Best software to burn MP3's

[Taycron 10+ year member]

I will be getting an Alpine CDA-9831 or 9833 when they finally come out. What is the best software (like adaptec) to burn MP3's with?

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[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

I use Nero burning rom...works great for me. But any CD burning program that can burn data CD's will work. peace

NG

 

[Taycron 10+ year member]

Thanks, I wasn't sure if one was better than the other..

 

[Casserole 10+ year member]

For burning MP3's to a CD the software wont make much of a difference other than one might be slightly faster than the other.

If your talking about getting the CD data to MP3 format it's another story however. extracting programs and encoding programs make a HUGE differenence in the sound quality of an MP3. I use exact audio copy to extract from CD. If you d/l it make sure you set it up to be quality & not speed as it defeats the purpose of using EAC. then just download the newest version of lame, and set the lame.exe to be the external compression program in EAC. if your just downloading MP3's off the internet dont bother with the programs as there is nothing that you can do to "fix" the MP3's. your best bet would be an original copy of the CD, maybe a copy of the original but not a copy of a copy of a copy...

 

[Taycron 10+ year member]

Thanks, Casserole.. That's what I meant..

 

[IgnoreMe 5,000+ posts]

For burning MP3's to a CD the software wont make much of a difference other than one might be slightly faster than the other.
If your talking about getting the CD data to MP3 format it's another story however. extracting programs and encoding programs make a HUGE differenence in the sound quality of an MP3. I use exact audio copy to extract from CD. If you d/l it make sure you set it up to be quality & not speed as it defeats the purpose of using EAC. then just download the newest version of lame, and set the lame.exe to be the external compression program in EAC. if your just downloading MP3's off the internet dont bother with the programs as there is nothing that you can do to "fix" the MP3's. your best bet would be an original copy of the CD, maybe a copy of the original but not a copy of a copy of a copy...

thats what i do too. one more suggestion tho, if you use nero to burn your mp3's. first open EAC(exact audio copy) then click on decompress which is in one of the pull down menus. select all mp3's you wanna decompress and put them in their own folder. when nero burns mp3's if decompresses them to .wav files. nero doesnt have the best decompressor so even if you have perfect quality mp3's, nero can make them worse by not deompressing the best way possible and leaving clicks or pops in your music. use EAC to decompress and nero to burn.

 

[allyourblood 10+ year member]

For burning MP3's to a CD the software wont make much of a difference other than one might be slightly faster than the other.
If your talking about getting the CD data to MP3 format it's another story however. extracting programs and encoding programs make a HUGE differenence in the sound quality of an MP3. I use exact audio copy to extract from CD. If you d/l it make sure you set it up to be quality & not speed as it defeats the purpose of using EAC. then just download the newest version of lame, and set the lame.exe to be the external compression program in EAC. if your just downloading MP3's off the internet dont bother with the programs as there is nothing that you can do to "fix" the MP3's. your best bet would be an original copy of the CD, maybe a copy of the original but not a copy of a copy of a copy...

for some funky reason, EAC never wants to run on my computer, so i simply rip the wav files twice, and compare. same thing as EAC, only you do the comparison manually, and you can extract with whatever program you want. doesn't take much more time if you're on a fast computer.

abe m.

 

[Casserole 10+ year member]

EAC will always technically produce better results. a quote from maximum PC-

"the first thing you will notice about EAC is that it's slow. In fact, extracting a heavily damaged CD can take hours, especially if your hardware has poor error correction. But we're going for quality, not speed. The process is sluggish because EAC reads each block a minimum of 16 times, and of those reads, eight must match exactly. It will read and reread your disc, essentially scrubbing the CD for accurate data, until it gets uniform results."

wether it sounds accurate is of the opinion of the user of course.

i dont know of any other program that does that, if there is something more "advanced" than that then forgive my ignorance.

 

[allyourblood 10+ year member]

EAC will always technically produce better results. a quote from maximum PC-
"the first thing you will notice about EAC is that it's slow. In fact, extracting a heavily damaged CD can take hours, especially if your hardware has poor error correction. But we're going for quality, not speed. The process is sluggish because EAC reads each block a minimum of 16 times, and of those reads, eight must match exactly. It will read and reread your disc, essentially scrubbing the CD for accurate data, until it gets uniform results."

wether it sounds accurate is of the opinion of the user of course.

i dont know of any other program that does that, if there is something more "advanced" than that then forgive my ignorance.

well, when you rip a track twice and compare, you're basically doing the same thing. the difference is, you're only doing it once, and you're ripping the tracks completely, rather than ripping/comparing in realtime with EAC.

in theory, if you have a badly scratched CD, you will need to rip and compare multiple times until you end up with two files that match. i suppose a CD rip could produce the same error at the same block twice, with matching checksums, but the odds are astronomical, and you wouldn't hear the resultant variation. EAC is overkill in this respect, but gets the job done well, and automates the process nicely.

abe m.

 

[maniackilla 10+ year member]

yea, good specific info above by casserol, but in reality .... if your bumpin or listening to music loud ... thats the last thing on your mind. i even make my mp3 cds with 128k quality and it sounds fine. i remember back when i had to manually decompress mp3s to wavs and then burn at 4x ..... talk about a process lol, back then i was the only mofo in high school with custom cds .... and the only w/o a gf ... dammit ... all fixed now though //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Casserole 10+ year member]

i can hear a difference between 128k & 320k. i havent really tested it out too much though. when i first realized that quality mattered i read somewhere that if it wasnt an original CD or 320kb MP3, SQ would be worthless. guess they were wrong.

 

[allyourblood 10+ year member]

yea, good specific info above by casserol, but in reality .... if your bumpin or listening to music loud ... thats the last thing on your mind. i even make my mp3 cds with 128k quality and it sounds fine. i remember back when i had to manually decompress mp3s to wavs and then burn at 4x ..... talk about a process lol, back then i was the only mofo in high school with custom cds .... and the only w/o a gf ... dammit ... all fixed now though //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

hehe! i got my first burner years ago (it was a 2x for $339!!!), and when i'd bring burned CDs to work, my fellow employees would be very impressed. "what is that?" "will it really play like a regular CD?"... haha! glad to see it's all "fixed now"! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

abe m.

 

[allyourblood 10+ year member]

i can hear a difference between 128k & 320k. i havent really tested it out too much though. when i first realized that quality mattered i read somewhere that if it wasnt an original CD or 320kb MP3, SQ would be worthless. guess they were wrong.

my wife is perfectly content with 128s (she finds most of the songs she wants on Kazaa and the like). i find them HORRID. the aliasing on the high end, and the lack of overall punch gets to me. 192 is borderline O.K... 320 i find to be downright pleasant, but still a few steps below a CD.

my deck won't play them, but wma files have really nice response, and a 128 wma (when properly encoded) is very comparable to a 192-224k mp3. along with vqf and ogg, wma is audibly superior to mp3 at the same bitrate, yet mp3 prevails. there's some sort of social commentary in there, i suppose.

abe m.

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

hahaha, yeah i remember when i got my first CD burner. It was a BLAZIN 4x...hahaha few hundred dollar also (like allyourblood. ) had like the first easy CD creator ever...adaptec...and couldn't burn mp3s. SO, i had to d/l an mp3 to wav converter...convert mp3's to wavs (as you can guess, HUGE files for back then) and then burn my music CD's. I wold take it to school, and be like i bruned a CD...people would reply "why would you light a CD on fire" hahahaha, good stuff. I was makin $7 a pop burning custom mixes back in tha day...lol. peace

NG