mp3 help please

[pipi]

I don't know much about mp3 & just want someone to explain it to me please. I know it is a type of compressed file & that is about it.
I have been downloading songs from Winmx as mp3 files & burning them to a cd with Nero. I get about 20 on the cd but I was told that with mp3 I should be able to fit heaps more songs onto a cd. What am I doing wrong?
ANY help will be so greatly appreciated!
Thanks alot

[Canada Joe]

A standard 80 min. CD will hold 79' 57" of music burned to CD Audio format (playable with all standard CD Players) (20 tunes averaging 4' each would be about right).
If you want to fit more on same size CD you need to burn as data (playable on computers and newer (compatable) CD players). A 700mb CD (80') will hold 736,819,200bytes (app. 702mb) of data and how many tunes you can save depends on the bitrates (compression ratio) of the mp3's. At 320kbps (highest "Normal" mp3 bitrate) you can save 4 times as many tunes as at CDAudio. The more compression used for mp3 (256 or 192 or 160 or 128kbps, etc) the more tunes that will fit.
As data you can mix bitrates on CD (some at 320, 256, 224, 192, 160, 128, etc.) but as CDAudio it's all the same bitrate (almost no compression).