Question

Compress MP3 and convert to Audio CD

Asked by: mtech

Hi
I have 21 MP3 tracks that contain only spoken text (no music etc.) that I want to convert into an Audio CD format, however, due to the size it would need 4 CDs to fit it all on. I have managed to use Blaze Media Pro (in its 15 day trial) to change the quality of these MP3 files and reduce their size to about one quarter so that they should fit onto one Audio CD. The problem is when I try to do this it wants to expand them back to full size first - using Nero for this.

To reduce the size I reduced the frequency, bitrate and went from stereo to mono. I am aware that I will lose some quality in this conversion but as it is only talking on the tracks I am not too bothered by this. Can anyone suggest a method that would help ne acheive my goals. Also as this is a one-off and non-commercial task I hope to be able to do this with shareware or free software if at all possible.

Many thanks for any help you can provide
Martin

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Asked On
2007-10-05 at 01:42:29ID22874225
Tags

mp3

,

compress

,

cd

,

fit

,

Easy CD/DA Extractor

Topics

Digital Music and Video

,

Audio Editing

,

General Multi-Media Software

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: shuboarderPosted on 2007-10-05 at 02:16:57ID: 20020434

Hi mtech,

There are 2 types of CDs that you can burn.

Audio CDs (playable in old and new CD players)
MP3 CDs (play in CD players with the MP3 logo and on your computer)

An Audio CD can only hold 74 or 80 minutes of audio.

An MP3 CD can hold MP3s and it goes by file size, rather than length of audio. Instead of 80 minutes, it holds, 700 Megabytes (MB) of music. The MP3 quality will determine how much audio will fit. In practice, it usually is 10 times more, ie: 800 minutes. The number of tracks will be dependent on how large the tracks are.

Good luck!

 

by: MeretePosted on 2007-10-05 at 05:08:27ID: 20021111

and data cd's, dont forget the good old data discs.
 if you burn these mp3 as data disc readable on pc and most dvd players the new mp3 players, stores a considerable amount of data on a 700 meg cd also retains the original format for easy copy back.
more than 6 hours of music on one cd disc

I also burn my MP3 files  to dvdr  as data discs, as a back up plays fine on dvd player and on pc.
 I can fit 4.7 gig of data which is a lot of mp3.  on one disc.

using Nero
How to burn a CD using the Nero Express Software
http://www.gsc.edu/it/sts/tutorial/Nero_how_to_with_pics.doc
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03september16.mspx
 

 

by: SheharyaarSaahilPosted on 2007-10-05 at 05:10:56ID: 20021132

try db powermusic converter to reduce the quality of the mp3s
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

it will create new copies of the mp3s with reduced quality and nero shouldn't expand them back to full size
also, if you are having xp, you can try the built-in cd burning wizard to create an audio cd

 

by: mtechPosted on 2007-10-05 at 10:43:10ID: 20023934

Thanks for the comments so far - my problem is I didn't think about it properly as the Audio CD format it is always going to be 338 minutes long and of course I can fit that amount of MP3 files easily on the CD without compressing them at all.

 

by: SheharyaarSaahilPosted on 2007-10-05 at 12:08:22ID: 20024694

sorry i didn't understand your last comment.....338 minutes long mp3s to fit on an audio cd!

 

by: mtechPosted on 2007-10-05 at 12:36:59ID: 20024908

Sorry
There are 21 MP3 files with a total play time of 338 minutes.

Does the MP3 cd just have the MP3 files copied onto it or is it created with some specific formatting

 

by: SheharyaarSaahilPosted on 2007-10-05 at 12:39:04ID: 20024921

yeps....an mp3 cd will just copy the mp3 files to the cd, the format will remain mp3, only the closing procedure of mp3 is different than the data cd, which will create a playable mp3 cd instead of a simple data one.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2007-10-05 at 12:51:17ID: 20024998

here they are
Mp3 verses audio verses data cd what are they
http://home.real.com/product/help/rp10v2_gold/en/CD_Audio_versus_Data_CD.htm

 

by: fredshovelPosted on 2007-10-06 at 00:52:46ID: 20026919

I don't think I've ever heard anyone debate mono CDs in detail. But since you can't fiddle with the audio time length of a CD I suppose it's something like this. The Red Book CD authoring takes all signals good, bad or terrible and re-encodes them to its own standard, which is 44.1Khz, 16bit x two channels. So I guess we can assume that if you've gone to all the trouble to make your singal mono that it just runs two mono tracks instead of a stereo track -- so you don't gain anything.
A very big market of the 'spoken word'  today is the 'worship industry' , and whilst it does encompass a good deal of youth who may be familiar with Mp3s and DVDs, the market also has a huge elderly following who don't have modern equipment. So if that is the case you have no alternative other than to use more than one CD -- and I'd grab the originals rather than use the downsampled mp3s to make the CDs.

 

by: mtechPosted on 2007-10-07 at 06:52:53ID: 20030013

Fredshovel
Thanks for that. It is actually a speaking book. My brother-in-law is the author and has created an MP3 version of his narrating the book. This was done in a studio in France and he was just given the two versions on disk by the studio so that he could run off his own copies. As you suggested I shall use the uncompressed versions of the MP3 files as they are higher quality to start with. In fact I will probably create an ISO for each of the disks to create new ones from. Looks like they will be offering a choice of 1 MP3 disk or 5 Audio CDs to their customers.

I will review all the help and comments here and share out the points accordingly

thanks

Martin

 

by: mtechPosted on 2007-12-21 at 08:41:52ID: 31408042

Sorry - forgot this and asked for poits to be refunded so I will share the points out now between you. Sorry I forgot
mtech

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