MP3 CD's

The whole MP3 concept was born from the internet. The original purpose for MPEG audio was to reduce the size of movies to make downloading faster but enterprising individuals were using it to compress digital music files even before the technology was released to the general public.

In respect to the CD formats that we've been discussing there really is no such thing as an MP3 CD. Like the technology itself, MP3 CD's were a market driven concept led by consumers. As MP3 gained popularity and CD burners became more affordable it was only natural that computer users would begin burning CD's of their favorite MP3 files. These CD's were of course nothing more than standard data CD's with MP3 files on them but to distinguish them from audio CD's, which could be played in stand alone CD players, they were called MP3 CD's implying that they could only be played on a computer. It didn't take the electronic hardware industry long to see the potential of MP3 CD's and soon MP3 players began to emerge. Today most CD or DVD players will recognize MP3 files as well as many hybrid audio-video formats such as VCD and Super VCD.

There's a lot of confusion about MPEG audio, how it works and the quality. MP3 files are to audio what ZIP files are to data or JPEG files are to images. Typically the MP3 algorithm compresses CD-quality audio to between 1/10th to 1/14th of the original size without any significant degradation of the sound quality. In practical terms that means that you can store from 10 to 14 times more MP3 music on a than you can CD audio tracks.
 

The purists among you will argue with the above sound quality claim but in point of fact most people cannot distinguish between the sound of an audio CD and an MP3 CD. Let's take a moment to discuss exactly what data is lost.

To create these very small files from very large files the basic compression algorithm process is augmented with a scheme called perceptual noise shaping which simply means that sounds that the human ear can't hear are left out. Obviously that means data has been omitted but whether or not it really matters is somewhat subjective. In the case of omitted sound that is at a frequency above or below the range of normal human hearing it could be argued that anyone who can hear sounds that are above or below the "normal" frequencies would hear a difference.

To create an MP3 CD with Fx Magic Music, select the CD Options button from the main tool bar.

Pick the MP3 option from the New CD Setup window and press the button to create a new CD.

Unlike a standard data CD, this configuration does not permit you to add folders or sub folders since the current generation of stand alone MP3, CD and DVD players will not walk a tree searching for files.

Although you can add both MP3 and WAV files, you should be aware that WAV files will not be converted to MP3 and that very few stand alone players will play WAV files. You can of course convert your WAV files to MP3 before burning your CD.

As we discussed, MP3 files are very small in comparison to CD-A or WAV files so you can get a lot of music on each disk.

The scale at the bottom of the list registers size on disk in mega bytes rather than playback time as is the case when creating an audio CD.

Using Nero is not quite as obvious and there are a lot of potential options available such as mixed mode and CD extra which are another world. For the purposes of this document we're going to follow the same  course as before and create a standard data CD which Nero calls CD-ROM (ISO). The below images show the sequence and require no explanation.

Like Fx Magic Music the capacity bar shows usage in mega bytes rather than time.