Maximum music on a cd-r

Calgarian · 03-16-2007, 11:57 AM

I am creating backups of my (legally owned) music CDs so I can keep them in my truck and not worry about damage or loss. They need to play on a standard automotive CD player. Is a music CD format (holding 15 to 25 songs) the best I can expect to get? I know a data disc of mp3s will hold much, much more, but it won't play. At the moment I'm storing them in Amarok and then using K3B, audio CD to burn mixes of my music.

TIA

{BBI}Nexus{BBI} · 03-16-2007, 12:25 PM

There's not a lot you can do about the amount of audio tracks you can burn to cd. Mp3's use a different compression technique to reduce the file size and retain the quality of the track. Unless you're willing to rip (copy) the audio cd's to hard drive and trim down the resulting .wav file/s so that you get some of the song/s and not the entire track you're always going to be limited to about 25 tracks per audio cd.

My advice is if possible buy a car stereo that plays mp3's, it's well worth it.

theNbomr · 03-16-2007, 12:32 PM

A little math explains audio CD capacity:
Audio CDs are digitized at 44.1E+3 samples per second, two bytes per sample, each of 2 stereo channels. That works out to 176400 bytes per second. A typical 45 minute CD, therefore, requires 45 X 60 X 176400 bytes, or about 475 MB. A normal CD capacity is 650 MB. Audio CDs were invented before digital compression techniques existed, so the audio data is stored 'as-is', taking the full uncompressed storage space. MP3 compression will typically compress to about 10:1 ratio.

--- rod.

J.W. · 03-16-2007, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Is a music CD format (holding 15 to 25 songs) the best I can expect to get?

Yes.

You might want to consider transferring your music to an iPod, then buying an adapter for your car