InC's tech corner: Mp3 player problem!

[InCreator]

Well, once again, I've bought some technology that I can not operate.

This time, it's...

Portable mp3 player!

Yes. Not the one with memory card or hard-disk(omgexpensiveugh), but a sexy thing that has FM radio, audio CD-playing capability, plus "plays mp3s from CD" - one.

Well, happily home, I started to burn my music onto a CD.
Furiously, 40 minutes later, I threw third wasted effort out from my window, nearly hitting a passing car.

The thing won't play! So I googled and googled... Closest thing I found was a word "finalizing CD" and Ahead Nero 5 - which I used for burning - was able to perform such action. Not that it helped any way, of course. I made also an audio CD, it played perfectly.
But no, not the mp3 one.

From manual, I see that player supports playing mp3-s even if they're scattered around folders on CD. I just burned them all into root directory of the CD. What really happens is --

* It doesn't detect any more tracks than track 1.
* It starts playing the track 1 but no sound is heard: just some very quiet "sssh" sounds very randomly, which are NOT very quietly playing song, but more like an untuned radio.

So how should I format and name the mp3s to get this thing to play them? Which program should I use? What's the trick?

Does anyone have any advice?

[HillBilly]

Have you tried talking to the people you bought it from? Apart from doing that I have no idea, except maybe trying to burn it on some other type of CD.

[RickJ]

here are a few fairly obvious ideas you have already thought of, but just in case you haven't:

1.  Make sure you close the recording session (arrrrrgh! terminology).   There should be a setting somewhere in the CD Burner Software (Nero in your case) that allows you to add more files to the CD at a later date or to "close" the CD.  Try choosing the later option and close the CD or recording session or whatever terminoloy Neo uses.

2.  I've made MP3 CDs as you describe.  MP3s in the root directory and also in sub-directories.  The MP3 players I have tried them on allow you to navigate the directory structure if you have on. 

3.  I've used the "Data CD" type of formating which it sounds like you have also done.

4.  Have you tried playing your MP3 CD's in a DVD or other MP3 players?   Perhaps the player you have is not what it advertises or is defective.   

[Ishmael]

1.Ã,  Make sure you close the recording session (arrrrrgh! terminology).Ã,  Ã, There should be a setting somewhere in the CD Burner Software (Nero in your case) that allows you to add more files to the CD at a later date or to "close" the CD.Ã,  Try choosing the later option and close the CD or recording session or whatever terminoloy Neo uses.

I belive that is "finalizing" in Nero.

[InCreator]

Closest thing I found was a word "finalizing CD" and Ahead Nero 5 - which I used for burning - was able to perform such action.

...so I tried that.
It just doesn't help. I also made one CD using Windows Media Player (version 10) but this one made non-playable mp3 disk too...

I don't have neither DVD devices nor a spare MP3 player... 
Tech like this is quite new AND expensive so there's no such way just to find this in my pile of tech junk (which occupies 90% of my room).


So either the player is defective or there's some other thing I'm missing... yet. The fact that player is top new and everything else works sooo-oo fine and sooo well makes me doubt in defectivity. It's not some used, scratched and dropped onto ground few-times player.

Of course, since audio CD-s work, I could just stick with them.... but mp3 support was the main priority on this purchase 

[Ishmael]

It happens to say "Creative" on it? ¬¬ I have some bad expriences of Creative's stuff, like cameras and wireless mice....

[InCreator]

Nope.
I was a bit aware of not some players not playing pirated/ripped MP3s,  heard somewhere that Sony mp3-players need some authorizing crap and so on.

It's manufactured by Italian company named "Trevi".

[LGM]

Nero has it's on MP3-CD wizard. Nero 6, at least..

I dunno what the problem could be. Maybe the illegal MP3 trick is the problem.

[Gilbert]

Try using standard DOS 8.3 filenames for all the files and see if it helps.

[Darth Mandarb]

See if the hardware has a button on it called 'Folder' ...

I've had an experience with an mp3/CD player before that wouldn't play mp3 directly unless you hit the folder button.  The first option for folder was /root and then it would seek through the rest of the folders.

Not that you wouldn't have tried that already ... but I figured I'd ask!

[InCreator]

No "folder" button.

But!

G00gleing again and again finally led me to a nice program "Acoustica MP3 CD Burner". Shareware, though.
But instead of usual schoolboy's "First Visual Basic Experiment" that most of these unknown-program-try & order-sites offer, this one was extremely advanced, simple and useful piece of software.

It has special "make mp3 cd" option, with very complex wizard, offering almost everything that might come handy with problems like mine. Mp3 normalizing, pre-equalizing, volume boosts, bitrate conversions, filename conversions and limiting from 8 to 64 characters, etc. Like, this program tries hard to match your CD to meet (and not cross) player's capabilities, even with file and folder limiting to some number and so on. This was pretty cool.

Which took me to a point where all I needed was to find out what's the limits of mp3 player and use the program to meet them.
Well...

What was not cool at all is that the manual which came with player only instructs at n00b level, what does this or that button do and how to turn on radio. There's absolutely not a single piece of technical specifications, such as maximum allowed bitrate or anything else like that. Not in the manual, not on the box. Nowhere!

Company homepage is also a school-project-type-spaghetti, being just one small sick flash animation and 3 music tracks. There's low-quality photo of a product and some unreadable lines of same crap they printed onto box. No specs.

Anyway, I keep trying. I configured the program to make a CD that should be playable even in 2000 years old MP3 player, maybe this will work. Of course, re-encoding all the mp3-s to super low bitrate will take 2000 years by itself...

*sigh*

EDIT, a hour and 40 minutes later:
And once again, teh day is saved! Lowering bitrate and restricting  spaces in names and long filenames did the trick! 

** jumps HAPPILY out of the window, nearly hitting the passing car

[LGM]

And what's the lesson we learned here today, folks? Don't buy cheap Italian electronics!

Glad your problem is solved.

[Gilbert]

And that's why I told you to try DOS 8.3 filenames, the DVD player at my home can play MP3 CDs, it would search automatically through folders and displayed them all at once as a long dirty list. The only restriction is the filenames MUST be in DOS 8.3 standard, no spaces, special characters, even underscores won't appear correctly (underscores CAN be used though, but they were displayed as 'O's in the list).