Making a normal CD from MP3s

Samson

This may have been asked before, if so, apologies, just point me in the right direction.

What I want to do is make a CD that will play in a normal audio CD player from MP3 files.
I know I'll have to convert the MP3s to WAVs, can anyone give me a URL for a program to do this?
A brief walk-through of the process would be greatly appreciated.

I use Nero, by the way.

Wossack

Well with nero, file -> new
Then choose audio cd from the wizard thing, then just drag
what mp3s you want from the file browser on the right
to the empty space on the left. Ta da!

Samson

Originally posted by Wossack
Well with nero, file -> new
Then choose audio cd from the wizard thing, then just drag
what mp3s you want from the file browser on the right
to the empty space on the left. Ta da!

Jaysus, who would have thought it could be so simple (not me obviously).
Thanks.

Wossack

Heh, no worries. Havent done it myself, but looks like it SHOULD
work Used to use a no nonsense program called audio-
grabber (now called audio catylist(sp)) but I lost it

Kali

just to add.. Nero can be a bit fussy with certain mp3s (especially if the audio has slight glitchs)... for best results just use winamp to convert to wav, then Nero will gladly burn them regardless of quality.

sceptre

Easy peasy with Nero. It really is the dogs goolies.

Works fine - I've done it a few times.

Nice point from Kali - Nero can be really picky at times.

If you've any MP3Pro files you'll be wanting to get the addon from the Nero site for that

bombidol

Just to add, theres a sweet little program called SCMPX a search on google will turn it up, it converts from WAV-MP3 and MP3-WAV nice and quick, it does batch conversions and all that jazz too.

daveg

You could also use easy cd creator. I know a lot of people hate it but all you do is select the MP3's and it converts them on the fly - as it burns...

Inspector Gadget

...but to my (slightly picky) ears, not all MP3 decoders sound the same, even when playing back the same MP3 file. I'm not certain which decoder I'd recommend, but I'd suggest checking the output of one or more MP3 decoders/players (such as Winamp) against what the CD-burning packages produce to see which one you prefer (assuming, of course, that you could be bothered)...

Gadget

tman

sound forge 6 has a damn decent decoder plugin, a wee bit pricey tho:(

STaN

does the type of mp3 matter allot?

Im not sure of the right termalogy, but i know where are 128bit, 192 etc

When i go to download/make them, which should i go for? And obviously which are the best for making CD's from?

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by STaN
does the type of mp3 matter allot?

Im not sure of the right termalogy, but i know where are 128bit, 192 etc

When i go to download/make them, which should i go for? And obviously which are the best for making CD's from?

Absolutely. MP3 is what's called a "lossy" compression system, which means that the file it spits out when it's finished doesn't contain all of the original information.

Instead, it uses algorithms (based, more or less, on a computer model of how the human ear works - as is usually the case with models pf physical things, it's had a few corners knocked off it mathematically, sacrificing accuracy for simplicity, but hey...) to throw away sound that the model suggest a human won't hear, or at least won't hear very well or very much; how much information is discarded is determined by the "bitrate" (basically a predetermined limit on how much data should be used to store each second of the sound - the standard values used for MP3 are 32, 64, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224 and 320kbps) - the lower the bitrate, the less information is stored, and hence the more is thrown away - a 320kbps MP3 to my ears is almost indistinguisable from the same track played from a CD, although the raw audio data coming off the CD is being read at a rate of just over 1400kbps! (remember, it's not compressed; the MP3 is...). On the other hand, a 32kbps MP3 sounds (to me) like something being transmitted over a Fisher-Price walkie-talkie set; fine for low-grade speech, but for music? Forget it...

(What I've just described is for what are called constant bit rate or CBR MP3's; variable bit rate or VBR MP3s vary the bitrate used to encode various parts of a sound clip according to how much detail there is within it - for example, using a very low bitrate such as 32kbps to encode silence and something like 192 or 224kbps for extremely complex full-frequency-range stuff. There's also something called average bit rate or ABR which is basically a cross between VBR and CBR - vary the bitrate but end up with an overall average bitrate for the file)

Another side-effect of lower bitrates is that the encoder decided that the higher frequencies - the tinny noises that mean the difference between something sounding realistic and sounding like it's being played inside a dustbin - get lopped off to conserve space - the lower the bitrate the deeper these cuts go.

An interesting side-effect of using a "lossy" compression scheme is that the actual algorithm used to encode the sound can make a difference to the end result; a comparison I saw a month or so back suggests that the (payware) Fraunhofer encoder gives better audible results than, amongst others, the (free) LAME encoder, at the same bitrate (the LAME encoder was "losing" high frequencies that the Fraunhofer was preserving) - this is basically a result of the acoustic model being used by one being slightly better/different than that used by the other. However, it's a bit of a swings-and-roundabouts thing as the "quality leader" crown can go both ways depending on the bitrate being used for any given pair of encoders.

Anyway, at the end of the day, what you use depends on your hearing and how fussy you are; personally, my entire MP3 collection is encoded at a worst-case of 192kbps CBR, mostly VBR with a 192kbps minimum setting; however, some people are perfectly happy with everying at 128kbps and can't tell the difference. All you can do is try it for yourself and see if you can tell the difference; go with the smallest your ears are happy with. Remember that a 192kbps MP3 will be 50% larger than a 128kbps version of the same file!

Hope this helps,
Gadget

DeadBankClerk

i like to use Acoustica's MP3 CD Burner for making audio CDs. It converts the mp3s and normalises volume etc... IT also has some nice mix/fade settings between each track. It also has a stupidly simplistic user interface so my brother can use it

(my brother uses winzip wizard instead of winzip classic)