OT: iTunes burning, audio or MP3?

[Smirnoff]

Getting myself in a complete mix up in deciding what option to use when
burning with iTunes.
I need to make the songs playable on most CD players, not just on my PC
and am using CD-R blanks.
Now the bit that's confusing me.
iTunes gives three options when burning (only the first two are relevant
to me):
Audio CD
MP3 CD
Data CD or DVD
The files I wish to burn are already MP3's.
So, should I just choose Audio CD?
Would selecting MP3 CD result in them being further compressed or is
that the correct option as they ARE MP3's?
The more I try to search for info, the more confused I get!

 

[Guest]

If the CD player you want to play these CD's on supports mp3 CD's, use that.
You'll fit alot more songs on.

If the CD player you want to play these CD's on does not supports mp3 CD's
or you don't know if it supports mp3 CD's, use audio CD.

If you make it an audio CD, it will play on any CD player.

 

[Smirnoff]

I take your point that I should ascertain whether a CD player supports
MP3 or not.
The point I was trying to clarify was that as the files are already
MP3's, would burning them as an Audio CD somehow uncompress/un-encode
them?

 

[David B.]

Converting an MP3 to a WAV to create an audio CD will result in the same
quality as the original MP3, you cannot increase the quality once it has
been compressed.
If you rip an audio CD to MP3, the quality is lost forever, the quality will
never be any better then the MP3 your working with.

 

[Smirnoff]

Understood, thanks.

Converting an MP3 to a WAV to create an audio CD will result in the
same quality as the original MP3, you cannot increase the quality once
it has been compressed.
If you rip an audio CD to MP3, the quality is lost forever, the
quality will never be any better then the MP3 your working with.

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[Smirnoff]

Understood, thanks.

Sorry, meant to add more.

If burning existing MP3's as WAV Audio CD files does not improve the
quality, should I just burn them with the MP3 option, or does iTunes
attempt to compress them further?
Obviously, I can get more MP3's on a CD so this would seem the logical
option if no further encoding is performed.

 

[David B.]

How you burn is pretty much decided by what you want the resulting CD to do.
If you want it to behave as a standard audio cd like you'd buy in the store
(does anyone still do that?) and have wide compatibility, then the audio CD
is what you want, but you will only be able to use around 20 songs per disk
(plus or minus 1 or 2). Many more MP3's will fit on a disk, but
compatibility is much lower concerning home and car cd players, they have to
support MP3 to be able to play these disks. Either way you do it, audio
quality will remain about the same.

 

[Smirnoff]

Thanks David, I DO understand what you have been saying. Just need to
get this clear:

Does burning existing MP3 files as an MP3 CD in iTunes compress them
further?
Or would I have to convert them to WAV files first and then burn the WAV
files as an MP3?

Just intrigued as to whether iTunes would further compress existing MP3
files if the MP3 CD burning option was chosen.
Hope I've explained it clearer now.