CD Recording time question?

[George Kimery]

I am a bit confused: I record our band's 3 1/2 hour gigs on my Zoom H2 at 128 bps as an mp3 file. I used to then just plug the H2 into my dual deck CD player and was able to record all 3 1/2 hours onto a normal 750 mb. blank disc. Unfortunately, the input on the deck quit working and I can't use it anymore for that purpose. So, I have just now went to iTunes. I downloaded just fine from the H2 to the computer. BUT, when I went to burn a disc, I got a message that the file was too large to burn onto a single disc. The files were around 60 mb each, so I was nowhere near the 750 mb capacity of the disc. I divided the data up and burned 2 CD;s. Then, I took one CD and made a copy in my dual deck recorder. I then left the new, burned disc un-finalized and put in the 2nd CD thinking since the deck burned all 3 1/2 hours before, it would do it again, except now using the 2 CD's instead of the H2 connected directly. WRONG!! I got a message that there was too much data in the file to burn onto the disc. I looked at how much space was burned on the disc (the darker area on the CD) and it was about 3/8 inch wide. There were still ton's of space (physically) on the disc. Is the problem iTunes? I just don't understand why a 750 mb disc will not record 750 mb of music. Hope somebody can explain it to me and tell me if there is anyway to put a whole show on one disc, not two, as I have to do now. Thanks.

[Mitch Drumm]

It's confusing.

Here is a short explanation.

DATA discs have a capacity measured in megabytes--about 700 in your case. Running time in minutes is irrelevant.

MUSIC discs have a capacity measured in minutes of running time--about 80 in the typical case. Size in megabytes is irrelevant.

You can't go downtown and buy a retail music CD with 150 minutes of music. They top out at 80 minutes and most have a lot less.

The average 3 minute song in mp3 format might occupy 4 megabytes. Divide 700 megabytes by 4 and you get about 175. That means you could put about 175 mp3s on a DATA CD--irrespective of running time.


Divide 80 minutes by 3 minutes and you get about 27. That means you can typically burn about 27 songs on a home made MUSIC CD--irrespective of the amount of megabytes involved.

DATA CDs of music files aren't likely to play in a CD player. MUSIC CDs will.

[George Kimery]

Mitch, thanks for explaining it all to me. I looked on the CD package and it does say 80 minutes of recording time. So from now on, I will think in terms of minutes, not mb's.

[Storm Rosson]

I degress , a cd disc holds from 650 MB (old days before overburn technology) to 800 MB, typically they will say 700 MB. The firmware in the recorder farted ,prolly when the input died, now your bitrate of 128 bps has defaulted to raw or uncompressed which usually equals 20 to 60 MB's per tune ...depending on how long it is. It don't matter if it's music or data it's the same disc and will hold a finite number of data bits...Stormy....the key to the prob is bitrate ,as that denotes how much the file is compressed....>lower bitrate= smaller file size