MPEG/AAC

[Dudley]

If you burn a CD using the MPEG format rather than on the AAC format you can obviously get more tracks on the CD. An AAC burnt disc holds about 70mb of music whereas I have burned over 200mb of MPEG files on one CD. Can anyone tell me what the total capacity is that can be burned of MPEG files on a normal 700mb CD please? Am I right to assume it is 700mb as it says on the label? I've always wondered why it says 700mb on the CD and you can only burn about 70mb because in the past I have always used the AAC format. My car stereo will also play MPEGs.

[rojash]

Your question doesn't make sense. A CD holds around 650-700 MB of data. It doesn't matter what kind of data it is.

[Dudley]

When I burn a CD in iTunes it will only take up to around 70mb (about 20 music tracks) if they are AAC tracks and if I try to get more a message comes up to say there are too many for the disc whereas if they are MPEG tracks I can get a great many more. I just wondered why when the AAC and MPEG files are more or less the same size.

[Dudley]

I should've said I am referring to normal CD-R disks.

[rojash]

As I said, a CD holds 650 to 700 MB. It doesn't matter whether that's Megabytes of MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, JPG, or plain old Word documents. It's still 650 -700 MB.

Obviously it will hold many more word docs than MP3 files, and more MP3 files than WAV files (of the same length in time). But it's still 650-700 MB.

If you are fitting 1/10 as many AAC files onto a CD, you must be encoding them at a different bit rate - i.e. they are larger files. For the same bit rate, an AAC file should be only a few bits different in size compared to an MP3.

[Fitzer]

I'd suggest the the OP is using iTunes to burn an audio CD in which case the tracks in question are re-encoded back to CD format (can't remember what that is) and as such the disc will only take as much as a standard audio CD. I'd have though that iTunes would treat mp3 files in the same way but maybe it burns them as an mp3 disc.

[Dudley]

Thanks Fitzer, iTunes does burn them as either MP3 or AAC whichever you choose and only about 20 or so can be burned in AAC format whereas a great deal more MP3 tracks can be accommodated. However most players will not play MP3 CDs.

[ChuckFickens]

Far more players would play MP3 over AAC!

It sounds like you are burning them as a "standard" audio CD, not a data CD with audio files on it of either MP3 or AAC.

[Dudley]

That's interesting Chuck. I've never thought of burning them as data disks because I thought the reverse would be the case. i.e. the data disks would not work on my home or car stereo. I will give that a try. My home stereo ignores CDs in MPEG format. Thank you.

[ChuckFickens]

I think you are getting confused with your terminology.

AAC are compressed audio data files, basically an alternative to MP3s

A proper audio CD (such as one you'd buy from a shop) does not contain files of any type (AAC or MP3) they contain the raw audio stream which it sounds like you are burning.