burning wma music compilations on to CD's issues

[ian elliot]

I tend to make up CD's for use in my car these days as my car was broken into a few months back. but i figured i'd see how many tracks i could get on to a CD. what puzzles me is, although my blank cd's have 700mb of space and 70 tracks only takes up to 260 mb, only about a third will burn before being told ive run out of space.
i wondering if it would be better having the tracks in mp3 format, i was looking at some freeware Wma to mp3 converters on the net but i dont really trust them.
cheers ian

[Moparmike]

I've done a couple WMA discs for my JVC Arsenal car units (they will play either a WMA or MP3 disc)...but I've got a Sony head unit in another car that won't read a WMA disc so I've been doing all my car CDs in MP3 format.
It is nice to have several hours of music on one disc instead of the rat's nest of originals that I used to have before!
I can fit a full 700Mb worth of MP3s onto a CD...but I need to put the files into sub-folders for organizing otherwise the JVC will only see about 50 or so of the songs. I dont' know if this is an issue of the CD file system or just how my JVC reads em...

I use WinAmpPro to rip to MP3 so I've never really shopped around any of those format converters. There have to be some decent ones out there though.


What brand is your stereo and do you have the manual for it? They might give tips on how to get max disc space utilization.

[Moparmike]

I found a PDF copy of my JVC's manual...here are it's criteria for how to burn a data disc for it. Maybe your head unit is similar.

[ian elliot]

I have a Sony unit also, a friend gave me a disk with over 80 mp3's on one disk which plays fine so im guessing my system dos'nt like Wma's, even though the manual says it will play them fine. ill have to have a go with a converter.
Strange really, i thought Mp3's where twice as big than Wma's, but you can get more Mp3's on a disk. :mixedsmi:
thanks Moparmike, cheers ian

[Moparmike]

Both MP3 and WMA can be ripped as different bit-rates. The size will depend on what bitrate they were ripped at. WMA many times will get ripped/saved as a variable bitrate file where MP3 will be fixed at whatever rate you choose.
Another thing might be in the WMA decoder software (codec) that the Sony head units have...maybe it's looking for a specific bitrate or just doesn't like the variable bitrate rips.

That Sony that I have is also supposed to read WMA data discs but it just plain won't read em at all...just says "no disc" when I try one.
It's an older unit that came with a truck I bought...I would've replaced it with another JVC (which is a brand I used sell when I was still in biz for myself) but it would read MP3s just fine so I figured I'd run it until it dies.

[Henry]

i rip my mp3s in windows media player
i have a 6 cd changer in my car
and put many cd's on one, in folders
works for me
H