Can I write (200 MB - 150 min) music to a (700 MB - 80 min) CD?

Question

I have mp3 songs of audio quality 320 kbps. The total size of the songs is around 200 MBs with a total playing time of around 150 minutes.

Can I write these songs to an audio CD, whose specs are following:

• 52x top recording speed on a CD-R/RW burner
• 700 MB storage capacity equals 80 min music recording time

Solution 1

You can write 200MB to the 700MB disk if the disk remains a data disk.

If you want the CD to play in home audio systems/stereos then the MP3 files will be decoded to raw PCM (like a WAV file) during the writing process and the disk will be written using a "time-based" calculation and your 150mins won't fit.

Solution 2

700 MB is calculated to 80 minute in CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) format. What you asked is a little bit ambiguous so, here's a break down of what you may have asked:

• You can burn 80 minutes of music (where MP3 is reformatted to CDDA, which you can listen to on most CD players lying around)

• You can burn 700 MB of music (where MP3 is recorded as such - as data, not as audio - and you can only play it on CD players that recognize MP3 format, remember, as data, not as audio)

But you definitely and absolutely cannot burn 700 MB and 80 minutes of MP3. The 700 MB (digital format) equals the amount of "analog" (audio) minutes.

You must remember that MP3 is an audio digital format where 320 kbps (or 128 kbps, or 256 kbps and such) is the sample for every "x" MB from the original master (mostly, CDDA format) and is used nowadays to stream.

So, you should choose which format will you use. If you have too many files to burn, use MP3 (burn as data) but you will be limited to PCs, car radios, or CD players with compatible format, but if you have a few files (totaling no more than 80 minutes of total play time), you can burn it as audio so you can have more compatibility with standard players.

Additional FYI: the fact that you may record an MP3 into a CD, doesn't mean your MP3 file "masters" by itself. You will get the same audio quality on your audio CD as was recorded in your original MP3 source (whether your library or other library).

Solution 3

The "700 MB / 80 Min" label is describing two very different way of burning a CD.

A CD can be burned as a "Data" disc or as an "Audio" disc.

700 MB is for data version. 80 Min is for audio version.

When you burn a CD as an Audio CD, it will fit 80 minutes of music. This limitation is standardized and you cannot really mess around with the music to change this. It'll fit that much and no more, regardless of what you do with your music quality.

If you burn the disc as a Data CD, the limitation then becomes only 700 MB. Duration has no meaning. If you encode your own MP3 for talk shows or audio books, you can easily do a 1 hour/10 MB compression, giving your 700 MB disc a whopping 4200 minute (70 hours) duration.

For maximum compatibility, an Audio CD will basically work in any player that is compatible with CD-R media, which means most players built in the 21st century. MP3 playback is not necessarily present in all systems, even brand new ones.

Solution 4

Yes, it can be done. But it's not likely something you would want to do.

A CD carries 80 minutes of stereo sound. But stereo means there are two channels. If you wanted to get creative, you could encode half of your collection as mono in one channel, and half the collection as mono in the other channel. Then, in your CD player, pan all the way left to listen to one channel, and all the way right to listen to the other channel.

This is, of course, quite complicated. I presume you will want to have each file as a separate track, so you'll need to match up similar length tracks, and likely put up with some silence one side as the song on the other channel is completing. You might be able to play around with having more than one track per song/file, if you use the "disk at once" option in your CD burner to eliminate any gap between the tracks.

There won't be any software to help you do this, either. You'll just have to use an audio editor to make the tracks mono, and then put them together in a single file per track, and then burn that file as audio to your disk.

So, while it technically can be done, it is complicated to do and produces an inferior result that has only mono sound and requires a CD-player with panning controls (or disconnecting a speaker).

Your best bet is to see if an MP3 CD (i.e. just burn the MP3s as files, rather than as audio) works on your player, or to just make two CDs.

Solution 5

Depends of the way you want to burn it.

There are 2 ways to do it:

1. If you want to write it as an classic Audio CD, with a single session, that you can play in ALL the stereos with a CD driver, you will not be able to burn it, because this way the audio duration will be considered and 150 mins of audio doesn't fit on it.
2. If you want to write the mp3 file (the file itself) inside the disc, you will be able to do it! It will turns a CD-ROM with a 200 MB .mp3 file burned inside it. Older systems ARE NOT ABLE to play mp3 files CDs, but nowadays all the systems are able to play it.

So, if you're sure the system is a modern device, write the mp3 file in the CD. It will depend of the burning software you're using, but on Windows you can simply copy and paste the file inside the CD unit via "My Computer" and burn it.

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Comments

[Display Name]

Writing mp3s as decoded to CDDA is a huge waste, and will also make them sound even worse (but not much) because the decoded sound must be quantized to 16 bit.

[Display Name]

and if you simply write the files, it won't be an audio CD.

[MSalters]

@SargeBorsch: And what exactly did you think happens in any media player reading an MP3? MP3 started out as a 44.1 kHz 16 bits codec, which not coincidentally matches the earlier CDDA specifications. And while MP3 supports a higher sample rate (48 kHz), sample depth is always 16 bits.

