Can't get CD burners to work properly.

[kingsX]

Hi,
For the last few days i've been trying to burn songs to a few CDs for a friend, but i'm not having any luck. For years i've been using XFBurn successfully, however for some reason every CD now comes out a little distorted.
I reinstalled XFBurn but that has made no difference.

I did try K3b, but i couldn't drag n drop the tracks. Each time i try i get this message, 'Unable to handle files due to unsupported format: You may manually convert files to wav using another application supporting the audio format and then add the wav files.'
I don't understand?
The files in question are actually mp3 files.
Also i can't find 'Preferences' in this burner, i thought maybe there was something i could change.

This is what happens when i try to use Brasero. I hit the Burn button, get a message saying it's best not to use a CD-RW disc, hit the continue button, then it turns out my blank CD. So even though it gives me the choice of using a blank CD-RW disc, when i hit continue, it won't burn the CD. What's going on?

Thanks.

 

[Brickwizard]

however for some reason every CD now comes out a little distorted.

Have you cleaned the read/write head [lense] recently?

 

[Condobloke]

G'day kingsX, Welcome to Linux.org

Xf Burn does have a good reputation.

When you reinstalled XF....where from? which distro are you running?

fwiw...

 

[JasKinasis]

With k3b, you might be missing some plugins/libraries. The "unable to handle files...." error means that k3b can’t find any libraries on your system to transcode that format.
For mp3 support, you need to install an mp3 encoder like the lame encoder, liblame.
Lame should be available to install. It’s in the repos of most Linux distributions!

 

[stan]

I'm rusty at making music CD's, and it's difficult to troubleshoot 3 different software programs at the same time. So let me ask this:

1. Are you trying to make a "true audio CD"... such that it will play in a CD music player? This would be much like a CD that you would purchase in a store or online. In my ancient past, I seem to recall that audio files needed to be in .wav format to make this kind of CD. That may not be true anymore.

Or....

2. Are you trying to just copy MP3's to a CD? Some modern CD players will probably play these, but most older CD players will not. If this is what you want, I would try to burn the disk as DATA, not as AUDIO. Making a DATA CD should be a simple drag-and-drop operation with your music files/folders.

I would discourage using CD-RW disks in either case. I don't think you can make a true audio CD with them, and even a data CD may or may not open on your friend's computer or player. But again, my experience goes back too many years. Maybe others will know if these things are still true today.

 

[kingsX]

Thanks for your replies.

I've bought some CD-R discs instead of the CD-RW and attempted to burn 3 discs with Brasero. Only 1 came out successfully. The other 2 were fine for the first 12 or so tracks then there was distortion.

I just tried using Kb3, but again i cannot drag the songs down to the burning section. I keep getting this message:
'Unable to handle the following files due to unsupported format.
You may manually convert these audio files to wave using another application supporting the audio format and then add wave files to the K3b project.'

The files i'm trying to burn are .mp3. I've changed the filter to .mp3 sound files. I don't understand why it is telling me about wav files?

As far as my cd/dvd players go, they are fine with playing .mp3 and .flac files.

 

[dos2unix]

What are you making these for? A stereo CD player?
A car CD player? A computer?

Your computer can use a normal iso9660 "data" CD or DVD to play MP3's.
'Some' (but not all) car stereo's can play MP3's.
All car stereo's play .WAV files on an 'audio' formatted CD by default.

 

[Brickwizard]

The files i'm trying to burn are .mp3. I've changed the filter to .mp3 sound files. I don't understand why it is telling me about wav files?

Did you convert the Wav & other files to MP3 first? using a sound converter application, I have burnt many sound cd's over the years using many different methods, but always coveted all the files to mp3 before I set about burning the disc

Bwiz

 

[JasKinasis]

Thanks for your replies.

I've bought some CD-R discs instead of the CD-RW and attempted to burn 3 discs with Brasero. Only 1 came out successfully. The other 2 were fine for the first 12 or so tracks then there was distortion.

I just tried using Kb3, but again i cannot drag the songs down to the burning section. I keep getting this message:
'Unable to handle the following files due to unsupported format.
You may manually convert these audio files to wave using another application supporting the audio format and then add wave files to the K3b project.'

The files i'm trying to burn are .mp3. I've changed the filter to .mp3 sound files. I don't understand why it is telling me about wav files?

As far as my cd/dvd players go, they are fine with playing .mp3 and .flac files.

Once again, as per my previous reply, k3b doesn’t work out of the box with mp3.
You need to install additional libraries to get it to work with mp3 files.
Offhand, I think you need to have lame / liblame installed….. There may be some other libs needed too.

I’ll take a more detailed look tomorrow, to see what extras I have installed with k3b.

When you burn MP3’s to an audio cd, k3b transcodes each song to lossless wav format and then burns each .wav to the disc in the audio cd format.
So perhaps it’s some wav related libraries that are missing?!

 

[Deleted member 108694]

If your player can play mp3 CDs then just burn it as data not audio - the audio function will convert the mp3 to CDDA format which is the standard audio format like a music CD you buy - if your CD player does not support MP3s, you're stuck with regular audio CDs (80 minutes CDDA format).
BUT, different players have different limitations on things like filenames, limits of sub-directories, etc. so it may take some experimenting to figure out what your MP3 CD player can and cannot play.

Generally you do not use CD-RW for audio most players cannot read CD-RW disks also slow your burn speed down to 4x not 52x this will usually get rid of that distortion issue the files are being burnt to quickly

 

[bob466]

When I create a music CD, I always use Xfburn and choose "New Data Composition" for my MP3 files and it doesn't matter if it's CD-RW or CD-R disks because all work in the Car...Stero System or Computer.

These days I just put my music on a Flash Drive (formatted to fat32) from my Music Folder and copy and paste the MP3 files to it...works great and you don't have to worry about the 700MB limit either.

 

[bob466]

Another thought, how old is your DVD burner ? Might be time to replace it, I have a spare DVD burner for my Tower I got about 3 years ago because they don't last forever and are very cheap too.