controlling mp3 file order

I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem. I'm new to burning mp3 CD's, but have burned numerous music CDs. When adding mp3's to the playlist, they always automatically arrange themselves in alphabetical order. I've tried every setting I can think of to avoid this, but nothing helps. I'm sure this is a newbie kind of problem, but I'm at a loss. I've tried Ashampoo and Nero.

 

Sorry man. They'll burn to the disc in the order you add them I think, but every program and player I know of will alphabatize. Try adding a number at the front of the track.
I could be wrong, but I have the same problem and have had no luck with it.

 

I'm afraid they still burn in alphabetical order. I tried creating a seperate file outside of Nero with the song order I wanted, closing it,then dragging that file to Nero. It still burned in alpha. order. There must be SOME simple way to bypass this annoyance!

 

Possibly Nero could be the problem...try using a different burner.

 

I've done that with Ashampoo and Roxio. Same results.

 

No, I just dragged and dropped. No numbers or letters added. I'm going to try that today. It seems like a lot of effort just to get songs in a particular order. Well, like I said, I'm new to mp3 burning.

 

Here is my guess:
mp3 files will always be in alphabetical order. Independent of the burner/burning order, almost all players (all that I know of at least) put them in alphabetical order. There are two things you can do:
1. Modify the order by using numbers in front of the file
2. Get a player that supports m3u playlists and burn a playlist with the proper order onto your CD
These are the only things I can think of. Both have worked for me.

 

Something else I'll have to learn. I have no idea what m3u is. But that's part of the fun, right? I did go back and add numbers in front of each mp3 name and was able to burn in the order I wanted. Time consuming, but successful. I shouldn't complain since I remember how exciting, but sloooow, it was to use a quality cassette deck for compilations. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

m3u is an mp3 playlist. It specifies the order in which mp3 files are played (as well as which ones are played.) A typical playlist might look like:
FileNumberOne.mp3
FileNumberTwo.mp3
FileNumberThree.mp3
etc.

 

in nero, you can just drag the songs up and down in the burn list, most other programs also allow this.
easiest way is to have the songs numbered 01, 02, etc....
just put 155 nero burn lists together in the last few days, luckily I had most numbered

 

I thank you for this thread.
I had already figured that I might need to number the order in which I want the mp3's to appear but here is another question for the Experts.
Has anyone yet put the mp3's into folders in the root and then made shortcuts to the songs in each folder, renaming them to Title-001.mp3, Title-002.mp3, etc. in much the same way as songs appear in regular *.CDA's ?
It seems to me that renaming shorcuts in the root would be less time consuming than re-naming each song as a compilation is made.

 

Writing a script to do the renaming would be simple.

 

I'm happy that this forum has proven to be so useful. It's great for us rookies to pick the brains of the more experienced. I appreciate all the advice. I still wish that I could simply drag and drop like I do with an audio CD, numbering not needed, but I'm sure it will happen some day...?

 

Working on it, man. I'm a software developer and this falls into my latest project...a network CD burning server/client pair. You have a fast burner in one machine running the server. On another (or the same) computer with the client, you create an m3u playlist. I will add the option for automatic numbering in here. Then, click Burn, it contacts the server program & burns the CD. First piece of software like it to my knowledge.

 

Write Script.???.!!!
What is that.???
No, Really... I am a total loser in that department... I may learn to do this soon because this is not the only instance where a script write probably would have helped.

Making a compilation-type cd with mp3's for me is hard enough. Since I do not own a mp3 player (or DVD-CDA-mp3-CDR/RW) yet, I will be asking my neighbour if the cd I am about to make will work the way i want and if it does, (or doesn't) off to irak it goes anyway and the recipient can figure it out since they have a portable DVD player handy.

I am thinking for my next trick to send some VCD/SVCD since that might also work in their machine. All i need is my webcam and VirtualDub or other program and the words of wisdom from the VCD/SVCD threaders, yes.? Oh, and a faster/stronger computer (AMD 266, 128ram currently being used)

So, anyway, the root shortcuts should work since when i tested that approach, it worked using WinAmp. So off I go to the burning factory

 

My bow of appreciation to the software developers. You make our tech lives so much more enjoyable. When alxdotnet achieves his goal, we can say that we saw it coming. Maybe we'll get a discount when ordering the new software!

 

I almost only collect albums. I use the AlbumPlayer to play thew but besides to that and that is what adds something to this thread it generates HTML index pages and playlists for a MP3 CD containing albums. May be it is useful info. I got it from http://www.albumplayer.com

 

Actually, it will be freeware.

 

Better yet.