[Admin]

Nice trick, in order not to ask a duplicate question you just ask a question that was relevant 20 years ago!

[MSalters]

See also Why do 700 MB blank discs only fit what iTunes says is about 150 MB of songs?

[Display Name]

@MSalters mp3 is not 16 bit, nor 24 or any other value, and it never was. because it's not a PCM based codec. the resolution of resulting PCM samples is up to the decoder implementation. And internally the format doesn't mandate truncation to 16 bit anywhere; LAME is one example of implementation which doesn't round to 16 bit at any stage.

[JPhi1618]

This would be better answered over at Retro Computing...

[Dmitry Grigoryev]

Possible duplicate of Writing ~ 630 MBs of MP3 to a Regular Audio CD

[MSalters]

@SargeBorsch: The MP3 decoding standard ends with a Synthesis Polyphase Filterbank which produces 16 bits sample depth. Sure, you can stuff those values in a 32 bits float, but the MP decoding algorithm simply doesn't produce sensible values for the 17th bit. Note that LAME is an encoder, and encoders can run non-standard algorithms in their decision which bits to drop on encoding.

[Engineer Toast]

@CL. If you're only concerned with storing the data necessary to build your own dinosaur, you probably can store it on a 700 MB disc. If you trust the Jurassic Park wiki quoting a paper from Nature, convert from picograms to base pair count, and store store each base pair as 2 bits, T. Rex would need about 457 MB to store it's DNA sequence.

[TwentyCharMax]

Fav only because of the funny replies

[ESR]

Possible duplicate of superuser.com/questions/1239346/…

[Clonkex]

Asked yesterday?? Gee wiz this question exploded fast!

[Clonkex]

@EdmundReed How the actual heck is that a duplicate? That question has 0 relevance to this question; it's completely and utterly unrelated.

[Clonkex]

The amusing thing is that the compact-disc tag description very nearly answers this question on its own :P

[user541686]

@JPhi1618: I know I left a joke to the contrary a couple days ago but this isn't really "retro computing"... the i7, Win8 laptop from 4 years ago I'm typing this on still has a CD drive and I still drive a car that takes audio CDs and not MP3 CDs.

[Damian Yerrick]

@SargeBorsch How is decoding MP3 to CDDA more of "a huge waste" than replacing a perfectly working stereo system that does not accept data CDs or SD cards with MP3 files with one that does?

[InterLinked]

@Geliormth I think this question is MORE RELEVANT today than it was 20 years ago. 20 years, people were not using PCs to burn their OWN CDs to the extent they are today. I have burned probably about 10 or 15 CDs, some with music I already had, some different, in the past several months. I have always burned the traditional way because my stereo systems obviously does not understand MP3s. It's older than I am, but I've never had a problem with it and intended to keep using it. Most GOOD CD players won't recognize MP3s; therefore, I advise you always burn the old way, not the Data route.

[Admin]

@InterLinked I didn't say music CD's are not used anymore today. Just that, contrary to 20 years ago, everything you want to know about them is available on dozens of places on the internet already ;)

[Hossain Khademian]

you can use pc softwares like Nero Express to make audio CDs with 700MB audio file

[psmears]

Note that many (but by no means all) modern CD players are capable of playing data CDs containing MP3 files.

[Kinnectus]

The majority that offer this capability are, generally, the upper-market ones that advertise as being able to play MP3 and some other formats. Entry-level devices, usually, don't have this because of the more complex processing of the data.

[rkosegi]

it is not only about more complex processing of data, but in past, some cost included license fee to use mp3 codec from Fraunhofer institute

[MSalters]

Mind you, a player only needs the (non-patented) decompressor part of the MP3 codec. The compressor part is the smart part. It has to decide which bits are inaudible and can be discarded.

[MSalters]

Actually, it's not stored in WAV format, but CD-DA, and that's also why you can store more than 700 MB of WAV files on a 80 minute CDR. CD's can store audio and data, the difference being that data sectors have more error correction bits. Hence, when you convert the WAV to CD-DA format, you can store more bits per sector, and you need less sectors per song. (about 15%).

[MSalters]

Changed "single track" to "single session". CD Red Book standard allowed one session, 100 tracks. This is clearly what was intended. CD Orange Book allowed multiple sessions, data files such as MP3, and indeed requires new hardware.

[leftaroundabout]

@MSalters are you sure that is right? AFAIK there is no standardised compressor; MPEG-2 Layer Ⅲ is really just a specification of the decoder. The encoder, as you say, is much more complicated/smart, but it's not part of the standard at all.

[michaelfOe]

yes indeed! my mistake!

[MSalters]

@leftaroundabout: Yes, and you seem to agree with me? There is no ISO-standard MP3 compressor, but Fraunhofer sells their MP3 codec (compressor+decompressor). Their compressor isn't standard, but it produces standard-conforming output.

