adding more songs to a cd-r

You don't say if you want this to be an audio CD that plays in audio CD players. If so, an audio CD player can only see the first session.

This has to do with the burning software your using. I dont believe itunes can do this. Im pretty sure toast and some other products can though. I would look on the burning software companys site to see if there program supports it. If it does then the option to make multisession cds would be somewhere in the burning options panel. I hope this helps.

~Ryan

From disk utility help:

Recording on a recordable disc more than once
Normally, you can burn items to a recordable disc, such as a CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-RW, only one time. However, if you use Disk Utility to burn the disc, you can burn items to a disk in more than one session as long as space is available. This is also called multisession burning.


In Disk Utility, create a disk image that contains the files you want to burn to the disc.
The files must be from a volume with a Mac OS Extended disk format. To check a volume's disk format, select the disk in Disk Utility and look at the information at the bottom of the Disk Utility window.

Select the disk image in the Disk Utility list and choose Images > Burn.
Select the "Leave disc appendable" checkbox. If you don't see this option, click the triangle in the top-right corner.
Insert a blank recordable disc in the optical drive, and click Burn.

To add more files to the disc later, follow the steps above. You can continue this process until all available space on the disc is used.

I understand you have to select the "Leave disc appendable" checkbox for multisession burning.

How do you access the box to make the change?
Do you have to have a blank CD inserted into the drive before you can access?

Richard

what you would do is make a playlist and have the songs on the computer and then drag them to the playlist then put a cd-r in and open the playlist and press burn and then in like ten minutes it will be done.

kidscomp

Are you just trying to back up song files to a CD-R or are you trying to make a CD-R that has music that's playable on something other than your Mac? If the latter, what are you trying to create - a mp3 CD, audio CD or something else? Did you burn the CD using iTunes or something else.

Normally people do not burn audio tracks to multiple sessions on a CD-R unless they are just trying to backup their tracks. That's because only a computer can see the additional sessions.

The instructions for burning multiple session CD-R discs are in Disk Utility Help, but I still question that this is what you really want to do.

The only way to burn an audio CD with the software provided by Apple is to use iTunes. Your music files need to be in iTunes. You then create a new playlist (click the plus sign on the bottom left of the iTunes window). Now drag the music you want to burn from the main iTunes window to the playlist you just created.

Click on the playlist to see what music is included. Look at the bottom for how much time it totals. You can fit maybe 70 minutes of music to a CD, so if you have more than that you'll need to delete some music or uncheck the box next to ones you don't want to burn. You also can drag the tracks into a different order.

In iTunes Preferences (in the iTunes menu just left of the File menu) click on Advanced. Now click on the Burning tab. Where it says Disc Format be sure the blue button is next to Audio CD. You also have an option to choose how long the silence gap is between tracks. Click OK to leave the preferences.

With the playlist selected on the left you'll see a burn button on the top right of the iTunes window. Click on this. You'll be asked to insert a blank CD and will need to click one more time to start the burning.

If my instructions seem confusing, Apple's step-by-step instructions are in iTunes Help (found under the Help menu). When the Help window opens type Burn audio CD in the search box. You'll see a topic called Creating Your Own Audio CDs. Click that to see Apple's instructions.

As I noted, you only can burn once to an audio CD. An easy thing to do is create a playlist and just keep adding tracks over time until you are ready to burn the disc.

Let me know if you need a better explanation of any of this.

Multisession disc burning is not used much anymore. (You'll now see dozens of posts from people who disagree with that statement). It primarily is used for data burning. Unfortunately I've read posts who backed up their photos this way and later have had problems recovering photos from all the sessions. In my opinion it is something to avoid. People can now back up to relatively inexpensive external hard drives or USB flash drives easier than to CDs or DVDs and those handle incremental backups much better.

Toast (not iTunes) will allow multisession burning of an audio CD, but everything after the first session won't play on a CD player. What some people do is burn some audio tracks in the first session and then add some data files or a QuickTime movie in the second session. This is known as an Enhanced Audio CD and you may even have some commercial CDs that have both audio and data files on one disc.

It's a shame you've wasted some CDs thinking you could add more to the disc later. If you deleted the music from your Mac you can import it back from those CDs to iTunes and create a longer-playing mix for your next CD.

You are correct, you cannot do a multisession audio CD that will play anything but the first session on a CD player.

" What can I use the multisession for?"

People often use multisession to have a hard copy of certain types of data. Say you save a bunch of photos on a CD for transport, backup or whatever. The disc is not full, so later you add another batch of photos.

Hope this helps,
Jeff

2 GHz. 17 iMac rev b Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Instead of doing all that in Disk Utility just use this http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/BurnXFree/