How Much Is 80 Minutes

When burning a CD, yous can either burn it as a data disc or an audio CD. A information CD tin can hold upward to 700 MB, while an audio CD tin can hold 80 minutes of sound. If yous have 200 MB of MP3 files that add up to three hours of music, you can still merely fire 80 minutes to the disc. Why is that?

What Happens When You Fire a Information CD

At the fourth dimension of burning, you choose to burn either a data CD or audio CD. Your disc burning plan burns the disc in a different format depending on the option you choose.

Data CDs are simple to empathise. When you lot burn a data CD containing MP3s or whatsoever other blazon of file, your computer creates a disc containing those files. The files on the disc are the aforementioned size as they are on your computer. So, if you have 200 MB of MP3s you want to burn down to a 700 MB disc, y'all can place the MP3 files and upward to 500 MB of other data files on the disc.

Why Burning an Audio CD is Different

Burning an audio CD is different. Audio CDs are not the same thing as information CDs, and they practise not contain MP3 files.

An audio CD contains sound information in CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Sound) format. This is uncompressed audio data, and it requires a lot more space than MP3 files, AAC files, or any other type of compressed audio file. A infinitesimal of CDDA sound always takes up the same amount of space on the disc, which is why you lot tin can only fire a maximum number of minutes to a disc. Fifty-fifty if the songs yous're burning are in MP3 format, they have to be converted to the larger CDDA format if you lot want the disc to work in a regular CD player.

RELATED: How to Rip Audio CDs to Your PC or Mac

Information technology goes the other direction, besides. Audio CDs y'all buy in stores can only have a maximum of about eighty minutes of sound, merely if yous rip an album to MP3 or AAC format, it will apply less than 700 MB of storage space on your PC. In order to convert CDDA to MP3, your reckoner uses a "lossy" compression process, where some data is thrown out. Otherwise, your ripped music collection would have up an atrocious lot of infinite!

Burning MP3s to Audio CDs Isn't Platonic

If you burn an MP3 to an sound CD, the MP3s will aggrandize to accept up the same amount of space as the original audio data. Yet, the resulting disc volition accept junior audio quality when compared to the original audio CD.

When you rip music from a CD to an MP3 file or AAC file, you're not getting all the original audio data. Some of the data is discarded to ensure the MP3s have a small-scale file size. The resulting MP3 files won't necessarily sound equally expert equally the original disc. How good they'll sound depends on the encoder you use and its bitrate settings. Your headphones and speakers are also a factor: Information technology will be easier to tell the deviation with college-quality, more than expensive headphones.

This is why audio geeks like lossless formats like FLAC, which provide some compression merely go on all the original audio data. If you lot burn down lossless files similar FLAC to a disc, you'll have an audio CD with sound quality skilful as the original.

When you burn down lossy files like MP3s to an sound CD, the MP3s will be converted to CDDA audio, which takes up more space on disc. But all the audio data that was discarded when the MP3s were created tin't be restored.

Of course, if you lot're already happily listening to the MP3 files, an audio CD you burn from those files won't sound worse any worse than the MP3s. But it won't necessarily sound equally good as the original sound disc, either.

Some Disc Players Support MP3 CDs

There'southward a compromise available, also. Some CD players can read both standard audio CDs and "MP3 CDs".

An MP3 CD is exactly what information technology sounds similar. Rather than converting the MP3 files to CDDA while burning an audio CD, yous burn the MP3 files to a data CD. The disc actor then reads the CD, loads the MP3 files, and plays them just like a computer would.

To discover out if your disc player supports MP3 CDs, look for an "MP3" logo on information technology. You can also read its instruction manual or check its specifications, and yous should see MP3 back up listed if it has it.

To create an MP3 CD, you but burn down a data disc and fill it with upwardly to 700 MB of audio files. You may want to organize the MP3s into folders so they're easier to navigate through on your disc player. Some applications, similar iTunes, have an "MP3 CD" option, only you tin can achieve the aforementioned thing by burning the MP3 files to a data disc with whatever disc-burning tool.

These CDs won't work on any old CD player, and then this isn't the most uniform solution. But, if you lot employ a CD role player that supports MP3 CDs—possibly your car stereo does, for example—you tin fire MP3 CDs instead of audio CDs to fit more music on a disc.

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