First timer here, long time mobile dj. Hello Folks. Looks like a nice group of folks here. This may have been asked before but bare with me for a minute. I need to upgrade my Roxio software. I believe I have the old creator 5 in my system. ( i know, don't laugh) ok i did. It has been serving me well for a few years so i never needed to up grade until last. I was burning a data cd for the first time. (again, i know I'm ancient ) when i started to drop the songs down into the lower box where you burn them from I noticed it alphabetized every song. It doesn't allow me to choose what order I want them burned in. (like when you're burning a regular WAV cd) it allows you to move them around as you want, in the order you want.

3 questions,

1- is there a way around this?

2- does the new software have something in it to be able to convert WAV files to MP3 files?

3- if I need to upgrade, which software package should I buy? Mind you the only thing I really do is burn cd's with my software, and have now started to convert my WAV files into MP3's and burn them as such. But I need to be able to rearrange the songs the way I like them and in the order I choose. NOT have the system do it for me.


Thank you for your time. And looking forward to learning alot here.

To answer your questions in order:

1 - no, not really, and here's why. An MP3 CD is really just a Data CD full of MP3 files, and Windows handles the way the files are displayed, normally, alphabetically. A Data CD is meant to be accessed by file, and they can be in any order. An Audio CD, which you're used to creating, is meant to be "played" and the location/order of the files is important, which is why you can move them around in the Audio CD layout.

So, the way to work with the system is to prefix all the tracks with a two or three digit number so that Windows will display them the way you want, such as:

001. track1
002. track2
003. track3
.
.
101. tracksomethingelse

Don't leave out the leading zeros! (Try it once and you'll see why.)

Now, we can guess that maybe you want to be able to access your files for your DJ work, in which case, I would suggest a folder structure to organize your albums:

artist
|-album1
| 01. track01
| 02. track02
| etc.
|-album2
| 01. track01
| 02. track02
| etc
|-album3

That would be easier to use than simply having all of your .MP3 files in the root directory.


2 - Yes, new versions of Easy Media Creator can create .MP3 files from your .WAV files. But then, so does ECDC 5, Spin Dr. Personally, I never cared for the encoder Spin Dr. used to create .MP3 files and used something else like LAME, which you could use too.

3 - I don't think you need to upgrade. The current version is Creator 2009, and requires at least Windows XP, and possibly significantly more processor power than you currently have.

Hopefully that helps. Feel free to ask more questions!

With the latest version, you can choose an option to "rename the music to keep the play order". It is hidden.

NICE, thanks for the help my friends! I am sure to have more questions once I actually try these suggestions. LOL Hopefully I won't overwhelm you guys with too many.

This may sound goofy but, when ever you upgrade, will the newer version see the older version and carry over all the music you have already in the older version? Plus move over all the folders with the same names you already have them in?

Thank you.

Unfortunately, no. Roxio has never been a company to worry about backward compatibility. In fact, they seem to shun it. None of your project files from ECDC 5 can be expected to work with Creator 2009.

Not a goofy question, and not the answer you might hope for.

CRAP! So then you start off with a blank library and you have to burn your music onto disks and then RE-download it into the newer version???? Seriously?

Well, I'm not really sure what you mean. Whatever music is on your HD on your computer will still be there. It's not going to remove it. Then you can point it to your collection, or let it find it on it's own (takes time and system resources, but maybe something you'll want to let it do), and then use it from there. So no, it won't "remove" anything, but I don't think it'll use any settings from the previous version, especially since you're likely skipping versions 6, 7, 7.5, 8, 9, and 10 to go to Creator 2009.

But if you have specific projects for burning a particular CD (again), that won't work.

Got It! And yes I wasn't worried about it being delted, just a bummer that it can't carry over what I already have and make a mirror image of it in the newer version. But probably like you said, I am skipping a few versions in between so that's probably a better reason why it won't do it. Thanks again, for all your help.