Creating your own CDs

With Windows Media Player, you can burn your own audio CDs or data CDs (also known as media CDs) from the tracks stored in the Library feature. Live streams, such as radio stations, cannot be burned to CDs.

You can use the Player to create the following types of CDs:

• Audio CD. Create music CDs similar to those that you buy. The Player converts tracks into .cda files to copy them to the compact disc. Audio CDs can play in most computers and in home and car CD players that play CD-R and CD-RW discs.
• Data CD. Create CDs that contain playlists and files that are not converted and that are in the order they are displayed in the Items to Copy pane (the left side of Burn). Depending on the bit rate used to copy the files and the file types, a data CD may contain more than eight hours of music. Only certain CD players and computers can play data CDs.
• HighMAT . Create another type of data CD that plays only in CD players that can play Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. Files are converted into WMA files, which are smaller than .mp3 files. Only certain portable CD players can play Windows Media Audio files. For more information about HighMAT, see the Microsoft Web site.

To create a CD, you must have a CD burner attached to your computer and a blank CD to which you can copy tracks.

File types that can be copied to CD

You can copy the following file types from the Player to a recordable CD:

• Windows Media Audio (WMA) files with a .wma extension
• .mp3 files
• .wav files

Audio quality and compression

The compression quality that you use to rip CD tracks to your computer affects the sound quality of the track, but does not affect the length of the track when burning from your computer to a CD. The better the sound quality that you use to rip a track to your computer, the better the sound quality will be when you burn it from your computer to a CD. If you use the best quality sound to rip a track to your computer, the track uses more disk space on your computer. Other variables such as the speed of your CD drive can also affect the quality of the copy.

This section covers:

• To burn (create) your own CD
• To erase a CD-RW

Related topics

• Using CDs
• Setting device options