Re: portable CD players

[rhkramer]

On Monday, November 12, 2018 08:35:23 AM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 10:47:11AM -0500, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > IIRC, a CD holds a maximum of 80 minutes .wav sound.  (Around 800MB,
> > about 1 MB per minute).  A 4 GB holds way more than that in .mp3,
> > although a figure doesn't come to mind at the moment -- maybe more on
> > the order of 40 hours of sound.  And, it is reprogrammable.
> 
> For starters, your "1 MB per minute" math is off.  Even using the numbers
> you showed, that's 10 MB per minute.

Oops, yes, you are correct  (sometimes I write before I think ;-)

And thanks for all the additional good information that you provided!

Re: portable CD players

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 10:47:11AM -0500, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> IIRC, a CD holds a maximum of 80 minutes .wav sound.  (Around 800MB, about 1 
> MB per minute).  A 4 GB holds way more than that in .mp3, although a figure 
> doesn't come to mind at the moment -- maybe more on the order of 40 hours of 
> sound.  And, it is reprogrammable.

For starters, your "1 MB per minute" math is off.  Even using the numbers
you showed, that's 10 MB per minute.

128 kbps MP3 (a de facto standard encoding bit rate from many years ago)
is an 8:1 compression over regular CD-quality audio.  This one is about
"a meg a minute".  At least as a first-order approximation.

So, a gigabyte of 128 kbps MP3 audio data is about a thousand megs,
therefore about a thousand minutes, or 17 hours.  At 4 GB, you're looking
at about 67 hours.

Of course, not all audio data is compressed at a bit rate of 128 kbps.
In more recent years, with storage and bandwith prices dropping, people
have started using much higher bit rates on music files.  It's not
at all uncommon to see MP3 encoded at 256 kbps or higher these days.
That drops you to 33 hours for a 4 GB storage device.

If your music library contains a mixture of songs encoded at varying
bit rates, you'll probably be somewhere in between these values.

And not all audio data is music.  Human speech can be compressed at a
much lower bit rate than music.  A quick google search tells me that
64 kbps is common for audio books.  That bumps you up to 133 hours, if
you're storing MP3 audio books.  Possibly more, since 64 kbps seems to be
an upper bound on speech encoding.

There are also dedicated speech encoding algorithms.  Speex was one of
them, but I believe it never really caught on.  I think it was obsoleted
by the Opus codec, which is starting to catch on a little bit.

According to 
the recommended Opus bitrate for audio books is 24 kbps for mono, or
32 kbps for stereo.

The problem with Opus is that a hardware player may not support it.
The most recent hardware player that I've got (several years old) does
not support Opus, but it does support Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA and other
formats that have been around for decades.

Re: portable CD players

[Ben Oliver]

On 18-11-10 06:11:34, mick crane wrote:

Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?
On the PC I
"play stories.m3u"
where "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org

If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?
Are they ATRAC or something ?
Any particular format needed ?
Any recommendations for CD player ?

mick


FWIW There are CD players out there that support MP3, if you really have 
to go with CD.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B019J4N5DQ/

You can put MP3s directly onto the disc and play them. This allows you 
to fit a lot more music on.


However, it's less versatile because _every_ CD player you want to use 
with the disc also has to support MP3. Just something to consider.


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: portable CD players

[rhkramer]

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 09:54:17 AM mick crane wrote:
> It has to be CD as a person doesn't have access to a computer or
> anything so I thought about sending them a cd player and story discs.

For the price of an inexpensive (less than $5) solid state MP3 player, a small 
SD card (again, I'm guessing you can get a 4GB for around $5), and, if 
necessary, a USB charger and a set of headphones and earbuds, you'd be ahead 
of a Discman and CDs.

IIRC, a CD holds a maximum of 80 minutes .wav sound.  (Around 800MB, about 1 
MB per minute).  A 4 GB holds way more than that in .mp3, although a figure 
doesn't come to mind at the moment -- maybe more on the order of 40 hours of 
sound.  And, it is reprogrammable.

(Some CDs are reprogrammable (erasable and reusable), but, ime, they typically 
don't work in standard CD players.)

