Foo - Basic mp3 questions

I need to know how to record a track of a CD and convert it to mp3 so I can play it on my new mp3 player and the computer at work. Do I need special software or does XP come with something to do this? I asked my kid but she just told me to download what I wanted. I want to make use of the CDs I already have.

iTunes will take CDs and import them as MP3 (if you go to Edit > Preferences > Importing and change it to MP3 and a high bitrate)
http://www.apple.com/itunes/

Put the CD in, click "Import" in the top right corner and you're good to go.

thanks

iTunes will take CDs and import them as MP3 (if you go to Edit > Preferences > Importing and change it to MP3 and a high bitrate)
http://www.apple.com/itunes/

Put the CD in, click "Import" in the top right corner and you're good to go.

For some reason I am shocked you use itunes...I can't explain why...

Did I say I use iTunes? I can't tell if you're joking or not. Regardless of what I use, iTunes is going to be an easy way for him to get his CDs archived and onto his MP3 player. Truth be told, most of my MP3s are ripped with gRIP on OpenBSD (which is a front-end to CDParanoia and LAME).

Although, I do use iTunes on my MacBook for listening and cataloging my music once it's ripped from my CD collection.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm an OS Agnostic that's somewhat bitter about my personal experiences with Windows (and to a lesser extent Linux) however that's no reason to stop people from using what works best for them. Mac OS X, OpenBSD and Solaris are what work best for me most of the time.

It worked for me. What is the downside to using iTunes?

I love iTunes

It worked for me. What is the downside to using iTunes?
It's a memory hog compared to apps like DBPowerAmp, and there's always people who prefer a more minimalistic (or just plain different) interface such as WinAMP, MusicMatch, or Windows Media Player.

Also, iTunes doesn't run (natively) on OpenBSD, Solaris, Linux, Zeta, or any of the other cool non-mainstream operating systems. Just Windows and Mac.

Basically, if it works and you like it, there's no downside.

Despite the bickering here....you can do this simply without any new software on a Windows Computer.


Just use Windows Media Player and click the "copy from cd" button. You can select the tracks you want to copy. I'm not claiming its the best alternative out there....but its right there already on your computer and can work without tweaking (though you can tweak quality in the WMP settings).

Shows you what I "actually" know. I'm still using Windows 2000 at home because I own three licenses for it and it still does what I need it to do. I suck at Windows XP.

I use Music Match Jukebox. I'm not all that impressed with Itunes.

windows has windows media player. not the best program but one thats already there and set up for basic use.

dont bother with itunes. its cute and silver but thats about it

dont bother with itunes. its cute and silver but thats about it
+1


Just so you know, the ripper I use....probably the best Windows CD recorder (ripper) is Exact Audio Copy, but unless you are a little more familiar with MP3s it may be more painful. You have to find and plugin your own seperate LAME encoder dll, and do a lot of program setup to get it exactly the way you want it. It's not nice and "automatic" like WMP.

itunes and media player are basically the same thing. media player is not bad, nor is itunes. you can change bit rates on both, i do not see any difference in them. what i hate is i can not sync my ipod with media player, thus i have to use itunes. but i just use itunes to transfer to the pod, and media player to have a library. i alsmost wish i didnt get an ipod, just because of itubnes. im too used to media player now anyway to switch all together. though i admit it is a lot of work to make playlists in itunes, because it also makes duplicate files on the computer, which i go back and delete after the pod is updated, thus i only change the pod up every couple months. all of this made me realize i should switch hahahaha
or get a different mp3 player and give my ipod to an emo hipster

don't encode to mp3. It's a lame file format.

just wanted to make a crappy pun - but seriously, go lossless and never look back.

waves

well comparing to WMP and iTunes, I prefer iTunes much much more, its easier to use and nicer to look at. WMP looks Yuck!, my opinion though, I need to do a lot of tweaking on the interface to make it decent to look at. Yeah iTunes have some of its downside, but its one of the best MP3 player software out there.

You guys keep talking about players...but OP was asking about ripping tools, not players.

Our Mistake, Sorry!!!!

You guys keep talking about players...but OP was asking about ripping tools, not players.

I was referring to iTunes as an application with ripping capability that is easy to use.

Also, file formats matter very little when most in-car players only handle MP3 or sometimes WMA. AAC, MP4 and Ogg, as cool as they are, aren't supported by most players. The MP3 player in my car is a genuine MP3-Only (well, audio CD, too) player.

I was referring to iTunes as an application with ripping capability that is easy to use.

Also, file formats matter very little when most in-car players only handle MP3 or sometimes WMA. AAC, MP4 and Ogg, as cool as they are, aren't supported by most players. The MP3 player in my car is a genuine MP3-Only (well, audio CD, too) player.
I know iTunes rips as well...but it seems everybody is talking about apps as players.

Just trying to keep OP's thread on topic. I know I hate it when that happens to my threads.

I like talking about players....feel free to start another thread and I'll chime in.

itunes can do it, i prefer windows media player though. i bought a ton of mp3s on itunes when i first got my mp3 player, only to find out they aren't compatible. i think cd's ripped from itunes should work in any mp3 player, but it annoyed me so much i boycotted it. I got around it by burning them to CD and then encoding them back to mp3. still PO'd me though.

though i prefer WMP it's not a great ripper. i like aftermarket rippers if i have a big project. they are usually faster and have fewer pops and crackles and corrupt files as WMP's encoder.

