M4A to CD audio - Nero on W10 ?? Anybody

Hi folks
I Have a load of BBC R3 classical Music concerts recorded in M4A format. I want to put these on to Minidisc so I can play in car via blu tooth transmitter in the output of a portable MD (minidisc) player (car has Blue tooth receiver so no prob). Md's can contain equivalent of 2 - 3 CD's on Net MD format or around 8 or 9 on the Hi-MD discs so no fiddling changing discs and no vibration etc to interfere with the playing.

To get on to the MD I need to create an Audio CD which I can then copy to MD using a program on a Virtual Machine Windows XP system where I have a "Virtual CD" mounter (Alcohol 52%) that can mount (amongst others) NERO .nrg files as audio CD's which then transfer to MD perfectly. The program is called Simple MD burner and that works perfectly even for the short lived HI-MD discs.

Anybody here have NERO on W10 who knows if it can create an Audio CD of an M4A file - I know the old versions have an "Image recorder" to make .nrg files but I don't want to splash out on NERO if it can't handle M4A files.

I don't want to convert the files to MP3, WAV, WMA,or FLAC first -- I know NERO can handle those formats but any extra handling of already compressed files just causes loss of fidelity so should be avoided where possible.

BTW the M4A files from the BBC streams I've been using are 320 kb/s which is perfectly good enough for playing in a car etc. !! or on even quite expensive gear -- you probably need to be under about 25 and with perfect ears to hear much improvement over 320 kb/s streams anyway - at my age I'm sure I've long passed that point. !!

(Note using a phone is just too fiddly and in any case when driving I don't even want to SEE a mobile phone - also here - very stiff fines if even using handsfree phones can be levied if there's any suspicion of driver with less than 100% attention -- believe me in winter you need MORE than 100% attention on some of the roads !!!). I put the phone in the boot / trunk of car - just like some US states make you do with booze !.

Cheers
jimbo

I don't think NERO is going to be of any help here so save your money. Minidiscs aren't optical media in the traditional sense and use Sony's proprietary ATRAC format for audio. You will have to use Sony's SonicStage software to convert from various audio formats to ATRAC then transfer it to your MD player. I don't know if SonicStage supports direct conversion from M4A, if not you can use FRE:AC to convert the M4A file to a format that SonicStage recognizes (probably WAV).

EDIT: Never mind I see you are already using Sony's Simple MD Burner for for MD player...currently looking for any free cd burning progs that work with M4A to cd image..

Bree said:

Why not? FLAC is supposed to be a lossless format.

Hi there
@Bree

FLAC is lossless agreed --IF (caps intended) the Source itself is lossless.

M4A is already compressed and lossy. -- it's not a lossless format - at least from those BBC streams --320 kbs is very good and provides very acceptable (classical music) concert hall quality when played on decent high end audio gear but it's still not lossless ----so there's nothing to be gained in "decompressing" an already compressed (lossy) file into FLAC.

(As an extra comment -- the human eye isn't as good at detecting slight artifacts etc when say "Uprezzing" a 1920 X 1080 HD picture into a 4K UHD one - as comapred with the human ear when also doing the equivalent of "up-rezzing" a lossy audio compressed audio file to an uncompressed "higher quality" one -- you never can get higher quality than the original source -- for video the compromise where the missing pixels are filled in by decent A.I such as Bi-Cubic etc can be acceptable and worthwhile - especially on large TV sets -- but that definitely doesn't work for audio files. !!!

Nobody in their right minds for example would take say a 128 kbs mp3 file and convert into WAV or FLAC -- nothing to be gained at all and it would just take more space.

It's a bit like for example converting a 640 X 480 VGA picture into a 4K UHD one --you'd probably see hideous pixellation.

Cheers
jimbo

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/h...to-an-audio-cd

there is an article about it

Feuer said:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/h...to-an-audio-cd

there is an article about it

Hi there @Feuer

Thanks for the link but :

I think you miss the essential point of what I'm doing -- I don't have a CD burner nor want to use PHYSICAL CD's.

Nero converts the existing M4A streams to a CD Image (all tracks are in proper CD audio format).

I then burn this to a "Virtual Audio CD" in Nero -- the image is saved using NERO's Image recorder in Nero's nrg format.

Now the Alcohol 52% program can mount this "Virtual Audio CD image" as a Virtual Audio CD which Windows treats exactly as a "Physical Audio CD".

The software might work on W10 (haven't tried it) - but the version I installed way back on my XP Virtual Machine does the job just perfectly.

I don't think the Windows 10 "built in" virtual iso mounter can load things like NERO .nrg images as a Virtual Audio disc.

