You can change the bit-rate using other software though. I personally use something called dBpowerAMP Music Converter from www.dbpoweramp.com for dowgrading 320 Kbps, 256 Kbps, etc.. MP3's to 192 Kbps. I'd stick to 192 Kbps which is CD-Quality. 128 Kbps is Radio quality. Not that I notice the differences but CD-Quality sounds good enough to me!

 

Just to clarify what you guys are saying, is it possible to fill up a DVD (approx 4G with MP3's and have it play through the standard CD player (assuming it has MP3 capability)?

This would be great as I can normally get about 10 albums on a standard 700mb CD and the extra capacity would be very useful.

 

Not quite, if you have Nav you can use it as a DVD drive (the Nav DVD doubles as a second CD player and MP3 disc player). If you do have Nav and burn a DVD with the MP3 files you want you should be good to go.

 

I rarely use nav, so I use DVD drive as my MP3 player and store my DVD nav in glove box. When I need nav, I just exchange the disc.
I have less than 150 favorite songs so I think it might fit on a 700MB CD with 192kbps, but I always ripped MP3 at 320kbps to maintain good sound quality as much as possible. CD does fit and DVD is the only way to go.
I do everything in iTunes. If you have MP3 in ripped with variable bit rate, you'd better off convert it to constant bit rate or BMW MP3 player will skip the song although it can read title and artist.

 

swajames, im lost are you saying both ways you would be able to use a dvd mp3 disc without a nav drive?

 

When I read his post I my understanding of what he said is NAV DVD slot will play MP3 DVDs AND CDs. CD single slot will play MP3 CDs ONLY.

This is in addition to the NAV DVD slot and single slot cd drives each able to play store bought CDs. My car does as I stated exactly.

 

Honest as I am , I've been buying all of my music through iTunes. Now I'm punished since iTunes won't let me burn the songs I bought from them to MP3 files...

Wen I try I get the following error message: "iTunes store files cannot be burned to a MP3 CD".

So... maybe I need to stop paying for my music... so I can use my own songs both in the car and home - what a novelty!

And when I try to burn files that I imported from CD to iTunes I get told that files that came from CD's cannot be burned to MP3 files either... So I guess ONLY files that are downloaded as MP3's can be burned to a MP3 CD?

 

are_62, it's a little convoluted but there is a way you can convert iTMS purchases to MP3 if you wanted to do it. You'll need to burn the purchased songs on to CD (in CD audio) by creating and burning a playlist with the songs you want to convert (up to around 80 minutes of music per CD). Once you create the audio CD you can them import the CD audio you just created back into iTunes with the encoder set to MP3, constant bit rate of say 256 Kb. It will horrify the audio purists as you're converting from lossy compression to lossy compression but in your E60 it will sound OK, and you will have MP3 versions of your iTMS purchases. Another option (at the discretion of your conscience,), is the removal of the DRM from your iTMS protected AAC files. There is software that can do that, or if you are a Mac user there's a trick involving an import of a protected AAC file into iMovie that can create an unprotected copy which you can convert to MP3.

Good luck!