I need help with mp3 disc playback!

I don't know about Sonic software, but I just made a playlist in iTunes and told it to burn a data disc. It works just fine. One thing you might try, select the files you want to burn, right click, and select "Send To" then select your CD burner. That will use the Windows XP burning utility to make a standard data disc. That should work. Try just one file as well to make sure it's not a directory structure thing.

Also, make sure you are sending non-encrypted MP3 or WMA files, no DRM stuff. I know you said it works in your other player, but just to be sure...

 

Try a different brand of CDs. If you are using ones with the blueish bottom, try the silver-colored ones. My 2006 plays mp3 just fine, and I use silver-bottomed CDs.

 

I'd also lean on the side of bad media.

What kind of files you using?
What bit rate?
How is the file named AND tagged?

 

ttabbal, any luck with getting iTunes to convert songs you've purchased from iTunes into MP3 for your Prius?? I have other music that was already MP3 that worked just fine, but I couldn't get iTunes to do it yesterday. And of course all my new music is what I want in my car....any help would be appreciated, and save me frustration when I find time to try again (at this rate, it will be mid-March).

 

DLA is generally a bad idea if you'll be taking the disc to another system than it was burned on. Same with InCD or DirectCD, they're all the same idea.

 

iTunes is specificly designed to not allow that. Complain to the RIAA about it if you don't like it, Apple can't do anything about it. The only option is to burn them to audio CD them re-rip into MP3. But that kills the quality of the music and you lose all tagging information. There used to be a way to decrypt them, so you would get to keep the tags at least, but I don't know if it still works. Google for "Hymn".

That is the biggest reason I have never bought anything from iTunes Music Store. I own a dozen things that can play MP3, I own 2 that can play encrypted AAC (iPod and Computer, and both of those can play MP3 just fine as well). So I get my music on CD for the most part. Used CD places have decent prices most of the time. And there's always P2P and places like AllOfMP3.com as well. Personally, if you bought it from iTunes, I wouldn't hesitate to get it from another source as MP3 so you can actually use it. After all, you paid your license fee for it. But that's just my take on it.

I guess the other option is to use an iPod and play the music through the Aux-In port on your Prius. I do that with audiobooks all the time. You didn't mention an iPod, so I'm assuming you don't have one.

 

Have iTunes burn your purchased tracks to a regular audio CD (a rewritable will work if you don't want a bunch of audio CDs lying around). Anything, including iTunes, will convert an audio CD to MP3. Then build your data CD using the MP3s.

David

 

Windows XP using Sonic DLA....

DLA is generally a bad idea if you'll be taking the disc to another system than it was burned on. Same with InCD or DirectCD, they're all the same idea.

All these application use the UDF file format (also called Packet Writing), which is specifically listed as incompatible with the Prius's MP3/CD player. In fact, they're generally incompatible with nearly everything. As a general rule, if the application makes the CD drive look like a big floppy disk in your system, that's bad, and the disk is unlikely to be universally readable.

You want to use any application that will burn ISO or Joilet formatted disks. Anything that asks you what files you want to burn, and then has a big Burn button will do.

-Ken