Playing CD-ROMs

I find that a commercially produced, musical CD-ROM that I can play on my living-room CD player and audio system I can also play on my computer's CD VLC player. But a music CD-ROM that I have burned with WAV files using Ashampoo-free on my computer, will not have a playlist that I can view with VLC or with Windows Explorer and will not play on my living-room CD player and audio system. Is that the situation, or have I done something wrong?

 

I think that home CD players and audio systems only plays CD's wtih MP3 music and not WAV nor any other music formats. Your computer does read and play WAV formats and MP3's as well as other formats.

 

To play CDs on a living room audio system has to be created differently from CDs with just music files on it. Audio CDs are split into 'tracks' and each track has one song on it. So you need to create an analogue 'Audio CD' which can be played on any non-computer audio system.
So In AShampoo Burning Studio Free, instead of selecting 'Burn Data' disc, select 'Music' to burn a CD that can be played on your audio system.
https://www.ashampoo.com/uk/gbp/psr/7110/burning-software/burning-studio-free

 

Yes, That is what I did The Ashampoo instructions are clear in the choice of burning data and burning music. The instructions I do not find clear on why I do not find a directory list of the tracks and why it will not play on my non-computer audio system.

 

I believe that MP3 format is a digital format, whereas WAV is analog. My home audio system plays digital but not analog you think? I would be surprised by that.

 

I would make a test copy of your WAV music files. Try copy/paste a few songs and convert them into MP3 and try again.

 

That seems like the appropriate test! Thanks!

 

Another difference between WAV and MP3, is that you can set metadata on the file properites of MP3 files e.g. Track name, artist, album, year etc. and Ashampoo may use this to populate the track directory, or you may have to manually populate it before burning the CD.
Audio CDs should be in uncompressed PCM stereo audio at 44100 Hz sample rate, 16-bit sample format.

 

The music CD that you create won't be in the database that VLC downloads from playlist servers.

FLAC is a good audio format that saves all the music information and it can save the metadata (artist, album, title, track number, amount of tracks, year, etc.). If your home sound system is compatible with this format use it. You will need a digital audio extraction utility that can encode into FLAC and save the metadata.

When making a music CD, always select audio CD. You can make it in Windows which will use Window media center to convert the MP3 or other audio formats into CD Audio format before burning to the CD. You can also use iTunes to make a music CD. I haven't heard of Ashampoo, so a setting in Ashampoo might not be set right.

If possible burn at a slow speed for a more reliable playback.

Both WAV and MP3 are digital audio. They are different ways how digital audio is stored. WAV is all the information of the audio. MP3 is algorithm compressed digital audio that it loses information that your mind doesn't usually hear.