Re: portable CD players

[David Wright]

On Sat 10 Nov 2018 at 07:41:21 (-0500), rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, November 10, 2018 06:49:02 AM Brad Rogers wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 07:15:26 +
> > mick crane  wrote:
> > 
> > >that's what I wondered and what exactly is an "audio disc" ?
> > >Can I make one from mp3 ?
> > 
> > Certainly you can, but why bother?  Just buy an mp3 player.  They tend
> > to be cheaper, have no moving mechanical parts and therefore less prone
> > to problems.
> 
> +1
> 
> And, on ebay, you can find some really inexpensive ones -- I think the last 
> one 
> I bought (as a spare, haven't used it yet) was less than $5 (but a long 
> delivery time from the far east).
> 
> Some have built in memory (I'm using one with 1 GB built in), more modern 
> (cheap) ones use SD cards (or at least, the one I bought does).  And the 
> cheap 
> ones don't have speakers -- they expect you to use headphones or ear thingies.
> 
> Pay attention to batteries, some have them built-in (typically rechargable, 
> but not (easily) replaceable).

I had this problem when my old portable CD player had become
unreliable and the Philips GoGear mp3 player had been discontinued.
(Some of the cheap mp3 players couldn't handle multi-track music
pieces (classical) in a sane way.)

My solution was to buy an unlocked phone, a Galaxy Y. As an upgrade,
it cost £25 (2013 flash sale, normally £40) though I've never actually
used it regularly as a phone.

It has an FM radio as well as being able to play audio and video files
in a variety of formats. Storage is on a micro SD card which can be
loaded from a computer through USB (cable, or by removing the card
from the phone) or via Bluetooth.

Of course, it has all the other facilities one would expect: stills
and video camera, sound recorder (mono), WiFi (hence Internet browser),
PDF viewer, audio output via 3.5mm etc. and apps, I suppose. The
battery is replaceable, and these power bank thingies can be used to
extend portable use in the field.

Cheers,
David.

Re: portable CD players

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

mick crane wrote.
> It has to be CD as a person doesn't have access to a computer or anything so
> I thought about sending them a cd player and story discs.

Then let's achieve it.
If the GUI programs are defiant then we can force success by command line.



For testing burn programs before buying the player you could let them make
a CD from your intended input files and let cdrskin inspect it. The
following run also creates a binary file cdtext.dat as wodim and cdrecord
would do too:

