The varied terminology I've been reading in the responses to you, to me, come off as more confusing rather than clarifying anything. Let me give another stab at explaining.
You talk about music CD's. This is actually vague because it could refer to a few different things. Whether or not music is the content of the files in CD audio or MP3 or another format isn't really the issue.
You can make a disk of songs in CD audio like a commercially produced CD that will play in any ordinary CD player. The same format can be used for an audio book or other spoken word materials. CD audio is what the PlexTalk calls PCM 44.1khz and/or "music CD." If you create a CD in this format, it will be playable in an ordinary CD player, whether or not the sounds on that CD are musical.
You can buy blank CDR's or CDRW's of the quality to write on them with data and/or music. This is just supposed to let you know not to expect more from a cheaper CD blank. It doesn't have to do with writing songs or spoken words on it. It refers to writing on it with CD audio files or data files. When you burn a CD audio disk, or a music CD in PlexTalk terminology, you are allowed either 74 or 80 minutes of recording and playback time. It depends on the blank CDR or CDRW you buy. Take note here also that CDRW's cannot be played on an ordinary CD player, even in CD audio format. You would need a player designed to play CDRW's specifically.
An MP3 disk is a data disk. You cannot play it in an ordinary CD player. You can, however, play it in an MP3 player. There are MP3 players that are the small personal types like the Sony Diskman that played CD's but built to play the data disks containing MP3 files. Since MP3 files contain audio material, they play as sound files like a commercial audio CD. But it is a different format and has to be played on a player made for that purpose. Most DVD players will also accommodate playing MP3 data disks as well as CDRW's and CD audio disks. We also have a boom box MP3 player that can play these formats. Your computer will also allow you to play files on an MP3 disk; but, even on your computer, the player your computer uses to play them, such as Windows Media Player or WinAmp, is designed to play this format of files.
Now, there are Daisy books which can be put onto CD's. The Daisy book consists of sound files and Daisy navigation instruction files. The Daisy files tell the PlexTalk or other Daisy book player how to play the book. Some of these are what is commonly called "smile files" because they have an extension of smyl. These files do not contain any audio material. The audio or sound files of the Daisy book are usually in MP3 format, although I believe you can use .WAV files as well. MP3 files are compressed to take up much less disk space and allow for more book content to be written to a single disk. If you look at the folders of a Daisy book CD with your computer, you will find the book title in a folder, or there might be more than one title on a disk. You will see in the folder the MP3 files with numbered filenames. Then you will see the data files that make it the Daisy format.
The PlexTalk is not designed or able to let you backup an MP3 data disk onto the flash card or PC card. You cannot even backup a file at a time from MP3 format. You cannot edit them or manipulate them in any way that we know of using the PlexTalk. Once a Daisy disk is made, though, it can be backed up to a card and edited. It is also not meant to let you burn straight MP3 data disks. You can, however, burn a Daisy disk with the MP3 files consisting of your songs. Many, and perhaps even most, MP3 players will play the MP3 files of the Daisy disk and simply ignore the data files as if they weren't even on it. The PlexTalk can at least play straight MP3 data disks. If you create a Daisy disk of your music, you will not get as much on the disk because of the data files that are not sound files taking up space. It doesn't mean that you cannot play the disk; it just means that you are using up space on the CD with files besides the actual music.
If you have the computer capabilities to burn CD's, you can use the MP3 files of the Daisy disk you created to burn either an MP3 data disk for play in an MP3 player or an audio disk to play in an ordinary CD player. You can also burn the recordings you are making with the PlexTalk in CD audio in the first place without using the MP3 format. In that case, you don't have to use the Daisy format to take up extra space. Remember, though, that you get about ten times the recording time with MP3 format as opposed to CD audio format. This ratio also depends on the bit rate you choose for recording the MP3 files. The smaller the bit rate, the smaller the file, but the lesser the sound quality of the recording.
If you want to burn a straight MP3 disk with your computer, though, why not just use your computer to record the files to your hard drive and turn them into MP3 files and burn the straight MP3 data disk? In that case, I cannot really see where the PlexTalk is a great advantage.
Having said that, however, recently we took a tape from a friend and created an audio CD on the PlexTalk. I then used my computer's CD tools to rip the files back into wave files on my hard drive so that I could do a bit of editing and manipulating. I wanted to increase volume of some parts, clean up some extra sounds that didn't belong on the disk, and also break up one track that was lumped together as the 2 tracks it should have been. I did all this with Windows Sound Recorder because I'm familiar with this method and could accomplish what I needed easier. While it was easier to do the actual recording with the PlexTalk from the tape, it made the extra CD along the way. Maybe the same could have been done with a re-writable disk so as not to waste the extra CDR. If you're looking for a straight MP3 data disk of songs, you might try this same method but rip the resulting CD audio disk to MP3 format files on your hard drive and then burn the data disk with your computer.
Obviously, from the length of this explanation, it could all be made easy and avoid so much ooggily googgily by having the PlexTalk both allow the backup of an MP3 disk and burn the same from recordings made with the PlexTalk. We've been told before that it's a copyright issue. I don't think so. If it only had to do with copyrights, they wouldn't allow the burning of even audio CD's. Using MP3 CD's to do more than listen on the PlexTalk is just one of the things we thought we could do on it. We can't, at least not yet.
Hope this clarifies things. Thanks for taking the time to read my epic explanation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps a thousand words can show a clearer picture to the blind. Hey, whatever works.
TTFN, Marilyn
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