Audio formats

The following is a list of audio formats supported by CDBurnerXP.

Type Full name Quality
AIFF Audio Interchange File Format lossless
ALAC Apple Lossless (extensions M4A or MP4) lossless
APE Monkey's Audio lossless
BWF Broadcast Wave Format lossless
FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec lossless
MP2 MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 lossy
MP3 MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 lossy
MPC Musepack lossy
OGG Ogg Vorbis lossy
Opus Opus lossy
WAV Waveform Audio Format lossless
WMA Windows Media Audio lossy / lossless
WV WavPack lossless
DRM protected files are not and will never be supported. Make sure that you buy your music from shops which do not impose any usage restrictions.

Variable and constant bit rates

The bit rate of an audio file determines how many bits (1 byte = 8 bit) are used to encode data per unit of time. The higher the value, the higher is the quality. The bitrate is not the only factor deciding on the quality of a file, it also depends on the actual format and encoder being used.

If, for example, an audio file has the bitrate 192Kbit/s = 192.000Bit/s = 24.000Byte/s, it will require approx. 4.12MiB for 3 minutes of audio.

A constant bit rate means that the disc space distribution is the same throughout the file. This makes it easy to determine the disc space required for an encoded file with given bit rate, or to decide which bit rate to use for a given target size.

A variable bit rate, however, yields a higher audio quality, because it allows the encoder to increase or decrease the bit rate dynamically to match the complexity of the music.

The formats MP3, OGG and WMA allow you to use either constant or variable bitrates. FLAC uses the lowest bitrate possible without losing any quality and WAV is not capable of any compression.

Bit rates

MP3 encoded with a CBR has one of the following bit rates (all in KBit/s): 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320. 192 is recommended. If a file does not use any of these bit rates, it's using a variable bit rate.

OGG is usually encoded with VBR, using one of the following nominal bit rates (along with the correspdonding quality setting): 64 (0), 80 (1), 96 (2), 112 (3), 128 (4), 160 (5), 192 (6), 224 (7), 256 (8), 320 (9), 500 (10). Using higher bit rates than 224 (7) is not recommended.