  $ cdrskin dev=/dev/sr0 -vvv -toc
  ...
  ... quite a lot of messages because of -vvv which we need to see the
  CD-TEXT ...
  ...
  first: 1 last 3
  track:   1 lba: 0 (0) 00:02:00 adr: 1 control: 0 mode: 0
  track:   2 lba:  2682 (10728) 00:37:57 adr: 1 control: 0 mode: 0
  track:   3 lba:  5364 (21456) 01:13:39 adr: 1 control: 0 mode: 0
  track:lout lba:  8046 (32184) 01:49:21 adr: 1 control: 0 mode: -1
  CD-TEXT data from CD Lead-in:
 0 : 80 00 00 00  J  o  y  f  u  l N  i  g  h  t f0 f7
 1 : 80 00 01 0c  s 00  S  o  n  g o  f J  o 43 1c
 2 : 80 01 02 0a  y 00  H  u  m  p  t  y D  u  m 43 f9
 3 : 80 02 03 0a  p  t  y 00  M  e  e O  w  w  w 24 72
 4 : 80 03 04 08  w 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6e af
 5 : 81 00 05 00  U  n  i  t  e  d C  a  t O 30 2c
 6 : 81 00 06 0c  r  c  h  e  s  t  r  a 00  F  e  l 76 f7
 7 : 81 01 07 03  i  x a  n  d T  h  e P ee 0f
 8 : 81 01 08 0f  u  r  r  s 00  C  a  t  w  a  l  k 6a 14
 9 : 81 02 09 07 B  e  a  u  t  i  e  s 00  M  i 97 04
10 : 81 03 0a 02  a K  i  t  t  e  n 00 00 00 00 b2 c3
11 : 82 00 0b 00  V  a  r  i  o  u  s S  o  n  g 7a b8
12 : 82 00 0c 0c  w  r  i  t  e  r  s 00  F  r  i  e b9 0d
13 : 82 01 0d 04  d  r  i  c  h S  c  h  i  l  l e1 1c
14 : 82 01 0e 0f  e  r 00  M  o  t  h  e  r G  o c6 0a
15 : 82 02 0f 09  o  s  e 00  M  i  a K  i  t  t 60 ff
16 : 82 03 10 08  e  n 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 99 fb
17 : 83 00 11 00  V  a  r  i  o  u  s C  o  m  p 25 e0
18 : 83 00 12 0c  o  s  e  r  s 00  L  u  d  w  i  g e2 a2
19 : 83 01 13 06 v  a  n B  e  e  t  h  o  v a1 38
20 : 83 01 14 0f  e  n 00  u  n  k  n  o  w  n 00  M d5 e5
21 : 83 03 15 01  i  a K  i  t  t  e  n 00 00 00 15 2a
22 : 84 00 16 00  T  o  m C  a  t 00  T  o  m7b 23
23 : 84 01 17 04  C  a  t 00 09 00  M  i  a K  i bf 92
24 : 84 03 18 06  t  t  e  n 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 57 0a
25 : 85 00 19 00  F  o  r a  l  l o  u  r1f 58
26 : 85 00 1a 0c  f  a  n  s 00  F  r  i  t  z a 9e 0c
27 : 85 01 1b 07  n  d L  o  u  i  e w  e  r 90 f8
28 : 85 01 1c 0f  e p  u  n  k  s 00  P  l  u  c 24 fa
29 : 85 02 1d 04  k t  h  e g  o  o  s  e 00 20 a0
30 : 85 03 1e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1a a6
31 : 86 00 1f 00  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0 00 00 1e 98
32 : 87 00 20 00 00 05  F  e  l  i  n  e c  l  a 23 c0
33 : 87 00 21 0a  s  s  i  c m  u  s  i  c 00 00 be 33
34 : 8d 00 22 00  T  h  i  s i  s n  o  t2a c8
35 : 8d 00 23 0c  t  o b  e s  h  o  w  ndc 4f
36 : 8d 00 24 0f  b  y C  D p  l  a  y  e  r d3 df
37 : 8d 00 25 0f  s 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 95 8b
38 : 8e 00 26 00  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  1  2 e4 9a
39 : 8e 00 27 0c  3 00  X  Y  B  L  G  1  1  0  1  2 b6 8f
40 : 8e 01 28 0a  3  4 00  X  Y  B  L  G  1  1  0  0 0b e0
41 : 8e 02 29 09  0  0  5 00  X  Y  B  L  G  1  1  0 43 ec
42 : 8e 03 2a 08  0  0  0  6 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 eb 0f
43 : 8f 00 2b 00 00 01 03 03 05 06 06 05 03 06 01 02 4c 73
44 : 8f 01 2c 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 05 03 2d 00 00 00 c9 b4
45 : 8f 02 2d 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6a 24
  cdrskin: NOTE : Wrote header and 828 CD-TEXT bytes to file 'cdtext.dat'

"control: 0 mode: 0" means that it is a stereo audio track with no
explicit permission to make a binary copy. With this permission it would
be "control: 2 mode: 0""
A data track would bear "control:" values 4, 5, 6, or 7.

The CD-TEXT display shows the text packs of the CD. The first byte is the
pack type. The title of the CD and the titles of the tracks bear type 80.
(Others are for performers (81), song writers (82), composers (83),
 arrangers (84), messages (85), disc id (86), genre id (87),
 a hidden remark not visible on players (8d), artwork registration codes
 "UPC/EAN" aka "Media Catalog Number" and "ISRC" (8e). 8f is for internal
 housekeeping of CD-TEXT.)

Most important for the player's menu will be the track titles.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: portable CD players

[Brad Rogers]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 14:54:17 +
mick crane  wrote:

Hello mick,

>It has to be CD as a person doesn't have access to a computer or 

If we'd known that at the outset.
Still, no matter.  We're on track now.

As Thomas has said, there are various options when it comes to creating
audio CDs.  Hopefully, his mail has you going in the right direction.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Let them go, set them free, let them be who they wanna be
Lovers Of Outrage - Penetration


pgpK5aLKO63KQ.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: portable CD players

[mick crane]

On 2018-11-10 12:11, songbird wrote:

mick crane wrote:

Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?
On the PC I
"play stories.m3u"
where "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org

If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?
Are they ATRAC or something ?
Any particular format needed ?
Any recommendations for CD player ?


  you will likely do much better getting a solid state
device of some kind instead of a CD player.



