Is it Possible to Burn Songs to an MP3 CD in Playlist Order? (Not Alphabetically)

geekily

Hi there,
My boyfriend has a nifty new head unit in his car that allows him to play mp3-cds, so I've started making him some. However, in order for the files to be in the order I want them to be, I have to rename them all to have a number in front (1, 2, 3...) so that they don't all show up in alphabetical order. I have tried lots of different programs, most of which automatically sort the files alphabetically... even the ones that leave the files in the order I place them won't actually burn them that way. Is there any way to have the files play in the right order without having to put numbers in front of each one? I tried Music Playlist Utility (http://mpu.soft-ware.de/) which claims to do that, but it didn't work at all. Please help! Renaming all these files becomes quite time-consuming.

Thanks so much for any advice you may be able to give me! I appreciate it greatly!

TimC

Welcome to CD Freaks.

Yes. CDBurnerXP Pro (free) should do this OK for you. You have to find the right option but it's there.

You can have a playlist , if the player handles that, or it will automatically rename them to give you the selected sequence.

geekily

Thanks! Wow, I feel stupid - I installed all these programs to try to get this to work, and CDBurnerXP Pro 3 is the one I had all along. I've been searching through the program, though, and I can't find that option anywhere. Where is it?

Thanks again!

TimC

I apologise. I actually meant to refer to Acoustica MP3 CD burner, not CDBurnerXP Pro.

That's the one with playlists or auto renaming of tracks.

CBMC

Just use 001, 002, 003, etc. I don't know if that is what you were trying to avoid doing?

geekily

Wow, this program looks excellent! I found the setting you told me about, but the only problem I'm running into, though, is that when I try to burn the cd, I get the error that "C:\Documents and Settings\Heather\Local Settings\Temp\acoustica_burner\D0\filename.mp3" is invalid or does not exist". I looked in the folder and sure enough, it doesn't exist... but how, then, do I get it to rename the songs so that they do exist?

Thank you so much for your help!

TimC

Well it worked OK for me when I just tried it now. Maybe the file it got to was invalid in some way.

geekily

I don't know what I did different, but it's working now. Thanks for the great recommendation!

BeardedKirklander

I just put numbers in front of the track name and burn it that way. So regardless of what I burn with and how it may sort or auto-sort, they have a good chance of being burned in the order I want.

01 - My fave song
02 - Next fave song
03 - Sort of an ok song
04 - My fave song repeated cause I like it
05 - Song to impress the babes with
06 - Has to be a Barry White song to get 'em in the mood
07 - A 20 min non-involved instrumental to keep 'em from being distracted from the fun
08 - A cool down song designed to change the mood
09 - The next song that gets them thinking about buying me a pizza for dinner

You get the idea...

geekily

Hahah, yeah, that works, too. It's just time-consuming. I love this Acoustica thing.

BeardedKirklander

Does Acoustica do batch EQ adjustments? Or do you have to do each file individually? Also, when it does do EQ, does it actually alter the sound file permanently or just adjust for playback within the app?

Thanks

geekily

Yeah, it'll do the whole CD at once. I'm pretty sure the changes aren't permanent, though, just for the temp files. Could be wrong, though.

BeardedKirklander

Okay. Thanks.

Sometimes when I record audio book tapes to disk, the files are muffled so I use Sound Forge to manually set the EQ for each one as a WAV file, and then encode them to MP3 so it's permanent. Was hoping maybe that there was a way to do it in batch.

Enjoy the app - it looks pretty cool.

jeff53404

A CDF member recommended MP3gain and it does allow adjustments to be made in batch. Have a look.

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

BeardedKirklander

I use that all the time. It works great for volume, but I don't believe it does EQ.

Thanks though.