MP3 disc burning

[Retro Pedro]

Hi all - Bought a Sony MP3 player for the car on ebay, expecting that I could copy my music to a large capacity USB memory stick and plug that into the player. Not so, it's a CD MP3 (not sellers fault, mine for not checking).
I do understand that MP3 has a lower storage requirement than audio, therefore you can get alot more tracks on a MP3 CD than audio CD
My questions are, can you use ordinary CD's to burn to or do you have to get special ones for MP3?
I store my music in iTunes on PC, would I need any additional software to burn in MP3 to the CD?
Unfortunately no literature or instructions came with the Sony.
Cheers for any advice

[Alchamist]

Any recordable CD should be fine with the stereo. You might even get away with a CD-RW, but to be honest it's probably not worth the hassle.

If you are using iTunes to download music, remember that they do not provide them in MP3 format (as there is no way to add DRM to them), so those will not normally play on a basic MP3 stereo.

If you are running Windows XP or higher, then CD burning software is included in the Operating System, and you can drag 'n drop files to the CD as you would any other folder, then burn the CD. If you put the MP3's into folders (like the way iTunes does) then the stereo should treat those folders as "Albums", to make finding the music easier (considering you can get upwards of 200 mp3's on a disk, depending on size).

Hope that helps

[Retro Pedro]

Thanks Jay
That will get me going.
I'm running Windows XP, so if I'm getting it right, I can create another folder to store MP3 format music in much the same way as I do with my iTunes library and then drag and drop onto the CD that will get burnt to in MP3 format.
I haven't downloaded from iTunes or from any other media (legal or ill-legal - not because I don't want to, just haven't got round to cracking it - been told by the techy guy at work but he loses me when starts talking about add ons and then he runs out of patience telling me, guess thats a nearly 55 year old trying to run at the same speed as a 35 year old on the IT front, but thats another story). I've only copied existing CD's to create my library.
Again, thanks for advice and I'll give it a go.
Peter

P.S. - Is there a way I can change my log in name on the forum and still retain all the existing links to my original name.
When I first joined I used my real name which I think is a bit formal - but would like to enter into the spirit a bit and changed it to Retro Pedro if available or is an option.

[Alchamist]

Hi Peter,

If you ripped the CD's using iTunes, then it's quite possible that it's not in MP3 format - though I cannot confirm as I avoid iTunes like the plague!

Best thing to do is to try it - CD-R's are cheap enough these days to be able to potentially turn one into a frisbee (or place mat ) If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll point you to some ripping software that will allow to pull them off in MP3 format.

As for the username ... PM on it's way