In between CDs and MP3s is an awkward half breed called the MP3 CD. It’s a recordable CD filled with MP3 data and playable only on special MP3 CD players. Technology allows you to store several hours’ worth of music on a single CD. But the format never really took off from the portable market. Car stereos on the other hand can't get enough of the MP3 CD. In fact if your car stereo is made in the past two to three years and has the ability to play regular CDs, there’s a good chance you can play MP3 CDs.
There’s also a fair amount of DVD players that will play them too. The quickest way to check is to just make an MP3 CD using your computer and a blank CD-R. There are a couple ways to do this. First, make sure you’ve got a computer with a CD drive that can both read and burn CDs. Most modern computers have this ability but if you're running a clunker, you may need to upgrade your drive. Now it’s possible to make an MP3 CD directly just by dragging and dropping a collection of MP3 files onto a blank CD-R and burning it as a data CD. This is the way to go if you want a CD to contain nested folders of artists and albums that you can navigate, like an MP3 player, using the controls on the device you're using to play the CD. The problem with this method is that not all MP3 CD players support nested folders and it can be painstaking to go through your collection and verify that all of the files are in the MP3 format. The simplest, most fool-proof way to make an MP3 CD is to use a jukebox program like iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp.
Since iTunes is both Mac and PC compatible, I'm going to show you how to burn an MP3 CD in iTunes. First, make a playlist and fill it will all the songs you want to burn to CD. A typical blank CD holds around 700 megabytes of music. So check on the bottom of the playlist window and make sure you haven't exceeded capacity. Next, while you're in the playlist, hit the Burn Disc button in the bottom right corner. You should see a burn settings window with options for audio CD, MP3 CD and data CD. Choose the MP3 CD option and hit burn. Now, the drawback to using iTunes instead of burning an MP3CD directly from your desktop, is that you don’t get the nested folders. The end result will have all your files thrown into one directory, just like the playlist you used to create it. The upshot is that’s it’s less complicated to create and navigation is identical to playing a regular audio CD.
That’s it, that’s how to create an MP3 CD. It’s a handy way to fit a lot of music onto a single CD. They're cheap to make, you don’t have to recharge them and unlike an iPod, it’s unlikely anyone is going to break into your car to steal them. For CNET.com, I'm Donald Bell.
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