Information, About MP3/WMA, 28-EN | Alpine CDA-9807, cda-9805

Information

About MP3/WMA

CAUTION

Except for personal enjoyment, duplicating audio data (including MP3/WMA data) or distributing, transferring, or copying it, whether for free or for a fee, without the permission of the copyright holder is strictly prohibited by the Copyright Act and by international treaty.

•What is MP3?

MP3, whose official name is “MPEG Audio Layer 3”, is a compression standard prescribed by the ISO, the International Standardization Organization and MPEG which is a joint activity institution of the IEC.

MP3 files contain compressed audio data. MP3 encoding is capable of compressing the audio data at extremely high ratios shrinking music files by as much as one-tenth their original size. This is achieved while still maintaining near CD quality. The MP3 format realizes such high compression ratios by eliminating the sounds that are either inaudible to the human ear or masked by other sounds.

•What is WMA?

WMA, or “Windows Media™ Audio,” is compressed audio data.

WMA allows you to create music files and store them at higher ratios of compression than MP3 audio data (approx. half original size). This is achieved while still maintaining CD quality sound.

•Method for creating MP3/WMA files

Audio data is compressed by using MP3/WMA specified software. For details on creating MP3/WMA files, refer to the user's manual for that software.

The MP3 files that can be played back by this device have the file extension “mp3”. Files with no extension can not be played back.

WMA files have the "wma" extension. (WMA ver. 7.1 and 8 are supported)

•Supported playback sampling rates and bit rates

MP3

Sampling rates: 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 32 kHz, 24 kHz, 22.05

	kHz, 16 kHz, 12 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 8 kHz,
Bit rates:	8 - 320 kbps

WMA

Sampling rates: 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 32 kHz, 24 kHz, 22.05 kHz

Bit rates: 32 - 192 kbps

Note that for sampling rates, this device’s frame display (Page 9) may not display correctly.

This device may not play back correctly depending on sampling rates.

•ID3 tags/WMA tags

ID3 tags of this device support ID3 tag v1 and v2. If ID3 tag/WMA tag data is in an MP3/WMA file, this device can display the title (track title), artist name, and album name ID3/WMA tag data.

This device can only display single-byte alphanumeric characters (up to 30) and the underscore. For non- supported characters, “NO SUPRT” is displayed.

•Producing MP3/WMA discs

MP3/WMA files are prepared, then written to a CD-R or CD-RW using CD-R writing software. A disc can hold up to 512 files/folders (including Root Folders).

•Media supported

The media that this device can play back are CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs.

•Corresponding File Systems

This device supports discs formatted with ISO9660 Level 1 or Level 2.

Under the ISO9660 standard,

there are some restrictions to remember.

The maximum nested folder depth is 8 (including the root directory). File/folder names are limited to 31 characters (including the extension), and are limited to 15 characters for WMA.

Valid characters for folder/file names are letters A-Z (all caps), numbers 0-9, and ‘_’ (underscore).

This device also can play back discs in Joliet, Romeo, etc., and other standards that conform to ISO9660. However, sometimes the file names, folder names, etc. are not displayed correctly.

•Formats supported

This device supports CD-ROM XA, Mixed Mode CD, Enhanced CD (CD-Extra) and Multi-Session.

This device can not correctly play back discs recorded with Track At Once or packet writing.