What you have to understand is there are, basically, two types of players:
- Players that can only play Red Book audio CDs. The audio CDs you buy in a store are Red Book audio CDs.
- Players that can play Red Book audio CDs but can also recognise and play discs with other types of audio files on them (mp3, wma, etc.).
For the sake of simplicity, let's say you're working with only mp3 files. Now...when you burn an audio CD, you have to make a decision. Do I want to burn a standard Red Book audio CD? Or, do I simply want to burn my mp3s to a CD-R? If you choose the Red Book audio CD route, that standard limits you to around 80 minutes of music/voice/whatever (74 is the norm). The software you use will convert your mp3s to the proper Red Book audio format and burn the CD-R. However, what you have created is a
standard audio CD...and it should be playable in almost any player provided that player can recognise a CD-R; some older players can't. The other option is to simply burn the mp3 file to a CD-R. This type of disc is really just a data disc. It will
not be playable in standard CD players that don't support "MP3 discs" as they like to refer to them. To be fair, more and more players these days are able to support these type of data discs.
Clear as mud?