Problems burning a cd

[sdavid]

I am having problems burning an entire album I have downloaded. It is 43K but when I try to burn it I only get about half of it. Why?

[murasame]

Are you trying to burn it into a music CD or into an mp3 CD?

[sdavid]

music cd.

[Lord of the Rings]

U obviously mean 43 MB right? 43 KB is a bit small for an entire album or even 1 song for that matter. What burner app R U using? What do U mean U only get about half of it? Have U burnt the cd & listened back to it & 2nd half is blank or something? Did U 1st try to listen to it via an mp3 player on your computer & see whether this 2nd half plays at all?

[murasame]

Well then, it's probably a space problem. Let me explain:
Songs are stored into your PC's memory in a compressed format (mst likely), like .mp3 and .wma. To make a CD that will be read by any CD player, you must first decompress it, which results in a much larger file than the one that you have in your comp. You see where I'm getting at? Say you have a 43MB .mp3 file that you want to put on CD. Now, unless it's an .mp3 CD (in which case the 43MB file size applies since the file remains unchanged) then the file while be decompressed into a very large file (probably .wav or .aif). This will in turn cause the CD to fill much quicker than you thought.
Want further proof? Take a CD and look at it's, uh, 'underbelly' .Try to write a CD (music CD, not .mp3) out of that album file you got. Half of the album will get on that CD. Take the CD out of your comp and look at it's readable surface (readable by the laser lens, not you). You should be able to see a darker surface which represents the amount of data that has been burned on the CD. If that surface is big enough for it's limit to be real close to the CD's edge, then that means that the CD is full and all I said earlier is true. If it's not, then ignore whatever else I wrote up till now and wait for another reply.

[sdavid]

Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm trying to copy "Dark side of the moon", and since all the songs run together you can't really record them one at a time.

The whole 43mb is on the computer, I can listen to it all. When I drag the album to cd creator, only 20mb goes.

[Lord of the Rings]

What size does it say when u check the file's properties? Also, set CD Creator for data burn & drag/add the file to it. What size does it say?

If you have an audio editor, why don't u edit the tune as wav. I think CD Creator should itself be able to export the file as wav. Or alternatively if you have an mp3 player that can convert it. For free audio editors check here (Audacity sounds reasonable & can convert several mp3 types to wav.) http://www.nonags.com/nonags/auedit.html I don't know about shoutcast or how it works. I wonder if this mp3 is an mp3 format that Roxio CD Creator doesn't totally understand. I had that problem with Roxio Toast (same company, just different platform) for a single 3 hr concert mp3 (even iTunes couldn't play it!) & had to convert it to aiff using an mp3 converter. I then used an audio editor (Peak) to separate the tunes & clean it up. Oh if u choose Audacity it may need some free xtras for encoding from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/windows.php

[murasame]

Hey Dave, did you try the underbelly thingy? What does the 20M CD look like (can you see the surface I'm talking about?)?

[Lord of the Rings]

Oh just an update, I tried out the mac version Audacity & it could open even that very large mp3 I mentioned earlier that neither iTunes/another could open (I had to use a 3rd one back then.) Though it did take a very long time due to the size of my mp3 (3hr concert)! You also have edit functions which are fine. Overall the app is somewhat slow. But it's what will solve your problem. It will also utilise vst plug-ins if u have any (need to 1st dwnld an xtra from the last link I gave to allow vst use.) And it's Free!