iTunes and MP3 CD's

[DarkSilver2]

I am having difficulty with the compatibility of iTunes and my Sony MP3 CD player. I ripped almost every CD I own onto my iMac, and created a playlist of the best songs. Then I added music I had downloaded on my Windows machine by transferring via an MP3 cd. The grand total was a lot of songs but at the bottom of the playlist it said the MB total was still under 800. When I tried to burn, however, (specifying MP3 burn format) iTunes un-selected a number of the tracks, burning only about 77 instead of over 150. What more strange is that when I play the CD on my discman, all of the tracks either read as track 1 or 2, and none of the track names show up. Does anyone know why this happened or what I am doing wrong?

PS: Just because I know someone will say it, I know I should just get an iPod, but I don't have the money now and the discman has worked just fine with everything else.

 

[PlaceofDis]

did you encode some of those songs in AAC instead of mp3? that might be the problem.....first thing i thought of....

 

[bousozoku]

I've made a few mp3 CDs for my car but I can't say that I'm really knowledgeable.

The TRACK number business may have to do with characters that aren't available on mp3 CDs. My Japanese music almost always turns into numbers because the file system apparently doesn't handle Asian characters or even files that begin with a number.

Were the tracks which were not selected paid music? If they were copy-protected AAC files, perhaps it won't convert them to mp3 format because that would remove the copy protection.

 

[DarkSilver2]

Some of the songs were recorded in the .m4a format (I think that is it - I'm away from home and that computer right now), but I thought that they would burn in .mp3 format if that was the setting. A majority of the downloaded music was pirated, but not all of it, and it seems that the majority of the songs that did burn to the CD were the pirated ones.

Do you think that I need to rip the songs in .mp3 format in order to be able to burn a decent mp3 CD?

Also, could someone remove my ignorance and explain to me the differences of the different formats you can rip you music into?

 

[decksnap]

Is it possible that when you 'added to library' from the CD(s) of MP3s, (not the ones you actually ripped) you didn't have you preferences set to 'copy files to iTunes Music Library'? If this was the case, then it adds them to your library listings but references the location you are adding from, in this case the CD. iTunes is looking for the source of those files in the list and not finding them, because it never actually copied them to your hard drive.

 

[DarkSilver2]

That is a good point, but it doesn't explain why the ripped tracks did not burn.

 

[1macker1]

I'm having a similar problem, I cant get my burned cd's to play in my car cd player. I make a audio cd, but they wont play.

 

[decksnap]

Well your AAC files will not burn as MP3 files- because they're not MP3s. You can easily burn regular audio CDs with your AACs, but not MP3 file CDs.

Regarding the file types, AAC is just a newer file type with better compression capabilites- basically an AAC will sound better than an MP3 of the exact same size. If you do use your MP3 player a lot, I'd recommend setting your preferences to rip files as MP3s and not AACs.

 

[bluebull]

Were the tracks which were not selected paid music? If they were copy-protected AAC files, perhaps it won't convert them to mp3 format because that would remove the copy protection.

That's what it is. iTunes won't allow you to burn files purchased from iTMS onto an mp3 cd.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

That is a good point, but it doesn't explain why the ripped tracks did not burn.

Well it kind of does because if you "add the songs to your library" but don't have it set to copy the files to your library folder then you eject the CD the computer does not have the origional files and when you go to burn your new CD you do not that all of the files. I might be wrong but that just my thoughts.

 

[DarkSilver2]

Let me try to address the past three posts.

1) Decksnap, what you are saying makes sense in a way, but why can you then convert AAC files into audio format for CDs but not convert them to mp3's?

2) bluebull, you wrote "iTunes won't allow you to burn files purchased from iTMS onto an mp3 cd" yet none of the songs were purchased from iTunes, so that is irrelevant.

3) ChrisFromCanada, while the idea is reasonable, I had dragged the files into the iTunes library off of the CD, and it took a good 5 - 10 minutes for the transfer to finish. Besides, it was mainly (if not entirely) just the mp3 songs that went on to the CD.


I'd like to thank everyone for their ideas, both this far and any ideas posted in the future. Please do not take my responses offensively, I am just trying to clarify the circumstances. Thanks.