I've had a solid state thing and I've got a (smart)phone
It has to be CD as a person doesn't have access to a computer or 
anything so I thought about sending them a cd player and story discs.




--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: portable CD players

[rhkramer]

On Saturday, November 10, 2018 06:49:02 AM Brad Rogers wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 07:15:26 +
> mick crane  wrote:
> 
> Hello mick,
> 
> >that's what I wondered and what exactly is an "audio disc" ?
> >Can I make one from mp3 ?
> 
> Certainly you can, but why bother?  Just buy an mp3 player.  They tend
> to be cheaper, have no moving mechanical parts and therefore less prone
> to problems.

+1

And, on ebay, you can find some really inexpensive ones -- I think the last one 
I bought (as a spare, haven't used it yet) was less than $5 (but a long 
delivery time from the far east).

Some have built in memory (I'm using one with 1 GB built in), more modern 
(cheap) ones use SD cards (or at least, the one I bought does).  And the cheap 
ones don't have speakers -- they expect you to use headphones or ear thingies.

Pay attention to batteries, some have them built-in (typically rechargable, 
but not (easily) replaceable).

Re: portable CD players

[songbird]

mick crane wrote:
> Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?
> On the PC I
> "play stories.m3u"
> where "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org
>
> If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?
> Are they ATRAC or something ?
> Any particular format needed ?
> Any recommendations for CD player ?

  you will likely do much better getting a solid state
device of some kind instead of a CD player.

  i don't have an MP3 player type device myself on
this machine but i do rip all of my CD's asap when
i get them so that they aren't in danger of being
scratched or otherwise damaged (dropped by accident).

  as soon as i figure out how to get the right device
to transmit to the stereo receiver in the other room
i'm going to replace the 300 disc cd player as it is
starting to have issues (it's been used thousands of
hours by now since we bought it).


  songbird

Re: portable CD players

[Brad Rogers]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 07:15:26 +
mick crane  wrote:

Hello mick,

>that's what I wondered and what exactly is an "audio disc" ?
>Can I make one from mp3 ?

Certainly you can, but why bother?  Just buy an mp3 player.  They tend
to be cheaper, have no moving mechanical parts and therefore less prone
to problems.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
I'm spending all my money and it's going up my nose
Teenage Depression - Eddie & The Hot Rods


pgpo7uu9N8aso.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: portable CD players

[mick crane]

On 2018-11-10 08:16, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

mick crane wrote:

> Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?


Only from times when music CDs were to be bought in real shops.



> "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org
> If I put them on a CD will Discman play them


Brad Rogers wrote:
Portable CD players of that type are usually audio CD players, they 
won't

play .mp3, .ogg, or any other file type, for that matter.


The old non-computer CD drives expect CD-DA sectors, which hold 2352 
bytes
each (in contrast to 2048 bytes with CD-ROM). The data format of CD-DA 
is

similar to Microsoft's WAV with parameters:
  uncompressed
  44100 Hz sampling rate
  16 bits per sample
  big endian (i.e. MS-WAV bytes need to be swapped)
  stereo (2 channels)

CD burn programs can take such .wav files, strip them of their headers,
and copy them on CD as CD-DA tracks. Tracks are usually numbered in the
range of 1 to 99.

A modern drive might be already a computer in disguise, be able to read
from CD-ROM (aka "data CD"), and to play the popular audio file format
 of the computer world. (A quick look by google shows a CD-DA-only 
"Coby"

for 20+ USD and a MP3 capable "Hott" for 60+ USD.)



with a menu selection ?


The popular GUI programs (K3B, Brasero, Xfburn, ...) recognize other
audio file formats and employ conversion software like Gstreamer to 
obtain

the prescribed file format.
With the command line burn backends (cdrdao, cdrecord, wodim, cdrskin)
you will have to provide readily converted .wav files.

Menu information beyond the track number is stored as CD-TEXT.

K3B and Brasero are said to produce it from playlists or from 
information

which they find in the original non-WAV files or in public data bases.
At least K3B offers the opportunity to edit track titels

https://userbase.kde.org/Special:MyLanguage/K3b/Burn_an_Audio_Cd_with_K3b#Edit_the_title_information

Xfburn probably does not support CD-TEXT because its development froze
before libburn offered this feature.

