I hope someone sees this post - not everybody comes down here to the General Forum....

Anyway, I'd like to know about making your own CD's. When you do so, do you use your recorded files in wav format or mp3? So far, I used only my mp3 recordings to burn CD's but I've got a new batch of recordings to make for my dad and wonder if I should change things. Probably wav files would sound better, but the big question is: How many minutes or tracks of wav files can fit on a CD? Also, when you pop a commercially recorded CD in your computer, can you tell if it is wav files or mp3?

When I've made cds from my recordings, I've used Audacity to convert the raw .wav files from my Edirol to 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz mp3s, then burnt the cds with an mp3 to cd converter. That seems to be perfectly adequate.

When you put a cd in a Windows computer, the files that you see aren't actually the music files, they are shortcuts to the music files which are not stored in either wav or mp3 but in the format used by cd players.

I've never tried converting to 320 kbps before. Thanks, Andrew, I'll try that now. I'm still wondering how many tracks I will be able to get onto a cd. I know it must be a lot less if I use wav files. Must also be less if using 320 versus 190 kbps. Guess I won't know until I fool around with all this - maybe in another day or so. Currently, I'm trying out several different video-editing programs. Sort of feel like my head is about to pop off from trying to keep straight so much technological stuff...

With mp3s the limit should be determined by total track time, not file sizes or number of tracks. Usually you'll get about 74 mins. If you do it straight from wavs, possibly not as much depending on the sample rate. A cd holds about 700Mb of data if used purely as a data repository, and I think (from memory, so I can't be sure) that equates to about 50 mins of wav at 320kbps.

Oh, that's really neat; I didn't know that! I assumed it depended on the kind of file. So I can put about 74 minutes of wav files on my cd's. That's great news! (and sort of bad too because I've deleted most of my wav files.... )