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Audio CDs use a completely different format than the data CDs or DVDs you might use in your computer. As a result, they require a different approach to create.
Audio CDs confuse many people and Windows - trying to be helpful, of course - doesn't help.
The fact is that an audio CD is a very different beast from a data CD. Windows may try to make an audio CD "look like" a data CD by listing its contents as one .cda file per track, but in reality, it's just fooling you.
Those "files" aren't really there.
Many people think that if they could just convert their .mp3 or other audio files into that .cda file format, they can just write them to the disc and they'd have an audio CD disc that would play in any player.
It just doesn't work that way.
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Audio versus data
A data CD is very much like a hard disk. It contains sectors and files and folders and directories and all the things that we're used to seeing on a hard disk. In fact, the CD is written very much like a set of concentric circles of data, just as hard disks are.
An audio CD has none of that.
An audio CD is more similar to an old vinyl record; it's best thought of as a single spiral of data - in the reverse of that vinyl - starts in the center and slowly spirals outward. A single stream of bits.
While a data CD can contain music, it's often in the form of compressed .mp3 files or files of other audio formats. The result can be several hours of music in the roughly 700 megabytes that can be stored on a CD.
Not so for an audio CD. That single spiral of data can contain only one format: uncompressed 16-bit stereo audio at a sampling rate of 44 kilohertz. If you do the math (16 bits per sample times two stereo tracks times 44,000 samples per second, then divide that by 8 bits per byte), you find that an audio CD requires 176,000 bytes per second of audio and a 700-megabyte CD can hold approximately 69 minutes of audio1. That's it.
What further confuses matters of course are audio CD players that can also play data CDs. These normally have an MP3 logo somewhere on them. For these players, you can simply burn your mp3 files to a data CD and enjoy hours of music.
If your CD player can only play true audio CDs, however, you need to do things a little differently.
Start with ImgBurn
I'm going to use my favorite free CD and DVD burning utility, ImgBurn, to burn an audio CD of one of my podcasts.
Important: When visiting the ImgBurn site, ignore all of the recommended downloads or the "Before you download" statements that you see. Those are all advertisements and are not required. Click Download in the upper left of the site and then click on any of the listed mirror sites to download ImgBurn and only ImgBurn. And like any download, make sure to pay close attention to all options, taking the Advanced or Custom path and declining any additional toolbars or other offers.
It all starts with CUE
Run ImgBurn and select Write image file to disc:
If you're not using the easy mode picker, simply click on Mode followed by Write.
Now click on the "Create CUE File..." button:
In the resulting dialog, click on the Browse for a file... icon:
In the resulting dialog, locate and select the .mp3 files2 you want to write to your audio CD. Remember that the total time of the audio cannot exceed the capacity of an audio CD: a little over an hour.
In the example above, I've multi-selected (holding down the CTRL key as I clicked on each file) two of my recent answercasts in .mp3 format to be written to an audio CD.
Once you click Open, ImgBurn spends a couple of seconds analyzing the files.
Now, click on the "Session" line in the resulting list:
You can see that in the CD-TEXT section below, I've selected Custom and entered in information relating to the CD.
You can actually include CD-TEXT information for each track, if you like. If the original file had this information in it already, then ImgBurn may have pre-loaded these fields as well. Some audio CD players have the ability to display the CD-TEXT as the CD is played.
Click OK when you're done editing any CD-TEXT; you'll be prompted to save the ".cue" file. I'll save mine as "answercast_example.cue".
ImgBurn then returns to the "Write" display with that file ready to be written:
Burning the disc
Insert your blank CD-R. I do not recommend CD-RW media and in fact, I recommend a good quality CD-R at that. Not all audio-CD players will play write-able material properly, even when written in the correct format. Using CD-R and quality media stacks the deck in favor of producing a CD that can be played in most players.
After you've inserted the media, the burn button un-grays:
Click it.
ImgBurn burns the audio CD.
Once complete, you'll have a CD in audio format.
A CD that Windows once again will fool you into thinking contains files.
But now, you know better and can create your audio CDs the proper way.
1: Not only have I rounded to make the math just a little clearer, but the capacities of CDs can vary some as can the ability of CD writers and players to write full capacity. As a rough rule of thumb, it's safest to say that an audio CD can contain just over an hour of music. More or less.
2: ImgBurn will actually support a wide variety of file formats. Click on the All Supported Files drop-down in the selection dialog box for a convenient list.
Article C5918 - October 14, 2012 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
October 16, 2012 5:51 PM
I tried to add titles to music on an Imation (0r Disc Power) CD-RW, but was refused as the files were "Read-Only". I tried adding the titles by way of Open Document Text - Open Office - and when I tried to "Write Files To Disk", I succeeded in erasing all the music. And the ODT dialogue didn't write to disc either. I didn't know the difference between data and audio disks then. The disk had been playing the music on my stereo. How should I have gone about this.
October 16, 2012 7:53 PM
I have been using the ITUNES method for a while now, without any problems:
Open ITUNES.
Click FILE/NEW PLAYLIST.
Name the playlist and click OK.
Double click on playlist name to open it.
Drag and Drop .mp3 files into playlist window.
Click FILE/BURN PLAYLIST TO DISC.
Under BURN SETTINGS make sure Disc Format "Audio CD" is selected.
Insert Disc.
Click BURN.
Thanks for a great newsletter, Leo.
17-Oct-2012
October 17, 2012 7:09 AM
Great topic, one I am dealing with. I appreciate knowing what a good program is to burn the cd's, I'm always struggling with RealPlayer and it is difficult to use! I'll use ImgBurn from now on. I can't wait to get home and try it, as I burn a lot of audio cd's of podcasts, recordings, etc.
Thank you very much!
October 17, 2012 9:00 AM
Nice article!
Regarding audio loss, MP3 uses a lossy compressed file format, and there will be audio degradation. However, if the listener is older or the playback equipment is not hi-fidelity, this loss may not even be noticeable.
As far as burning music, one suggestion is to make sure to burn audio at the slowest speed your device supports in order to make it the most compatible with older playback equipment. I personally choose 4x, but 8x is likely sufficiently slow enough for this compatibility.
November 20, 2012 2:05 PM
Well, I don't know, it seems to me there's more to this business of track titles than meets the eye.
I have a vinyl disc of a song recital which I bought when it was first issued in 1963; the company that produced it has long since bitten the dust. In 1996 it was reissued as an audio CD (which I also bought) by another company which had licensed the recording from the copyright holders; they too have long since disappeared.
I've recently tried to make a copy of this CD for a friend who is particularly interested in the music on the disc. Using Windows Media Player I ripped the tracks from the CD in lossless (.wav) format without any difficulty. However, they were unnamed - presumably the online search facility doesn't work for such old material - so I then manually entered the artist details, and composer and title of each track. Then I burned the material to disc using Image Burn and following Leo's instructions.
The music transferred without any problem; the disc plays in my CD player indistinguishably (to my ears anyway) from the original CD, and the track numbers are displayed - my player does not display track titles. However when I put the burned disc in a computer, none of the information I entered appears; the tracks are just shown as numbers from 1 to 17.
I was going to write for advice when I read Marian's comment regarding using iTunes. What I found was that though iTunes insisted on reordering the sequence by composer's name, which affects the 'balance' of the programme, the entered information still did not transfer over.
Any suggestions?
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