The backends offer various ways to define CD-TEXT. The most popular one
is the .cue file format, which all the mentioned backends accept.
It does not cover all possible CD-TEXT attribute types but should 
suffice

for normal needs.
See "Example of a CDRWIN cue sheet file" at the end of
  https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libburn/raw/master/doc/cdtext.txt

The professional way is/was obviously the Sony Input Sheet. See
"Sony Text File Format" in doc/cd_text.txt. Amon the mentioned 
backends,

only cdrskin can read it.

There is also the opportunity to re-use a binary copy of the CD-TEXT 
data

from an existing CD-DA medium. (Beware of copyright ...)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas


Thanks for comprehensive information.

mick


--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: portable CD players

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

mick crane wrote:
> > Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?

Only from times when music CDs were to be bought in real shops.


> > "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org
> > If I put them on a CD will Discman play them

Brad Rogers wrote:
> Portable CD players of that type are usually audio CD players, they won't
> play .mp3, .ogg, or any other file type, for that matter.

The old non-computer CD drives expect CD-DA sectors, which hold 2352 bytes
each (in contrast to 2048 bytes with CD-ROM). The data format of CD-DA is
similar to Microsoft's WAV with parameters:
  uncompressed
  44100 Hz sampling rate
  16 bits per sample
  big endian (i.e. MS-WAV bytes need to be swapped)
  stereo (2 channels)

CD burn programs can take such .wav files, strip them of their headers,
and copy them on CD as CD-DA tracks. Tracks are usually numbered in the
range of 1 to 99.

A modern drive might be already a computer in disguise, be able to read
from CD-ROM (aka "data CD"), and to play the popular audio file format
 of the computer world. (A quick look by google shows a CD-DA-only "Coby"
for 20+ USD and a MP3 capable "Hott" for 60+ USD.)


> with a menu selection ?

The popular GUI programs (K3B, Brasero, Xfburn, ...) recognize other
audio file formats and employ conversion software like Gstreamer to obtain
the prescribed file format.
With the command line burn backends (cdrdao, cdrecord, wodim, cdrskin)
you will have to provide readily converted .wav files.

Menu information beyond the track number is stored as CD-TEXT.

K3B and Brasero are said to produce it from playlists or from information
which they find in the original non-WAV files or in public data bases.
At least K3B offers the opportunity to edit track titels
  
https://userbase.kde.org/Special:MyLanguage/K3b/Burn_an_Audio_Cd_with_K3b#Edit_the_title_information

Xfburn probably does not support CD-TEXT because its development froze
before libburn offered this feature.

The backends offer various ways to define CD-TEXT. The most popular one
is the .cue file format, which all the mentioned backends accept.
It does not cover all possible CD-TEXT attribute types but should suffice
for normal needs.
See "Example of a CDRWIN cue sheet file" at the end of
  https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libburn/raw/master/doc/cdtext.txt

The professional way is/was obviously the Sony Input Sheet. See
"Sony Text File Format" in doc/cd_text.txt. Amon the mentioned backends,
only cdrskin can read it.

There is also the opportunity to re-use a binary copy of the CD-TEXT data
from an existing CD-DA medium. (Beware of copyright ...)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: portable CD players

[mick crane]

On 2018-11-10 06:52, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 06:11:34 +
mick crane  wrote:

Hello mick,


If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?


Portable CD players of that type are usually audio CD players, they 
won't

play .mp3, .ogg, or any other file type, for that matter.  Insert a
non-audio disc and most simply report 'no disc'.


that's what I wondered and what exactly is an "audio disc" ?
Can I make one from mp3 ?
I'm not very good at audio.

mick

--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: portable CD players

[Brad Rogers]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 06:11:34 +
mick crane  wrote:

Hello mick,

>If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?

Portable CD players of that type are usually audio CD players, they won't
play .mp3, .ogg, or any other file type, for that matter.  Insert a
non-audio disc and most simply report 'no disc'.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Age of destruction, age of oblivion
Neuromancer - Billy Idol


pgpGnSWUBWCdf.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

portable CD players

[mick crane]

Does anybody know about these portable CD players like Sony Discman ?
On the PC I
"play stories.m3u"
where "stories.m3u" is just a list of mp3 files from librivox.org

If I put them on a CD will Discman play them, with a menu selection ?
Are they ATRAC or something ?
Any particular format needed ?
Any recommendations for CD player ?

mick

--
Key ID4BFEBB31