Do you have a large collection of mp3s on your hard drive?  You would probably like to back them up so you don’t lose them if your hard drive ever crashes.  The best way to do that is by converting them into audio CDs.

Actually it is pretty simple to do.  Most CD burning software will do the conversion automatically for you.  You create the playlist of MP3s and then just burn the CD.

What happens is before the CD is burned, the MP3s convert into Compact Disc Audio files.  This is all automatic, but you can take control of the process by using an audio editor.  This lets you split files and filter noise reduction and other types of edits.

In the event that your CD burning software does not let you manually take control of the conversion into CDA files, all you have to do is download free audio editing software from the web and edit the audio file before you burn it to CD.

One of the most useful edits you can perform is to normalize the files.  This levels out the differences in volume among tracks so the entire CD plays at the same loudness.

After you finish editing your audio files, save them as WAV files so they can be burned onto your CD.

You do not necessarily have to convert MP3s to audio CDs.  Instead you can directly burn the MP3s onto the CD.  The advantage to this is that you can store up to 100 songs on a CD compared to a dozen the previous way.  The disadvantage is that it is very difficult to find a particular song among so many.  Your CD of MP3 songs can be played in a computer CD-ROM, and probably a regular CD or DVD player as well.

A great way to play your CD with MP3 format songs is by using a home theater system.  The DVD should be able to play the CD okay and has the added benefit of displaying the song titles so you can find what you want to hear.

Consideration must be given to how you will name your MP3 files before you burn your CD.  Song titles displayed on DVD are just a few characters, so make your song title recognizable within the first 8 characters.  Be careful of starting the filename by artist or you will have several files displaying the same name.

There is actually software available to help you rename your MP3 titles.  It is designed to edit ID3 tags and all you have to do is check options at the beginning of a song title and it can rename your entire music collection in seconds.