]

I've thought the same about the long songs and segued tracks, but the flip side of that is that you might want to listen to the album itself in normal sequence. I accomplished that with the TjB by keeping each album in its own folder on the disc. So if I want to play GOING PLACES in order, it's folder #1 (since alphabetically, GOING PLACES turns out to be the first album - it counts "The" as being in the T's).

Next time, I might rename the albums to start with a the number of the album's release. So THE LONELY BULL would be renamed "01 THE LONELY BULL", eliminating that alphebetizing anomaly.

As for listening in random, I probably wouldn't find it much more jarring than it already is. No matter which compilation I'm listening to, whenever I hear "Tijuana Taxi", when it's done, my brain automatically loads "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You."

Harry

 

[Rudy]

I did something similar with my two Led Zeppelin box sets: these were the four and two disc sets that, together, make up their recorded output. I not only put them on an MP3 disc, I put them back together in their original album order. I had a Sony 10CD changer that played MP3 discs, plus I also have a Panasonic portable, and both of my Pioneer universal players (DV-578A and Elite DV-45A) play these as well. The latter two might also play WMA...not sure.

 

[Rudy]

I'd just rip at 192kbps and call it a day.

That's about the bare minimum for listenability--I once did an MP3 CD at 128kbps, and the percussion on the Brasil '66 tracks was actually "chirping" (such as on "Berimbau"). Quite nasty. For me it has to be 256k or higher, fixed bitrate (so it is compatible with all players).

 

[Harry]

I was thinking about doing a Carpenters disc, and the one big problem might be the oldies medley. But then I remembered that the "Oldies Medley" was presented as one long track on the ANTHOLOGY comp from Japan, along with the live Bacharach-David medley, also combined into one long track. Those would serve better when using a random "shuffle" function.

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

OK, I decided to try this and am having problems. What the heck am I doing wrong?

- Set the Windows Media player to rip at 192k
- Ripped all the CDs to a TJB folder (it creates a subfolder for each album)

But when I try to burn the disks, it still fits only about 25-27 songs on a disk even though the settings say I should be able to get at least 7 hours worth on a disk at that rip rate.

WHAT am I missing?

 

[Stephen Vakil]

Hi Mike

Sounds like you're writing them as if you were burning a normal CD rather than saving the files as data.

Stephen

 

[Harry]

I've been using Nero to burn these discs. In that program it worked if I chose to burn a "Data CD" or a "WMA CD". Both worked in my car.

It sounds like you need to change the settings in Windows Media Player to burn a "data CD". (?)

Harry

 

[Rudy]

Hi Mike

Sounds like you're writing them as if you were burning a normal CD rather than saving the files as data.

Stephen

It almost sounds like it, or possibly a data disc that has the WAV files (rather than the compressed files) on it.

Mike--can you put that CD back in the computer and browse it with Explorer to see what is on it? That might tell us what you ended up with on your disc.

I got frustrated with burning MP3 CDs since I had to number all of the tracks and folders so the discs would play back in order. I had heard that some players can make use of a standard MP3 "playlist" file, but I have yet to find a player that uses it. (I forget the extension, but I thought playlist files were named "playlist.m3a"...it's been awhile.)

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I think you guys nailed it. When I got to the burn dialog, it asks if you want to make an audio CD or a data...I selected audio, thinking that the file format would make the difference. Will try it the other way, if that doesn't work I'll chime in again. Thanks for the input.

 

[Rudy]

You definitely want a data disc for MP3 or WMA files.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Yup, that was it. Seems odd that I've never burned anything except a regular CD (well, I've burned data disks but only for data files, not music).

So now I have a disk with the complete TJB catalog (except I left out about 3/4 of THE LONELY BULL because try as I will, I just can't get into most of those tunes).

I drove around for a while after work listeing to the disk on my car stereo - I notice a loud "THWACK" sound every now and then. Kind of like the sound you make when you click your tongue on the roof of your mouth. It's definitely on the disk, because the sound happens at the same time everytime, and more in some tracks than in others. Any idea what might be causing this? It happens maybe once per song, but a few songs played without the sound at all, and I heard it three times during "Marjorine" (one of my favorites! :grr: )

 

[Rudy]

Could be anything--it could have been a glitch while encoding, most likely. If it were a write error, it may have resulted in a dropout instead.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

It may have been errors caused by me doing other stuff on the computer while the disks were being ripped...I might try it again since it only takes a few minutes.