I am trying to burn some mp3s to a CD.
I am using Brassero and an audio burn.
But my songs do not play ?
Can someone help?
Thanks
You mean you are burning an audio CD ? (Red Book conformant)
And you discovered that it doesn't play in your computer ?
This is to be expected; only burn as audio CD if you want to play it in a real (red book conformant) CD-player. In every other case, burn it as a data-CD
Or are you burning the CD for playback in a real CD-player ?
Then there are several things that you can try:
- convert mp3 to wav before you burn
I learned not to trust Brasero to do things automatically the right way.
if that is not enough:
- use a different burner program, I prefer 'k3b'.
No need to do the above mentioned workaround. 'k3b' is reliable.
And if it is still not working then your CD burner could be broken or you might have gotten a defect batch of CD's
Before I get to that, I have another problem. All of my programs have either lost the menu bar or it shows up in my panel.
Is there some global setting causing that?
Yes, that must be 'global menu', it is part of the Cupertino layout in mate-tweak.
It uses appmenu-gtk2-module and appmenu-gtk3-module but I don't have the slightest clue how to disable that, other than change the layout in mate-tweak . I've never used it.
I fixed the problem by picking another panel.
I lost many of my panel icons, but that's ok. They are easily restoreable.
Since when is this true? I've never seen a single optical drive for a computer system which can't play Red Book CDs. Has nobody heard of Rhythmbox or similar programs? I've never had a problem playing audio discs using appropriate software unless the disc was scratched with steel wool. 
Now, mounting the disc like a data CD doesn't work; you can't expect a command like:
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt
...to work on an audio CD. But even if you don't have appropriate software installed, oftentimes GVFS-using file managers (such as Caja) will display the tracks of an audio CD in a directory-like fashion, and you can open these files in pretty much any audio playing application.
In short, I honestly have no idea how you came to this conclusion. If you know something that I don't, please tell me and let me know.
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And you discovered that it doesn't play in your computer ?
This is to be expected; only burn as audio CD if you want to play it in a real (red book conformant) CD-player. In every other case, burn it as a data-CD
Since when is this true?
Since Ubuntu chose Brasero as default optical media burner.
Redbook-burn is a bit of a cumbersome process and especially Brasero has had a extensive track-record of failing to burn audio CD's (without even so much as giving a warning).
I've never seen a single optical drive for a computer system which can't play Red Book CDs.
The optical drive is not the problem, they can play redbook pretty well.
(Except for some SONY CDs)
It used to be easy when, long ago, optical drives were internal models with an analog output directly to an analog input of the soundcard.
We don't have that analog route anymore nowadays. We have to streamrip the audio from the CD (with all its drawbacks) because copying (like we do in a filesystem) is not possible (because of redbook standard).
The OS redbook audio driver part, is often non-existant.
It means that the player needs a dedicated driver build in for the optical-drive in question (thankfully they are standardized nowadays) plus the fact that it has to practically bypass the OS to do this. It is virtually equal to writing a non-root single-application userspace-driver because there is not a common API offered by the OS to do otherwise.
Nice to know that Rhythmbox, just like VLC, has CD and DVD playback but that is not standard and not all players have that. Even Audacious has a seperate plugin for redbook.
oftentimes GVFS-using file managers (such as Caja) will display the tracks of an audio CD in a directory-like fashion, and you can open these files in pretty much any audio playing application.
Yes, Caja can read the TOC of a redbook-CD through GVFS but that is pretty much all it can.
The number of players and editors that can play them directly (the ones that have half a driver and a a streamripper build in) is restricted.
Anyway, that is not the issue at all.
The error correction on redbook is pretty bad, also it has no filesystem to speak of (only a TOC) so musicdata is easily damaged and difficult to recover or repair. You can't copy the data, you can only stream-rip it which is a vulnerable process because a redbook-CD is not a random access block device with a CRC code every 512 bytes, but a continuous stream so you have to keep up with the datarate or you'll get dropouts.
Do you remember EAC (exact audio copy) ? How long it took to rip in paranoid mode ?
Do you remember not to rip faster than 2 speed to avoid samplecorruption ??
redbook is hell on wheels as interchange format.
Sure it will pretty much work, but it is NOT a situation you should deliberately create if you have other options.
TLDR; Redbook format is brittle and cumbersome to handle. Best to avoid it whenever you can.
Therefore:
If you are going to play your MP3's from a CD-ROM in your computer, please don't convert it to the fragile redbook format but keep it as data. That is, in my experience, much more reliable and solid in the long run.
Only go redbook if you can't avoid it (like if your target is a classic stand-alone CD-player)
Thanks. I used k3b and had no problems.
All right, I suppose you're right, now that you lay out all the caveats like that.
But just one humorous note:
Pun unintended, right?
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Hahahahaha, I did not even noticed that 
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