dagarhart

Being that my box is fairly new, on the way home from DQ the other day I noticed the symbol WMA on the stereo. I got to thinking that my little creative MP3/WMA player takes both formats too. Previously I had read that the WMA format reduces the size of MP3 file almost half, so I thought I would try to convert all my music files to WMA and directly copy them to a regular CD.

Wow, it worked. Now if the average file is 3-6 MB, then lets say the average file is 5 MB. A CD would be capable of holding 140 songs. So I tried it. It works. The only thing I do not get is the title and artist’s name scrolling across the stereo.

Not sure if anyone else knew that they could put that many songs on 1 CD, but I thought I would share. So also in theory, if you could put 140 WMA songs on a CD, you should be able to put 70 MP3 songs on 1 CD (haven’t tried that yet).

Well, I thought I would share.

midtowndesi

Yeah, this is a known thing to a lotta people but worth posting. I have CDs with over 140 songs on them. Definitely beats having a CD with only 12-19 songs on it. lol..

The only thing that sucks is that the stock scion head units do NOT read CD-RW (rewritable) disks... which means if ou have FULL CD, you have burn another NEW CD in order to add a song or two...
- sh00k

thegoatlord

you only get 140 songs on a disc?

damn..

kevets

i want to have a mp3 deck that will read mp3s/folders off a DVD disc. now THAT would be sweet!

dagarhart

My numbers are conservative, but a DVD-RW full of WMA or MP3s would eliminate the need for many iPods.

killerbab

it sure would, it is as big as the biggest Ipod nano. i wish the cd decks were capable of reading DVD discs.

DarkLighter

Only 140 songs? I've got the Scion Sampler CDs 1-9 in MP3 format (about 113 songs in 9 folders, 160kbps bit rate) on a single disc no problem. It displays artitst/track info on the display also. There was over 100MB unused on the disc too. I could have gotten a lot more than 140 songs I bet.

I guess how much you can fit depends on what kind of quality you have on your original MP3s.

THE_DON

I have an '04... No WMAs for me. Sucks!

But yeah, I've gotten so used to MP3s I forgot what having a regular 12 song disc was like!

The days of the "CD changer" are long gone.

-THE DON

Generik420

How many songs you get will all depend on the bitrate your MP3/WMA's are ripped at. I personally prefer a high bitrate, so the average full album comes out around 70-100MB. Thus I get about 10 full albums on one MP3 CD. If I went with the lowest bitrate, I could probably get double that or better.

I also am waiting for the day where you can play a DVD burned with MP3s. One thing I saw that I really want in a HU is a front USB port. One that you could plug in a flashdrive full of music and the stereo would play from that. There was one at Best Buy late last year, but it was some no-name brand stereo.

DarkLighter

Yeah, I have found that 160kbps is pretty good esp. with the sound retouch that adds compression to the MP3s, sounds really good. I do prefer 192kbps or better for the home though. But then again, I'm not an audiophile either so I'm no expert.

A flash drive option on a HU would be cool, but make sure it has memory and shuffle. My old one reset when you turned the key off and only played in alpha-order. What a POS.

kewlbox

My albums ave. 40 to 70 MB.

I have a u2 cd with 13 albums on it but i never counted how many songs that are on it.

that is great that i can have a holder of 20 cds and have around 200 albums to choose from.

theomen21

scion doesn't do RW? My '05 plays CDRW's just fine.

LEDMods_net

Lol, yea, can you believe it? These "cavemen" are only able to fit 140 songs on a disc...


haha!

Blacklisted

yah mine does too
what year is your box midtowndesi?
i have the 04 6 disc changer in my 05 and it plays RW's
my 05 single disc played RW's too

midtowndesi

blacklisted - i have an 06 box, not an 06.5 ... I tried only a single CD-RW though - I may try another brand... I dont mind burning just CD-Rs tho... because I mainly use my laptop for music, etc.
- sh00k

Grateful11

I need to figure out how to convert some of my protected AAC iTunes songs to MP3 so I can burn them to MP3 disc. Seems Apple doesn't want us to have this option. There must be a way other than burning them to an Audio CD and then rip from that. That's the only decent way I've found so far. I have about 7000 songs and probably 100-200 of them are these protected files.

DarkLighter

Are you on the PC or Mac? You might try ImTOO Converter http://www.imtoo.com/wma-mp3-converter.html. It's supposed to be able to convert these. I would also make sure your settings in iTunes are set to rip into a regular MP3 format and not AAC. That way you can use your MP3s however you want to going forward. Good luck!

Big_Kokujin

dbpoweramp....thats a good converter. I have a cd that has only about 260 songs and thats with like 300+mb left