[BCdotWEB]

See also electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd1.htm . Also, this is not true: "700MB is calculated to 80 minute in WAV format" Look at the calculations at the bottom of audiomountain.com/tech/audio-file-size.html and you'll note that an hour long stereo PCM file @ 16 bit, 44.1 KHz (= audio CD standard) is 635.04 MB; thus a 700 MB file = approx. 66 minutes.

[abhi]

My 1992 CAMRY was not able to play MP3 CDs.

[Toby Speight]

Strictly speaking, the MP3 streams will be converted to CD-DA, not WAV.

[Kinnectus]

You can edit the answer to improve it :)

[Mark Ransom]

It's worth noting that the 44.1 KHz uncompressed audio as used by both CD-DA and most WAV is 1411.2 kbps for comparison.

[Cole Tobin]

@TobySpeight which contains stereo 44.1 kHz 16-bit PCM with error correction (which can easily be wrapped in a RIFF [WAV] container sans error correction). But if you're gonna be pedantic, the Red Book standard [IEC 60908] allows for more than just plain audio. CD-Text being the most common one.

[Casey]

@Kinnectus My economy car from six years ago had MP3 CD support, so I don't think it's that upmarket a feature anymore.

[Vality]

Note, "It'll fit that much and no more, regardless of what you do with your music quality." isnt 100% true... YOu can overburn CDs a little, theoretically up to 99 minutes, though I have never seen more than about 82 be reliable.

[derobert]

Last ten years? Should work in an ordinary CD player from the 1980s. (At least high-quality CD-R should; -RW may not). I've personally used them in players from the 90s.

[Shaamaan]

Be mindful that there might be even more restrictions imposed by home players on MP3-filled CDs. For example, my car won't read CDs with the UDF file-system, but will read Joliet (I'm not sure about ISO9660).

[Nelson]

@derobert To be honest, beyond 10 years, the player itself is probably not working. The rubber that provides traction to spin the disc would not even grip the disc anymore at that age, so it is not likely to work, even though it isn't the disc's fault.

[Nelson]

@Vality true, but overburning involves moving the tracks a little closer than the specifications, banking on the reader's fault tolerance to handle the denser tracks. It has nothing to do with the music quality though.

[derobert]

@Nelson that depends on how the player was built. Last I tried it (this year) my parent's CD changer, which I think is 90s, still works. And I have a Plextor CD drive from the early 2000s that still works last I checked (probably a year ago). But a working CD player from '82 ought to play a CD-R. Your answer though makes it sound like a CD-R is an incompatible format, only working in newer players.

[Nelson]

The exact details are tricky, and it really depends on how much tolerance the players can handle. I wasn't going to do a broad "It'll work in anything in the past 30 years" because I don't have that much experience with the format. The tricky part is that the 700 MB / 80 Min density was not specified 30 years ago. The fact that the players can handle it is simply a testament to the engineering quality of said player. They're playing a disc that's outside specification.

[AndyT]

"It's possible, but not something any normal person would do" - fits perfectly on "superuser.SE" then!

[Tschallacka]

MP3 is now royalty free because the patent has expired, all hardware can use it now for free without having to pay patent fees. So I expect a lot more mp3 support in future hardware madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/04/05/mp3patent

[Dennis]

700 mb is 700 millibits or 0.7 bits.

[Dan Henderson]

@Kinnectus I had a portable MP3-capable CD player about 20 years ago, I believe it retailed for around $70-80. Doing a quick Google Shopping search for "mp3 cd player" just now, I found one for $22 on the first page of results. Does that not qualify as "entry-level"?

[Dan Henderson]

This is basically the same as trlkly's answer, posted 4 hours earlier.

[Kinnectus]

Go to a local retailer and you'll notice the very cheapest devices probably don't have the capability, the further up the scale you'll see capable devices. You specifically searched for MP3 devices so of course you'll find dirt cheap devices. Additionally, of course you'll find many extremely cheap MP3 capable players online - most online retailers don't have the overheads etc etc. This is all getting out of scope of the answer to the OP's question so such comments aren't really necessary or provide extra value to the answer...

[Kevin Krumwiede]

@Kinnectus I bought one of the cheapest stereo systems at a local big box store in 2012, and not only can it play MP3 discs, but it supports Bluetooth streaming as well. The fact that this capability is near universal is quite relevant to the question and would be part of any good answer.

[David Richerby]

"The rubber that provides traction to spin the disc" Though many CD players are top-loading and use three sprung ball bearings to grip the disc.

[Ruslan]

@Shaamaan Joliet is just an extension to ISO9660, so no reason to be unsure about the base standard :)

[Shaamaan]

@Ruslan Fair enough. I know little about CD standards (just that they exist and might not be compatible), so I didn't know that. :)

[Jolta]

Actually there were many CD players manufactured in the 90s and earlier that could not reliably play CD-R media, simply because CD-R was not invented yet. Something about the reflectiveness of the media being too low. The answer should reflect the fact that the last 10 years is too short a time to encompass all reasonably compatible players.

[KPM]

@Dennis a fraction of a bit simply doesn't make any sense. Bits are integers, since they're the number of figures of a binary number.