What is the difference between audio and recordable cd's?

Answer 1

An audio CD is the kind you buy in the store. Some store-bought albums have extra content, but you buy it because it plays the music you want to hear through your CD player of choice--in your car, in your boombox, etc. An audio CD conforms to certain specifications so that CD players from as long ago as the 1980s will be able to play them.

An MP3 CD is a CD burned as data. Unless you have a CD player that specifically boasts about its ability to play MP3 CDs, an MP3 CD will not play in your car, in your boombox, etc.

Answer 2

The difference is in the amount and type of compression, which affects the size of the files and sound quality. A store-bought CD contains music in WAV format. Music that is in MP3 format is more compressed (smaller files), and so takes up less space. A CD can normally fit a maximum of 16-20 songs in the normal WAV format (which will play in a normal CD player), whereas if the songs are in MP3 format you could fit hundreds of songs, but you would only be able to listen to the CD if the CD player is designed to play MP3s. The sound quality of MP3s is technically inferior, but the difference is indistinguishable to the average untrained ears. MP3's are common on the internet because the files are smaller, and therefore they can be downloaded and traded much more quickly. It is fairly easy to convert WAV files to MP3 format, or MP3 files to WAV format, using any number of programs, many of which are free. So many people will convert their CD's to MP3 format for use on their computer, or so they can be loaded onto a portable MP3 player etc. And if you have a CD burner, you can download MP3's from the internet, convert them to WAV, then put them on a CD which will play in your normal CD player.

CD:

CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows for storage of additional information (e.g. album name, song name, and artist) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The information is stored either in the lead-in area of the CD, where there is roughly five kilobytes of space available, or in the Subchannels R to W on the disc, which can store about 31 megabytes. The latter areas are not used by strict Red Book CDs. The text is stored in a format usable by the Interactive Text Transmission System (ITTS). ITTS is also used by Digital Audio Broadcasting or the MiniDisc. The specification was released in September 1996 and backed by Sony. Support for CD-Text is common, but not universal. Utilities exist to automatically rip CD-Text data, and insert it into CDDB or freedb.

MP3:

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group. The group was formed by several teams of engineers at Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen, Germany, AT&T-Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, Thomson-Brandt, and CCETT as well as others. It was approved as an ISO/IEC standard in 1991.

The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners, but is not considered high fidelity audio by audiophiles. An MP3 file that is created using the mid-range bit rate setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is typically about 1/10th the size of the CD file created from the original audio source. An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality. The compression works by reducing accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. This method is commonly referred to as perceptual coding. It internally provides a representation of sound within a short term time/frequency analysis window, by using psychoacoustic models to discard or reduce precision of components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner. This is relatively similar to the principles used by JPEG, an image compression format.

Answer 3

A CD (compact disk) is a storage medium, like a floppy disk, which holds information and an MP3 is a file format... special kind of audio file. The standard music CD from the store, has it's music in a audio format known as AIFF. Both audio formats, AIFF and MP3 can be burned onto a CD, but not all CD players will play MP3 formated CDs. A CD will hold more MP3s than it will AIFF songs.

Answer 4

Audio CD's have digital encryption encoding that is recognised by some audio CD recording equipment. The equipment will only recognise audio CD's and allow recordings to take place. Generally they are more expensive. That way money is paid to the artists for performing rights

Answer 5

An mp3 player is easier on the machine memory wise.

Mp3 files are much more compact, that is how ipods can hold thousands of songs, and CD's can only hold 15-20.

Mp3 players are now replacing CD players, which will soon be obselete, like walkmans.

Answer 6

The difference is in the amount and type of compression, which affects the size of the files and sound quality. A store-bought CD contains music in WAV format. Music that is in MP3 format is more compressed (smaller files), and so takes up less space. A CD can normally fit a maximum of 16-20 songs in the normal WAV format (which will play in a normal CD player), whereas if the songs are in MP3 format you could fit hundreds of songs, but you would only be able to listen to the CD if the CD player is designed to play MP3s. The sound quality of MP3s is technically inferior, but the difference is indistinquishable to the average untrained ears. MP3's are common on the internet because the files are smaller, and therefore they can be downloaded and traded much more quickly. It is fairly easy to convert WAV files to MP3 format, or MP3 files to WAV format, using any number of programs, many of which are free. So many people will convert their CD's to MP3 format for use on their computer, or so they can be loaded onto a portable MP3 player etc. And if you have a CD burner, you can download MP3's from the internet, convert them to WAV, then put them on a CD which will play in your normal CD player.

Answer 7

A CD is used for storage and a MP3 is a audio format.

Answer 8

Audio CDs are cdr disks that have audio tracks transferred onto them.

If you use cdrw disks they may not work on your audio equipment