Understanding the Types of Discs You Can Burn

You can burn several types of disc formats with iTunes, and each of these formats is useful for specific purposes. With iTunes, you can burn the following types of discs:

• Audio CD When you burn a CD in this format, you can play it in any CD player, such as the one in your car, a boombox, or a home theater. And that is the primary benefit of this format: CD players are ubiquitous, so you can play audio CDs just about anywhere.

• MP3 CD You can place your tunes on a CD in the MP3 format and then play those discs using any player that can handle MP3 music. Many newer CD players for cars and home theater systems can play MP3 CDs, so this is a good thing. The benefit of using the MP3 format is just what you might think it is you can put about three times as much music on a single disc as you can with a disc that uses the Audio CD format.

• Data CD or DVD This format is the same that's used to store music files on your computer's hard drive. In fact, when you choose this format, you simply replicate songs as they are on your computer on a disc. The primary purpose of this format is to back up your music to protect it from loss should something go horribly wrong with your computer. You can also copy songs to a disc to move them from one computer to another.