Burning Music to CDs

I ran into this info today and don't want to lose it. I figured that
the mp3 was pretty universal but they don't play on this older CD
player that Rock gave us years ago. Evidently there's a way to do
that so they will play and I may make Ma some now.
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Burning CDs for the ride



Hi. I hope you can help me. I
always have wanted to have every song that I ever liked in my car.
Daddy bought me a car with a CD player. I put my MP3s on a disk, but
the CD won't play them. I hope this isn't a stupid question. What
am I doing wrong?
—Cyndi in Houston, listening on KTRH 740 AM

No problem, Cyndi. We
all started knowing nothing about this stuff. So first, let's talk
about formats. MP3 is a music format. So is WMA. And there are others.

Some CD players can play MP3 discs. That's really handy, because you
can get a lot of MP3s on the disc. Others can play WMAs. That's even
handier, because more will go on a disk. WMAs are smaller than MP3s.

Both are compressed data files.
Furthermore, compression takes out certain sounds. That's how they
make them so small.
The CD drive must decompress the files, restoring the missing stuff.
The CD drive has some of the capabilities of computers.

Still with me? Good. Your CD drive apparently will not play

these files. It sees these files as data it cannot read. No problem.

You just need to convert your MP3s to WAVs. WAVs are
uncompressed music files. All CD drives play them. The same goes for
WMAs. And this really isn't a big deal. There are numerous programs

that convert files to WAVs and burn them to CDs. It's all automatic.

If you have Windows, you can use Windows Media Player. Mac
comes with iTunes. In addition, there are lots of third-party burning
programs. Most all are free. There are also "pro" or "professional"
programs. You have to pay for them. I wouldn't. Their features are
usually not necessary.

Thump