MP3 CD

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An MP3 CD is a compact disc (usually a CD-R or CD-RW) that contains digital audio in the MP3 file format. Discs are burned in the Yellow Book standard data format (used for CD-ROMs), as opposed to the Red Book standard audio format (used for audio CDs).

MP3 files are supported by many modern CD players, including DVD players. In addition, some CD players are also capable of playing other formats, such as Ogg Vorbis and the proprietary Windows Media Audio and ATRAC.

Because of audio data compression, an MP3 CD does not have to spin all of the time, thereby saving battery power. The song is buffered in random-access memory, which also provides protection against skipping.

The number of songs that a disc can hold depends on how the songs are encoded. A standard audio CD (74 minutes) can hold about 18 songs, a data CD containing MP3 files can hold about 138 songs, and a data CD containing AAC files can hold about 173 songs.^[1]

ID3 tags stored in MP3 files can be displayed by some players, providing information not contained in audio CDs. Some players can search for MP3 files within directories on an MP3 CD. The sound quality of an MP3 CD is inferior to an audio CD, as the former contains transcoded audio data.