Did I say I use iTunes? I can't tell if you're joking or not. Regardless of what I use, iTunes is going to be an easy way for him to get his CDs archived and onto his MP3 player. Truth be told, most of my MP3s are ripped with gRIP on OpenBSD (which is a front-end to CDParanoia and LAME).

Although, I do use iTunes on my MacBook for listening and cataloging my music once it's ripped from my CD collection.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm an OS Agnostic that's somewhat bitter about my personal experiences with Windows (and to a lesser extent Linux) however that's no reason to stop people from using what works best for them. Mac OS X, OpenBSD and Solaris are what work best for me most of the time.

No, I am an os agnostic too. I use the tools that work for the job I am trying to do. I was just oddly shocked. Its likely because I find itunes very unintuitive and cumbersome. I know I know, I am one out of a few billion that love it, but I also find Mac very unintuitive for my tastes as well. I like "Mac" products to some degree but I just can't seem to use them with any degree of skill.

I just use iTunes, but that has more to do with me owning an iPod than anything else.

Before that I used to use lame to encode, and used some generic freeware ripper of the month.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. iTunes seems to work good enough for my needs. I'll try WMP when I get a chance. I didn't know it would do that. One last quick question- what difference does high vs low bitrate make.
In other words there a discernable difference in sound quality on a cheapie player.

Lower bitrate = smaller file size.

Most audiophiles can hear it, I can't to a certian point. Just rip the same song at progressivly lower bit rates. Play them back until YOU can hear a marked difference, then rip at that rate.

Smaller files = more tunes.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. iTunes seems to work good enough for my needs. I'll try WMP when I get a chance. I didn't know it would do that. One last quick question- what difference does high vs low bitrate make.
In other words there a discernable difference in sound quality on a cheapie player.
Higher bit rates = higher quality, but larger file sizes also.

Think of it like the way you were taught to make graphs in high school. Remember how you would graph some number of points and draw the graph from those points? Well, that's pretty much exactly how the sound (wave) is produced by using N samples per second. Every song can be different in terms of how many "sample points" it needs to accurately represent the wave.

That being said....average is usually 120Kbps, max is usually 320Kbps. It depends on the sound as to where it sounds indistinguishable and where it sounds different. I used to always use constnat 320Kbps to be sure I had the highest quality. Now, to save file space, I tend to use 192 Kbps Variable Bit rate. 192 Kbps variable means it will always use a minimum of 192Kbps, but up the sampling rate "on the fly" if the sound wave requires it for an accurate representation.

Today only Giveaway of the Day (http://www.giveawayoftheday.com) is giving away a full licensed version of Zortam MP3 Media Studio Pro (http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/zortam-mp3-media-studio-pro/). The only catch is that you have to download and install it today.

I personally use EAC and LAME to rip my tracks with alt-preset-standard. iTunes is great for some, but I much prefer manually copying the MP3 files or using the Sync button in WMP.

I try to stick with MP3 because if ripped right, it sounds as good as other lossless formats (maybe the file size is a bit bigger than other formats), and every device out there supports MP3.

I need to know how to record a track of a CD and convert it to mp3 so I can play it on my new mp3 player and the computer at work. Do I need special software or does XP come with something to do this? I asked my kid but she just told me to download what I wanted. I want to make use of the CDs I already have.

I use FREE RIP. Works great...everytime!
Download here...free (shareware)
http://www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml
;)

You can download the newest version of the Windows media center software for free. I use WMA to copy my old CD's to the hard drive of my home computer. Using the WMA format, NOT the MP3 format, I find that the 128 KBPS setting produces excellent sound quality on rock/pop style CD's, but uses very little space on the hard drive.

Every week or two, I "synch" my MP3 player to my home computer using Windows Media Audio, and copy a new set of CD's for that week's listening. I've been very happy with the sound quality of music played back in the 128 Kbps WMA format. In contast, in the MP3 format, the treble (such as cymbals) did not sound as good as on the original CD's.

Alan,

To fix the treble in MP3, like the cymbals you mentioned, up the bitrate to 192Kbps.

Each compression format has it's advantages and weaknesses. MP3s is that the loss of audio data is quite drastic on the low and high end of the spectrum at lower bitrates.

I've found that MP3 at VBR 192-256kbps rates ends up at similar file-sizes to WMA @ 128kbps, but sounds better than WMA. Also plays on more devices as well. The CD-player in my car will play MP3s burned onto a CD, so I can have about 10-hours of music on a single CD! :)

just wanted to make a crappy pun - but seriously, go lossless and never look back.
What lossless codec do you use and how much smaller is the resulting file? When I last tried a lossless codec (FLAC), the sound quality was good but the files were very, very large.

The only problem with iTunes is that you cant choose to burn the songs onto the CD in MP3 format, iTunes will automatically burn the songs into CD format (higher bitrate I guess), the downside of this is you can only upload about 20 songs per CD (average)

I've found that MP3 at VBR 192-256kbps rates ends up at similar file-sizes to WMA @ 128kbps, but sounds better than WMA. Also plays on more devices as well. The CD-player in my car will play MP3s burned onto a CD, so I can have about 10-hours of music on a single CD! :)

LAME at alt-preset-standard (which is the standard that eMusic uses) is what I use. I don't have "golden ears", but I can tell especially in electronic pieces distortion due to low-rate MP3s, and I have good results with alt-preset-standard. Anything lower (128k MP3 especially), its noticable enough to distract from the song being played.

I am reading this whilst copying some cd's I found cleaning out the closet earlier to iTunes. It's very easy, I recommend it!