How do I burn a CD that will play in any CD player with my Mac?

Question

I have a MacBook running OS X version 10.4.11 and I want to use the "burn folder" to make a CD from music in iTunes. I open a burn folder, drag & drop music into it but when I try to burn the CD, it will only burn in MP3 format. How do I change it to "wav" format (I think that's the right format)? Any Mac gurus please advise. Thanx!

Answer 1

You cannot burn an audio CD from the Finder. You can burn a data CD with audio files but if you put it into a typical computer optical drive, it won't play. You would have to navigate to one of the files and choose to open it. Incidentally, many CD players in cars and for home audio systems can play MP3 data CDs so don't use your car CD player as a test of whether you burned a true audio CD.

For burning an audio CD you should use a playlist in iTunes. Don't worry about WAV files. They are "container" files and an old Microsoft thing similar to AVI containers for video+audio. All but the oldest Windows computers are able to play any audio CD you burn from iTunes if you compile your song collection as AIFF, WAV, or MP3 format. Older Windows systems may not be able to handle any except WAV and some types of MP3 files.



Commercially produced audio CDs don't use any computer-type sound files. They use cda data that appears to the computer as "track1", "track2", and so on. It is not really a "format" or even a file as such but just raw audio data. You can't play any cda data from a computer hard drive, only from a CD. Try dragging a track from a commercially made CD to your hard drive and then try to play it. No-go.

If your burning software is iTunes (as it is for 99 % of Mac users), you choose the file format in iTunes preferences, Advanced > Importing tab. That sets the format for how songs are imported into the iTunes Music folder. If you choose WAV, AIFF, or MP3 audio files, you can feel sure they will play in all but the older Windows CD-ROM drives. The form of the finished audio CD will appear correct to any modern CD player. Any of the three can be played on any modern computer. For that matter, even after importing, any song in the iTunes library can be "converted" to MP3 from the Advanced menu at the main menu bar. It's not a true conversion as such but a copy is generated in MP3 compression. The original file will still be there. The advantage of MP3 format is that it is much smaller than full scale audio files. You wouldn't want MP3 compression if you listen to YoYo Ma on a $50,000 home sound system.

Answer 2

Go to iTunes preferences>advanced>burning and check that the MP3 button is NOT checked - then make sure that the Files you are burning are .wav format.

You don't actually need to use the Burn Folder option, If you have a selected playlist in iTunes that is .wav format>just insert the CD and click Burn CD button at the bottom of the Window.

The Burn folder option is more for general data files and images than for music tracks.

Answer 3

go to edit, then preferenced in itunes. click the "advanced" tab, and then "burning". there you go! wav format is best, and in older car cd players, it is best to have 0 seconds gap between each song, along with a 2x or 4x burning rate.