The Alcohol 52% software is still Free and downloadable although the version I'm using I installed years ago on the XP Virtual Machine. I haven't tried the software on W10 though.
.
Alcohol 52% - Download

Also most other Audio CD creating programs always seem to require you to burn to a physical medium which is why I'm continuing to use NERO as it lets you create an Audio CD compilation and then burn as an image file (.nrg) and as I said above the alcohol 52% program allows this to be mounted as an "Audio CD" which Windows recognizes and then I can use the Sony Simple MD burner to do the rest.

The Sony simple MD burner burns that "Virtual Audio" CD to the MD device -- for a HI-MD minidisc it can burn approx 8 -10 Audio CD's to a single MD, or on the standard MD's 2 - 3 Audio CD's to a single MD.

The whole point of the exercise was to get Music tracks primarily of FLAC and M4A to the MD system.

Using the XP Virtual machine the whole thing works perfectly - and using a portable MD in a car with blu tooth saves having any AUX IN cables getting in the way of the driver. (I plug a small blu tooth transmitter into the optical out of the portable MD player and the car has its own blu tooth receiver in the entertainment system. The MD portable player/ recorder sits in a lift up container space out of the way and out of sight of driver etc -- 100% safe.

Cheers
jimbo

@jimbo45

what we are doing

i have an android phone, i use vlc player for playing media files (audios and videos) (all formats support)
i save my music files in mp3, wav, (sometimes) flac formats

if we want to listen something in the car, we are doing it like you
phone has its own bt so if car has bt, we do not have problem to listen, we just open bluetooth
if the music system old in the car, we use aux

windows 10 can mount .iso images
at the page i gave

Step 4
Click "Start Burn" in Windows Media Player. This will convert your M4A formatted music to the CDA format and then burn that converted music to the CD, creating a standard audio CD

if you do this you can convert your cda's to img or iso easier than (m4a to img,iso)

i do not use portable disc players for 20 years so i do not know what will happens with them
your routine seems to be hard

when i used NERO last time at windows xp days, nero was about 2gb, my windows xp folder was about 1,5gb that i remember, but it had user friendly interface, it was easy to use

Feuer said:

@jimbo45

what we are doing

i have an android phone, i use vlc player for playing media files (audios and videos) (all formats support)
i save my music files in mp3, wav, (sometimes) flac formats

if we want to listen something in the car, we are doing it like you
phone has its own bt so if car has bt, we do not have problem to listen, we just open bluetooth
if the music system old in the car, we use aux

windows 10 can mount .iso images
at the page i gave


if you do this you can convert your cda's to img or iso easier than (m4a to img,iso)

i do not use portable disc players for 20 years so i do not know what will happens with them
your routine seems to be hard

when i used NERO last time at windows xp days, nero was about 2gb, my windows xp folder was about 1,5gb that i remember, but it had user friendly interface, it was easy to use

Hi there

@Feuer

I already have the M4A's in the first place got from a variant of the BBC's i_player - the audio streams are presented as M4A 320 kbs high quality audio streams and saved to computer.

For example 1hr program from BBC R3 to the computer gets downloaded via a command line script :



To test try and hear the live quality of the BBC R3 classical music audio stream use on any browser the Dutch application Radio Garden and select BBC R3 -- play into high quality speaker and you should get good sound. These Internet streams are usually of higher quality than the "Terrestial" DAB systems. There's usually (I've never found any yet with this application) no geo blocking or country restrictions on accessing these internet radio streams worldwide.

BBC Radio 3 – Radio Garden



Another trouble with the phone is that if anybody calls the blu tooth becomes disconnected and re-connection in some cars needs to be done again manually -- not a good idea if driving on hazardous narrow icy road with huge trucks passing at times. I certainly also don't like any extra cabling such as phone to AUX IN on car's dash getting in the way of the driver either.

Also it's a real mess to sort out what music etc to store on the phone - and I also don't like to even see a phone in the car when I'm driving -- With the MD's I just take what I want and that's it -- I can also play on good high end equipment at home.

The DAC's in most phones (Digital to Analog converters which provide the analog audio for the speakers) are usually pretty ropey -- I've got a top end studio quality MD deck -- even if one was 75% deaf one could easily tell the difference between a compressed MP3 song played from a phone and the sound from my portable MD devices. !!!

Cheers
jimbo

sure there is difference between lossless and compressed mp3s

i have about 800gb music and sfx files most of them 320kbps mp3 and it is ok for portability,
i saved them in one external hdd, i can copy them to our phones, computers and my friend's devices easily,

and i really dont like to carry something on me and in my pockets (even wallet, coins, keys)
and i have so much things (especially books, retro things) at my home,
i dont want to be busy with cds dvds, and dont want to carry them with me

maybe i can turn lossless audio flac (vlc player supports)
i have used them for only rammstein albums before

but you like your routine, so i am happy you solved it