jerfitz

Burning music disks. Somewhere on this forum I saw a question or two on this subject but could not find the specific questions again so I thought I woud share my experience on burning music disks.

Burning music CDs: I have a 2007 ES350 with the Mark Levinson (ML) audio system and have experimented with burning music to both DVDs and CDs. Even though you can get 600 plus songs on a single DVD I personally do not like music DVDs. This is because they are recorded as if they were a Video File (a movie) and I could not easily access the proper controls unless the parking brake was ON. Further more I could not see the song titles as they played and I had no other control over them. It may be somewhere but I couldn't even get DVD recorded songs to play in a random sequence like you can with CDs.

I now burn all my music on CDs in the MP3 format. DVD audio disks do not work as well as CD audio disks in Lexus cars...period. Depnding on the MP3 file sizes I can get about 250 songs per CD. I have already tested a CD with 204 songs on it and it plays perfectly. That means with a six-disk CD changer I can have 1,500 songs in my ML Audio system. You can easily choose to play the songs sequentially, random, or repeat. When the car is moving the song title that is currently playing is shown on the screen.

On the other hand, when the car is NOT moving I can view and scroll through the entire list of song titles on the CD because you can access the FOLDERS and FILES menu, which is grayed out when the car is moving. If you want to scroll the music FOLDERS and FILES when the car is moving go see (this is for the ES350) but there is probably a similar one for a GS model:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=276775

Also, with a CD, you can quickly move from song to song by turning the radio tuning control **** while the CD is playing. If you had a printed list of the 200 plus songs on the CD and the song titles on your printed list were numbered from 1 to 200 you could almost instantly move from, let's say, song 36 to song 157 if song 157 was the one you wanted to hear at that moment. The song number appears on the screen.

THIS IS MY EXPERIENCE: I could not get Windows Media Player 11 to work with the Lexus Audio system because it wants to use the .M3U playback format. I found buried at the end of a sentence somewhere in the Lexus manual that .M3U playback will NOT work. NOTE: the playback format for songs is different from the MP3 recording format for the songs.

I used Sonic System’s Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 to burn a music CD with 204 songs on it and it both plays and shows each song's title as it plays even when driving.

Here's how I did it. Start Roxio, click on AUDIO, choose MUSIC DISK CREATOR, choose MP3/WMA disk, click FILE (upper left), click IMPORT AUDIO in the drop down menu, in the left pane of the two panes that just appeared click on My Computer to get to your C: drive and find you music files (songs) you want to burn, choose the songs you want to burn by clicking on them (they change color), click on ADD (middle right of screen).

If you want to edit any song's title, before burning the CD, click on that specific song and then click on Edit Audio Tags.

Then choose PROJECT SETTINGS. Here you name your disk, choose convert all to: MP3 (good quality), uncheck .M3U and leave only .PLS and .WPL playback formats checked, for file use Joliet and press okay to return to the previous screen.

Next, look at bottom left of the screen to make you have an 80 Min (703 MB) CD in the CD burner. Now click on BURN (right middle of screen). You probably should not use a rewritable CD-R.

This worked very well for me!

Best regards,
JerFitz

phattbam

thanks for the write up. I've tested this out on my '07 GS350 w/o the ML Navi. it's really great for the commutes.

A.C Milan

thanks but i have a question ..
how can i make a dvd audio disc?
i make mp3 CDs all the time an no probs but when i tried to burn a dvd audio disc i inserted it in the car and nothing happened ,but when i played it in a computer it worked perfectly .. so what's the problem ? notice that DVD videos work fine on the ML.

i use Nero startsmart ,, i clicked on DVD then Audio then mp3 disc and simply added the files and burned it.

mf1776

Thanks...tried this last night and it worked great.

2 questions...I couldn't see the artist name...only the song name and the folder name...also the songs seemed to play in alphabetic order although I don't think (??) that's the order I burned them in (??)...still a nice-to-have for the long commute

jerfitz

Re the artist name, somewhere in the Lexus owners manuals they listed the MAX number of characters that will display. That might be the problem but who knows.

While the CD is playing, at the bottom of the the Lexus video screen you have a choice of repeat, random, or ???? (can't remember). Press RAND and they will play in random order.

Glad this worked for you.

jerfitz

I never have used NERO so I cannot answer you exactly. In ROXIO you go to MUSIC DISK CREATOR> DVD MUSIC DISK> ADD SONG TITLES. Notice, Roxio has separate software for burning a MUSIC DVD.

Also, in the project settings I used "MPEG 1 LAYER 2" plus there is a choice to check for AUTO-PLAY. This makes the music DVD start immediately in the ML audio system.

Look for these things in Nero.

jerfitz

That's great that it also works without the ML audio system.

jerfitz

If anyone is interested I will post a detailed description on how to burn a DVD music disk using Sonic System's Roxio easy media creator 9 (this is the only softeare I have so I canot describe Nero or others).

lexeu

Hello, sorry for digging an old thread, but I am having some issues with burning a CD that would work. I've got a Mark Levinson in my GS430 (no DVD symbols on the radio, so CD-only I guess), I have 3 CD's inside which work just fine (these CD's are typical Audio CD's so 80 minutes/~15 songs max). I followed the guide from the first post step by step, and it resulted in the following on my radio unit:
- the CD gets read properly, it automatically starts playing
- first problem - there is nothing playing, it's like playing a silence
- second problem, there are no tracks, the radio only sees one track on that CD ( also no disc or songs title visible, just blank)
- third problem, when I switch the CD to other one through the radio screen and would like to go back to that burnt CD, I cannot. The number with that CD is grayed out. However, when I switch back to that burnt CD using steering wheel controls, it does change the CD but the same thing happens as in previous points.
- of course, all other CD's work fine while that 4th CD is in the changer.

I tried: your solution, ImgBurn as Data CD using Juliet system, Windows Media Player as Data CD, all three give the same results. Normally, I would record that CD as an Audio CD, but come on 16 songs is just... bad. I have many more songs I'd like to play on one CD, all of them in .MP3 format. The CD I use is a CD-R as suggested. Brand new, good quality.

I hope you can help because I really have no idea how to burn more songs on one CD.

MX73

What year is your 430? I believe the 2006 will not play mp3.

lexeu

It's the 3rd generation GS, production year 2005, model year 2006. That's so bad if it cannot play MP3's :-/ So there is no chance to record more songs than a standard Audio CD can handle?

Would a Yatour or something like this be working here in this case (for USB playback) ?

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