CD - > MP3 -> CD question

[Dragon Phoenix]

This weekend, I have converted a large number of CDs to MP3 and made two compilation CD's with MP3 files. So far so good.

These would be ideal in the car - no need to change a CD every hour on long trips. Unfortunately, the car CD player does not play MP3.

Question: is it possible to re-convert MP3 files to (smaller, lower quality) audio files that a normal CD player can handle?

[Planky]

Short Answer: No

Standard Cd Players can only play tracks, so you would have burn the mp3's as tracks, which would be pointless as you have the original cd's (or not)

Either get a Car Mp3 CD Player, or get car cd stacker - which at least you dont have to keep changing the cd's every hour

God, this about the 5th time Ive edited this, and twice I've rewritten it, lol.

[This message has been edited by Planky (edited 08-11-2003 06:04 AM).]

[MacadamiamaN]

CD MP3 players are actually quite cheap if you want to make a small (~$200) investment of replacing the one currently in your car. Then you can play 700mb of songs in data form without problem.

All you need to do is get the radio (receiver) and a wiring harness (adapter specific to the wiring setup of your car), and possibly an adapter to fit the shape of the radio insert currently in your car. You can always get someone else to install it as well.

Here's an example of one. Other benefits that you'll get would be the possibility of further enhancements to your car stereo including the addition of an amplifier (via the pre-out connection), better and more powerful speakers, etc...

[This message has been edited by MacadamiamaN (edited 08-11-2003 06:49 AM).]

[Logain]

DP, audio tracks on a normal CD are set in their bit-rate. They are tracks in the format of a CDI, which is a CD image rather than a normal file structure like an mp3.

Go with what MacadamiamaN said. Rather than going through the hassle of converting to mp3, then converting back to CD format to play in the car, upgrade to a CD-MP3 car stereo. I just bought my Pioneer car stereo for ~$200. Or if you want to go cheaper, buy a CD-MP3 portable and play through a tape deck adapter.

[jadesmar]

IIRC: CD audio is uncompressed audio sampled at 44.1 kHz with 16 bit (2byte) samples, always.

This would mean for example we have 44100x2 bytes of information per second = 88200x60 bytes/minute = 5.292 Mbytes/minute of play. (hmm... something is wrong with this calculation, it should be slightly bigger than that).

With MP3, you have a compressed audio format with a variable bitrate. When "ripping" a CD-audio track to MP3, there is always information lost (if bitrate <=192), which changes the sound of the output track. So, you should not usually convert to MP3 and back to CD Audio.

[Dragon Phoenix]

Sure, we burn CDs for the car directly from other CDs. I just hoped there would be an easy way to get lower quality = more songs in audio format. Guess not. Thanks anyway.

[MacadamiamaN]

no new radio?

[HyToFry]

Yeah. no.

I have a six disc in my car, and a tape player in the deck. I have a portable mp3 CD player that I use through the tape adapter. I also connect my laptop more often than not.

Short of that, you'd have to buy an mp3 player for your car, or use a radio transmitter (which is shit IMHO)