Intro

First time burning CDs? They are not dead!

Why? My car does not have anything but Radio and CD. FM bluetooth transmitters exist but the quality is trash, plus you have to carry around a device to play from, Like a phone.

Burning CDs is easier and harder than you think, you need a CD interface, I had one from inside a old PC & bought a adapter.

Next is a program to write CDs, I chose brasero which can be installed with sudo apt install brasero on Linux.

Next which is important is old stereos support up to 99 MP3’s, (if your stereo says MP3 somewhere) so i had to do a little trick, i could fit 180 songs, I made a python scrypt that puts 2 songs in 1 MP3. So i have 90 songs, just under the 99 limit. With the standard 700mb on CD-R’s (CD-RW means its re-writeable), Here is the code:

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import os
from pydub import AudioSegment

def merge_mp3_batch(input_dir):
    input_dir = os.path.abspath(input_dir)
    output_dir = os.path.join(input_dir, "output")
    os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)

    mp3_files = []
    for root, _, files in os.walk(input_dir):
        for f in files:
            if f.lower().endswith(".mp3"):
                mp3_files.append(os.path.join(root, f))

    mp3_files.sort()

    song_number = 1
    for i in range(0, len(mp3_files), 2):
        batch = mp3_files[i:i + 2]

        combined = None
        for mp3_path in batch:
            song = AudioSegment.from_mp3(mp3_path)
            combined = song if combined is None else combined + song

        output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"merged_{song_number:03}.mp3")
        combined.export(output_path, format="mp3")

        print(f"Created: {output_path}")
        song_number += 1

    print("Done!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    folder = input("Enter song directory: ")
    merge_mp3_batch(folder)

There Is one little thing to note, which is that ofc you skip the first half of the song, you wont listen to the seconda half, make sure to put only songs you know you wont skip!!

If your stereo does not mention MP3, you are limited to 20~ songs.

For Burning, When you open brasero, Press Data CD, drag and drop from the folder your songs, plug in your CD reader/writer and put your CD in, wait to spin up, (if it wont detect, try a different USB port, I had a issue with that) and at the bottom select the CD, I recommend also saving the ISO file beforehand, Press write and wait about 20 mins untill the CD pops out of the interface. And done! Hope this was of use.

Notes

• CD’s In the cover pic: AliExpress Link

• CD’s SATA / USB adapter: AliExpress Link