How Can I Convert Song from iTunes to Format that Will Play in Auto CD

[sheilae]

A real novice here...

I have iTunes with about 3000 songs on it. I got a new car yesterday and was told there was a way that you could get up to 180 songs on one CD. With a 6-CD changer in the car, this would let me get up to 1000 songs from my iTunes library onto 6 CDs for the car.

Today I tried changing my preferences in iTunes to burn the songs as "data", as a nice person who worked at Staples told me I needed to do. I used the correct 700 MB disc to burn a playlist I created of about 488 MB (136 songs). During the burning process, it appeared to be going through each song, but when the disc was finished, only 6 of the 136 songs transferred when I tried to play the disc on Windows Media Player and in the CD player in the new car.

I tried the whole process again with another playlist I created and this time nothing showed up when I tried to play it in Windows Media Player and when I took it out to the car, I got a message that said "no audio file on disc" on my car display.

Does anyone know if this is possible and if so, what I am I doing wrong?

TIA

[-pops-]

I've been checking the viability/feasibility of doing this and it is not as easy as may be thought and almost certainly not something for "a real novice".

At best, the only converters I've seen convert iTunes to MP3 - which is not what you want for your CD player as I understand it. OK, you can then convert from MP3 to WAV (the normal CD format) but the results are unlikely to be very successful.

One of the big problems is that iTunes is a compressed format (M4P or AAC) in which a lot of information (data) on the original source has been discarded to accommodate the small file size. Similarly, MP3 is a compressed format which discards more (or different) data. So, trying to create anything like the original sound is effectively impossible as there is little of it remaining.

This doesn't even consider the potential problems associated with Digital Rights Management.

I think you will be better keeping the iTunes as they are.

In regard to the message "no audio file on disc" on your car player, it may be that the car player does not recognise CDR or CDRW disks as viable playing media - this is fairly common.

[AlanHo]

One of my friends used a microphone plugged into his computer, played the iPod, recorded selected tunes onto his hard disc - then burned them to a CD. I was surprised at the quality he achieved.

Took him quite a while to do though - but he has lots of spare time until the football season starts again.

[D4\/!d]

...it is not as easy as may be thought and almost certainly not something for "a real novice".

What pops says is very true B)

...and was told there was a way that you could get up to 180 songs on one CD

Yeah, you could prolly get more than that. I've managed to put over 300 tracks onto one CD. However they would be in mp3 format - are you sure your car CD player can cope with the mp3 format? Those players are not cheap. And neither will the CD play on your normal HiFi unit indoors.

He, he, if you are still with me, LOL, one way to "record" your iTunes to your PC, is to use software such as Total Recorder which is not costly Total Recorder, or JetAudio (Basic is Free) JetAudio. But you'll need plenty of disc space on yer PC hard drive. You then burn the result as a compressed file such as mp3 (not an "audio" file) onto a CD for the car. You got a decent burner?

Check out / google for sites that deal with recording and you will see how tricky it can be. It can be done, I've made plenty of mp3 CDs for friends who have the special players in their cars. And yeah, half a dozen CDs will prolly hold yer complete music collection ;)

Have fun, :)