znod

Hi All:

I replied to cobradav recently that I intended to do another MP3 project soon on another thread, but that this project was far down on my project list. Well, I got interested today and began the project. I have been determined to get some decent sounding, on my 545i, MP3s, but have been thwarted so far--to the point where I had begun to believe that it really couldn't be done. I had some decent luck today. The MP3 CD I produced took time, but it sounds pretty decent in my car.

Previously, I had no luck producing decent sounding MP3's using my new Dell Laptop (or my old one) along with MusicMatch or Windows Media Player. Yes, I know there are many better options, but I didn't want to invest the time to seek them out, etc.

Today, I tried my iBook/iTunes. I first ripped 9 CDs in AIFF format--the format an individual wanting to make an audio CD would use on a Mac. I then converted them to MP3--which took over 5.75 hours allowing error checking, etc., and using the highest quality settings. Then, I set up a play list and burned them all (95) to an MP3 CD. And, as said, the result seems to be pretty decent--having listened to only a few at this point. I can say at this point that I am very likely to be willing to listen to my results.

Everything looks good. All the song titles show up nicely on my screen. I can fast forward and move to the next track using one of my steering wheel buttons. And, of course, I can move between tracks using my joy stick. My only problem is that my songs are not arranged in folders by album.

If anyone knows how I can go about creating a folder arrangement using iTunes, then I would greatly appreciate having your insights. Obviously, I want to be able to move among folders, select one, and play its tracks while still being able to move among them.

znod

I tried burning a data CD with Roxio. The sound is like before--decent. Now, on my car, I have folders with identifiable 3 letter album "names." However once in the folders, there are no song names. Everything works fine mechanically. So, now I am down to decent sound with nice tune titles or decent sound with sloppy album names/folders and no song titles. I'll keep at it. Any thoughts?

Oh, and the data CD approach works fine on my Dell laptop--decent sound, album names/folders, and song titles. Hummm! More of Simens VDO/BMW's software "challengedness"?

znod

I have not yet figured out how to get "good quality" folders, etc., although I have one suggestion that I am going to follow up on. Unless something astounding occurs, this will be my last post here.

But, to follow up, having listened much more now, I judge the MP3 CD(s) I created to be very good. I am very surprised about how good the sound is. I don't know what to attribute the quality to. It seems like it should be just as good if I had simply ripped MP3s directly rather than using the procedure I mentioned earlier. And, I only used 192 kbps. Maybe there is something extra good about ripping in AIFF first and then converting to MP3. I wouldn't have thought to do so except that I was thinking that I would use the AIFF files for some ultimate quality audio CDs eventually. Hummm????

I have one more outcome that I like. Using the 107 song version that I burned using MusicMatch and the coverted MP3s from iTunes, I set things up so that all the 1st tracks are first, the 2nd tracks second, etc. Doing so, given the 8 CDs ripped, provides nice playback variety.

swajames

Znod, I see you're also a fellow Mac user. You could try burning your discs using Roxio's Toast Titanium. I just drag the album folder onto the Toast window (when it's set up to burn an MP3 CD, I suspect this would work equally well using ISO 9660 as the disc type). Long story short is I burned all my Oasis albums onto one MP3 CD today, using Toast I have all albums in alphabetically organized folders and all the tracks on the albums avalable in order in each folder and can browse them in this way on the CD menu in iDrive. The CD itself has a main directory of "root", and all the individual albums are available as subdirectories. Can't imagine why this wouldn't work in any other burning application, they all seem to be pretty similar feature wise but Toast is pretty good. Hope this helps!

Alec

I posted a thread about iTunes Folder organization a while back. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it may help

iTunes Organization Hiearchy Solution

znod

Thanks much. Alec. I remember your post now. It appears to be exactly what I am looking for. Was you car able to present the folders song names, etc., in an acceptable fashion? Did you make a data disk or an audio disk? As mentioned, I was able to get folders by making a data CD, but the presentation was ugly, and the somes did not have names.

Alec

Absolutely.

The format is presented on screen as Root>Artist>Album>Songs.

There was no loss of information, or any odd character artifacting.

I burned them as MP3 CD's (As I recall, there are three options under advanced burning - Audio CD/MP3 CD/Data CD).

Hope that helps.

znod

Thanks much swaja. Yes, both Macs and PCs. My 12" iBook is my travel machine. But, anyway, I did use Roxio early on to burn the MP3's produced with iTunes on my Dell Laptop and ended up with the Root/3 letters for album, and no song titles result mentioned above. And, I did it just as you say--by dragging folders to Roxio. Are your results better than the results I just mentioned? The folders names and song titles display just fine everywhere but in my car. I misspoke a few minutes ago when I mentioned to Alec that the data CD I made using iTunes was giving the results mentioned above. I forgot; the iBook data CD would not work in my car.

znod

Thanks Alec. I'll definitely try your sort and burn approach tomorrow. Seems so simple; I hope it works. I'll post back tomorrow letting both you and swaja know what happens.

swajames

It does work in the car for me (at least insofar as there is an album/folder name and all the tracks within each album/folder are named). What's not so good is there seems to be a character and file name length limitation so I'll try the burn from iTunes to see how that works out and let you know the results.