Got a dilemma, and a new toy. I picked up a portable CD player from Target last week. A Panasonic, which has MP3 capability. I specifically wanted MP3 due to a lot of upcoming travel and needing to be able to play back CDs in the car. Having more tunes on one disc will be very helpful, so I don't have to fumble around changing discs all the time. Maybe later this summer I can get a *real* car that has an in-dash CD player. I have yet to try this thing, but I'm wondering about the preparation of a CD of MP3 files. According to the instructions, you create MP3 files where the first three digits of the filename are numbers, such as: 001Babylon_Sisters.mp3 002Hey_Nineteen.mp3 003Glamour_Profession.mp3 If you want to store these by "album", you can have one level of folders beneath the root, like this: 001Katy_Lied 002Royal_Scam 003Aja 004Gaucho ...and store the tracks beneath them. In this example, the Royal Scam tracks would begin their numbering sequence where Katy Lied left of. In other words, each individual album does not have their track numberings start at 001. No problem doing any of this, other than having to rename all of my files. My question, though--is this standard for CDs containing MP3 files, or are different brands of players going to have different track name requirements? This player apparently does not need a playlist (.m3u file), but I thought I'd heard that others did. I just don't want to make a dozen CDs of favorites and have to remake them if, say, I get an in-dash player or home DVD player that can play MP3 files from CD.
Originally posted by Grant I don't know. I just dump all of my mp3s on a CD-R as data and go. I do not finalize the disc so I can add more later. One thing I did find is NOT to ever use CD Creator Deluxe to make those mp3s ever again! The encoder sounds very bad. I will use Cool EDit or Sound Forge from now on. All works well.
The internal ROM programming has a standard, just like you mentioned. Many players will NOT play MP3 CDs unless they are IN folders, not just in hiearchy like you mentioned. For instance, if you made your CDs in folders like: 001 - Abbey Road 002 - Let It Be and then inside, Let's say, Abbey Road 01 - Come Together 02 - Something 03 - Maxwell's Silver Hammer.... etc... This disc, as done, will play in Car CD/MP3 players, portables, and DVD players, and will be easier to organize....
The docs didn't really mention that the files *had* to be in folders below the root--the way they present it, it's more like an option. I still will organize by folders since it gives me album access, should I need it. Here's exactly how they describe it: 001 Aja - 001 Black Cow - 002 Aja - 003 Deacon Blues - 004 Peg - 005 Home At Last - 006 I Got The News - 007 Josie 002 Gaucho - 008 Babylon Sisters - 009 Hey Nineteen - 010 Glamour Profession ...and so on. I know in Easy CD Creator, they give you the option of creating a playlist for MP3 files. But it's unnecessary in this case. I am wondering, too, if I could still put in an .m3u playlist, and the player would ignore it. That would mean I'd use the CD in a computer as well, and at least I'd have a playlist ready if I should ever need it. I may use CDex for encoding, since it gives me a choice of several encoders. Or stick to Sound Forge.
CDEx is very good. No, maybe not your unit, Rudy, but some APEX DVD players and such say the tracks don't get read unless they're in folders. My JVC DVD-A player will play the tracks like that. One thing CDEx does is the artist, title, track number hiearchy into folders. You may or may not like that... I just make the mp3 CD a certain way so they'll all play the same....
My JVC DVD-A player does .mp3 playback and it will play back the files whether they are in folders or not, but it is very unpredictable. Many times it will display multiple copies of the same .mp3 or some of them it will refuse to playback while some it won't even recognise as being there at all, even though I specifically put it on the CD-R. I'm not really sure how to get it to work more properly.
This Panasonic's "album" feature is neat, with the folders. I can skip right to the correct album if I should want to skip, and the display will tell me which album it's in. The player ignores track ID3 information, so the filenames are irrelevant. But when playing in the computer, it is useful. Easy CD Creator also created an automatic playlist, which I also saved on the CD....great, again, for those players that recognize it. During my ill-fated trip to Worst Buy yesterday, I walked past a Sony 300-CD changer that was MP3 compatible. Just think about it--at 192k, I can get maybe 10 albums on a CD. 300 CDs? 3000 albums. What's the average length of a CD these days, and how long could this changer play continuously? (Given my luck, the music length would outlast the changer! ) I did use my player Wednesday, through my garage system. This is an old, decrepit Sony boombox with dead CD player (it was the first Sony CD boombox), dead cassette player, but a functioning radio with an Aux input. Plays through a pair of vented speakers I built with midranges and ribbon tweeters. Plugged in the Panasonic, and was able to work to continuous music. Beats the same 47 songs on the classic rock station...
A short quote from the Steve Turner - "A Hard Day's Write" book, page 191. "Paul said at the time that the song "epitomizes the downfalls of life. Just when everything is going smoothly, 'bang bang' down comes Maxwell's sliver hammer and ruins everything." Turner also writes that a couple of years later after he recorded "Instant Karma" John Lennon said that the karma theme had first been explored in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "the law of karma... the minute you do something that's not right, Maxwell's silver hammer will come down on your head".
