How can you do it?
Just want to transfer an album in MP3 format from my laptop to a normal music cd/r to listen in the car.

WMA is a red herring.

Off the top of my head, you need to go into Media Player, select the songs you want and hit ‘Burn’. Something like that, anyroad.

Why convert them? The player will already be able to play MP3, there’s no reason I can see to change from what is, after all, a universal file format.

Yes but my car only plays audio cds

Download iTunes, Make playlist, bress “Burn Disc”. Unless something’s changed since I last used iTunes to burn a disc, that is.

Yes but my car only plays audio cds

Which still begs the question, why change the format? If it only plays audio cd’s, then why change the format? If it can’t play MP3 files, it certainly won’t be able to play WMA files, which are a proprietary music file unique to Windows. Just set up a playlist of about 80 minutes duration containing the tracks you want, then, as Cougar and gfs said, ‘Burn disc’, which should give you a cd that will play on any CD player. CDR’s are disposable, just burn one and shove it into the player; it should play ok, if not, it’s coaster format, and you’ve wasted a few minutes and a few pence. It really shouldn’t make any difference what file format the original is on your computer; burning to disc should automatically make it playable on any CD player, making it a waste of your time changing the files from MP3 to WMA. 😀

Converting from 1 lossy format to another is always a rubbish idea. Find something that can just burn cds from the mp3s. Haven’t burnt a cd in years, the last time I did was using Nero which does that fine.

Wmp can burn CDs from mp3 / WMA if I remember right

CDBUrnerXP will burn audio CDs from most formats if windows media player lets you down:

http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home

Does renaming them work?

No.

This isn’t rocket science, as has been mentioned above. Select the mp3 files you want to have on CD, then within windows media centre (the default Microsoft player) just select make audio CD.

Ta da.

No need for converting to other formats, using 3rd party software. Etc…

If you still struggle, just Google ‘make audio CD using windows media player ‘.

Which still begs the question, why change the format? If it only plays audio cd’s, then why change the format? If it can’t play MP3 files, it certainly won’t be able to play WMA files, which are a proprietary music file unique to Windows. Just set up a playlist of about 80 minutes duration containing the tracks you want, then, as Cougar and gfs said, ‘Burn disc’, which should give you a cd that will play on any CD player. CDR’s are disposable, just burn one and shove it into the player; it should play ok, if not, it’s coaster format, and you’ve wasted a few minutes and a few pence. It really shouldn’t make any difference what file format the original is on your computer; burning to disc should automatically make it playable on any CD player, making it a waste of your time changing the files from MP3 to WMA.

Actually it’s a perfectly valid question as a lot of older in-car CD players won’t read MP3 files. If you simply burn the files playback will only be possible with compatible players however, to be fair, most new head-units read MP3. As it happens WMP offers three options and if you select ‘Audio CD’ it will convert the files during transfer for compatibility with all CD players. Exactly as CP notes.