I have a non-related XP question. I am curious about burning mp3s to cd and the whole converting mp3s to wav so a cd player will be able to read the cd. When I download a mp3, do I have to convert it to WAV format and then burn it? That is what I have been told. I use WinAmp to convert it to WAV format and then I use Nero to burn. My question is basically this. It seems like once I convert it to WAV, the file is MUCH bigger. I had over 200 songs in my mp3 folder and it was about 800mgs. I had about 60 songs in my CONVERT TO WAV folder and it was over 3 gigs. What am I doing wrong and what is the proper steps to do this? Please fill me in, I'm clueless! Thanks John

mp3 files are simply wav files compressed...to burn your mp3's on a disk....they need to be uncompressed so the cd can read it and burn it to a cd....so when a mp3 gets uncompressed it changes from about 4mb's to 40mb's so if you uncompress 20 of these thats where all your hard drive space is going... That was in 1998 Now in 2002, mostly every burning software including nero can burn mp3 right to cd....this way you dont have to waste time and hard drive space converting. im positive the new nero burns right from mp3, take a try. -Colin

Colin is correct. While you don't notice it, the MP3 is still being uncompressed "on the fly". It still needs to be in WAV form for most CD players to read it. Nero is excellent. If you don't have the MP3 editor with Nero, you must get it. It allows you to edit the MP3 in any fashion you wish. When you're done, save the edited MP3 at 196 bits or higher. Anything less will be noticable. Another tool I recommend is MP3 Trim (freeware). It will "Normalize" the volume, chop off the beginning/end of the MP3 if needed, and add silence to the end/beginning if desired. http://www.logiccell.com/~mp3trim/

just a little FYI, MP3's are not just compressed wave files. They are a totaly different format. A wave file is an uncompressed audio format. An MP3 uses psyco-acoustic modeling to remove supposed unheard audio. with all the extra audio removed it is able to compress the file to an extreamly small size. Wave files are not what is burned to the audio CD. The reason wave is the most common format to convert to CD audio is because it is un-compressed. This yields 2 advantages. 1. You get the best sounding audio because there is no compression. 2. When CD burners first came out, systems were much slower and didn't have the speed needed to decode a compressed file and burn it at the same time. Michael's suggestion about MP3 Trim is a good one. MP3 Trim is the ONLY program that lets you do MP3 editing without having to decode the MP3, edit, then re-encode. Every time you decode then re-encode you will pick up extra compression artifacts and degrade the quality of the audio.