Mp3 Cd

[ScubaDive]

On the new 2008 Ranger the Stereos are MP3 capable. I was just wondering if there is any limitation to how you make a MP3 CD?
Do you just take all your music and place it on the CD or can you have different Folders?

 

[human5]

You can make individual folders for the albums you put on the cd. You'll grow to love mp3 cd's right away. For me they're great, I can carry around 100+ albums on like 10 cd's and if they're stolen it's no big loss. Do you have the 6 disc cd/mp3 player?

Don't place all your music in just one master folder though. You'll get seriously annoyed with flipping through each individual track to find a song on a different album. If your cd player is like my ex's all you have to do to switch folders is hit the seek or scan button (which ever one dosn't change the individual track).

 

[ChrisR1S]

Human 5 nailed it. And i second how great they are. I dont use normal cds anymore. All i listen to are mp3 cds. You can fit loads of songs on just one cd and still have great quality music.

 

[Tempe]

Compressed = not quality

 

[martin]

I think the mp3 players are great, I tried playing my vinyl records in the truck but the needle keeps bouncing off them.

 

[Ranger SVO]

Compressed = not quality

You must still be using a sub-standard encoder. MP3 got the reputation for bad quality for two reasons. One, the encoders of that era were still being developed and they had a long way to go. BladeEnc, QDesign and the original Frauhofer definately needed work. Most people back in those days had dial up connections, so bit rates were kept low, 96 and 128 were the standard.

Today we have encoders like LAME 3.96 (current version might be 3.97). While it cannot rip a CD, it can be easily used in rippers like Audiograbber. Now there are other high qualiy encoders out there and I have tryed many of them. And so far (in my opinion) Lame works great.

Using these settings, I have never had a customer or any one else that could tell the original from the MP3. NEVER.

 

[Tempe]

Even with a high-quality audio system? Nice reply!

 

[Ranger SVO]

Even with a high-quality audio system? Nice reply!

Adjustments might need to be made. When I originally did this in my truck (put a majority of my music on an Ipod), I definately noticed how bad the Ipod sounded when compared to a CD. My first rips were done using Windows Media Player. One of the fastest encoders I've ever seen, but at even 320 bit rate it sounded bad.

I started using different rippers and encoders and finally settled on the combination that I currently use. The way I would test the sound quality was to put the CD in the player and switch between the source and the Ipod. When I could no longer hear the difference I was there. My quality setting is VBR 2. I have begun re ripping all my music using even one setting higher or VBR 1.

Also Lame can be used as an external encoder for even more control, The following commands -V2 --vbr-new or, -V1 --vbr-new or -V0 --vbr-new will produce great results. Other commands may be entered to adjust for personal taste.

Now MP3's are only as good as the source they come from. Only rip real store bought CD's. We don't know how a burned CD was made. Was it compressed first, then uncompressed and burned. Thats bad, depending on the compression format. In most cases lost info cannot be recovered. Making an MP3 from such a CD will result in a poor quality MP3 regardless of the settings.

Now if we are ripping for the purpose of archiving our music, then I would never recommend MP3. Lossless formats like WavPack or FLAC should be the way to go.

 

[AllanD]

THE thing is to use burning software that puts the files on the disc according to the Joliet standard.

Unless your player uses the propriatary ATRAC or subsequent ATRAC upgrades
which were originally used for mini-disc players.

Personally I'll be using a Sony Disc changer that is MP3-CD compatible (A CDX-757MX)
that way I have ten discs stacked with 700+megs each and if I get bored of that I have TWO spare disc magazines

I dislike using "loose" individual CD's, atleast original ones.... Burned discs?

If a burned disc fails I can make another one fairly easily
infact my burner program remembers what was burned onto each disc (I name my discs)

SOME software, like the one I use (Roxio Soundstream) rips and burns and uses LAME encoding to compress the WAV/CDA files into MP3's.

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[AllanD]

Tempe,

mp3 sound quality is a matter of HOW MUCH compression is used.

Obviously the more compression the lower the quality.

But the basic fact is that there is FAR MORE sonic information
on a CD than ANY human ears can discern.

Like for example when "compressing" a .WAV/CDA file to an mp3 the first thing that happens is that ALL sound information above 15.8kHz, which very few adults can hear
anyway, PARTICULARLY in the imperfect environment of a truck cab.

If you record everything at 320kb/sec and THINK you can hear a quality difference it's in your head.

For practical purposes the only thing gained by using higher bitrates than 192kb/sec
is you take up more space on the disc.

at 192Kb/sec you can store 7times as much music on the disc
at 320kb/sec you can store about 4 times as much music on a disc.

so presuming that the albums you want to record on your mp3-CD are 80minutes long you can fit SEVEN of them on a single CD-R.
I find that typically the albums I want to listen to run 45-55minutes,
so I can frequently fit ten to twelve albums on a single mp3/CD-R disc

In a moving truck with highway wind noise, engine noise, tire noise,
you can't really hear the difference between a CD and a 128kb/sec
mp3 recording, but even so I never use a bit rate lower than 160kb/sec.
though on downloaded stuff I don't have much choice.

higher compression rates (lower bit-rates) not only lose data but can create "Compression artifacts", sounds not present in the original recording.

One distinct advantage of mp3 formats is the included metadata content, which includes artist and song title and can include other data (album?)

With CD's you typically need to tediously program that information
into our head unit or player...

And there is frequently Volume normalization applied which prevent tracs from different sources from being at greatly
differing volume levels.

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[ScubaDive]

Which brings up a questions? Do song titles and Folder Names show up in the display for burned MP3 CD's?? (again a stock Ford Ranger 2008 radio)

I have made two, MP3 CDs using Nero and both of them have fully named files on them that show up if I play them on the computer over Winamp but in the Truck nouthing shows????
Is there something I'm not doing right a option that not on when I'm burning????

 

[AllanD]

I'm not familiar with "nero"

I use either Roxio or NTI, but I don't have a late model ford player to test the discs in.

I make Mp3 discs only to "archive" my compressed files so they don't
waste space on my harddrive that I need to store WAV files that
I'm editing

I don't have a CD head unit, just my changer, I don't like handling single
discs when driving.

I MIGHT change that attitude if I had a headunit like a Sony MEX-2 that has memory AND will play Mp3/DVD-R discs which store 4.7Gigs of files...
One of those and I'd get rid of the CD changer.... and my Cd collection would
fit neatly onto two DVD-R discs.


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