Which file format is needed to play music in a CD player

• Jul 25, 2016 - 13:10

Last night I was trying to burn several scores onto a CD so I could listen to them in my room. I am using windows 10. At first I exported the scores as .mid but when I burned them on the CD, it would not play in my CD player. So then I went back and tried .WAV but when I tried to burn it, the computer kept saying that "the files ready to be burned are subfiles of the original files" or something like that. Then it gave the option to either skip or cancel. So I clicked on skip, and that little download bar thing popped up but then disappeared after a second or two. I tried again but it did the same thing. So then I found another button that said "finish burning" and I clicked on it. This time it burned onto the CD, but when I tried to play it in my CD player, it still didn't play anything. Am I using the wrong file type or is it something else? Please help


Comments

You can use Windows Media Player to burn audio CD's.
Be sure you choose 'Audio CD' as the burn option (as opposed to 'Data CD'). This way, the burned CD will be playable on most players.

See instructions here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15062/windows-burn-rip-cds
Regards.

P.S...
.mid files are essentially text files containing a set of instructions for a synthesizer to perform the music. They can be burned as data files, not audio - so they're *not* playable on a basic CD player.

WAV is the correct format (MIDI is not an audio format at all). However, to make sure you're making a playable CD and not just copying the files to it, you need to specify that you're creating an audio CD and not a data CD before burning. According to http://askabouttech.com/windows-10-how-to-burn-audio-cd/, on Windows this is under a "Burn Options" icon in the Windows Media Player toolbar. Once you've set it to burn an audio CD, start with a new blank disk and try again.

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