downloading stuff onto a CD

[Ben's mum]

I'm struggling - not very bright on a computer at the best of times.  For my OU course I can download some interviews and things onto a cd to listen to in my own time. I bought some from Tesco that say CD R on them.  I've tried to download the info but its just not happening 

am I using the right sort of disc to be able to play it in a CD player, or will it only play on a computer.?
Do you have any tips about how to download spoken word stuff ?

thank you

Bens mum

[Annette]

Dunno. But my first instinct would be to use an ipod for that job anyway.

Do you know if you have a writeable CD or DVD drive? What operating system have you got (Windows, XP or Vista whatever)


All dictated by OH.

Hope that's a start for you anyway.

[Jeeves]

Now, I'm not the best at this stuff either, but I do know that some audio players will not play stuff that has been out on a DVD/CD by a computer.  I found this when I downloaded some music to play in the car, and it worked on the computer and also in the car, but would not work on the stereo in the lounge.

Try listening to it in a variety of machines - it may be that the one you are using isn't compatible.  You may end up sitting in the car to listen to your work!!

[dazla]

Hi Bens mum

What are the file extensions for the audio files. If they are .mp3 then you might need to convert them to play on a standard cd player.

If you put an audio cd into a pc and look at the files you will see that they have a cdda extension. These are uncompressed files and are normally converted to mp3 or some other compression system such as wma in order to reduce their size when saving them to a pc.

The audio tacks that you have downloaded are very likely to be compressed so you will need software to decompress them when you burn them to disk. Windows media player can do this but i prefer a free program called cd burner pro - similar to norton but way better

Your cdr s should be fine- only reallllllllly old cd players need the cd audio disks