Authored by Kumara Velu in Computer Software
Published on 02-07-2009
MP3 has become the buzz word for music lovers in recent years. What makes MP3 attractive is its excellent compression size and its versatility – it could be played over the computer, mobile telephone and also your personal MP3 player, among others. Why, you can easily share and download it over the Internet.
In theory MP3’s audio quality is lower than that of an audio CD. Users, however, don’t seem to notice any loss of quality when an audio CD is converted to MP3. All they are concerned about is they can listen to hundreds of songs on a device as big as their thumb. As long as it stays that way, then MP3 is going to stay close to their hearts until a better format comes along. So, any owner of an audio CD collection would want to explore methods of converting his or her collection of music to MP3 which offers more flexibility when it comes to listening and sharing music.
The first thing you should know is if your try to open an audio CD with Windows Explorer, you will see .CDA files. Can you just take these files and convert them to MP3? You can’t because they, surprisingly, don’t have any audio data in them. The only way to get the data out is to use audio CD ripper software. That’s what we are going to do in the next section.
Converting Audio CD to MP3 with Windows Media Player
The version of Windows Media Player that should be used is version 10 or 11 and it comes with Windows XP. You will also have no problem if you run Windows Vista.
First, launch Windows Media Player. If you have an older version you can update to the latest version provided you have a broadband Internet connection. On the Media Player interface, you will see the Rip tab between the Library and Burn Tab. When you click on the tab, you will be prompted to insert a CD.
Next, insert an audio CD. If the Player does not automatically detect the CD, right click on the tab and choose CD and Devices – Rip Audio CD and then choose the drive your audio CD is in. A window pops up showing all the tracks in the audio CD.
You can now select the tracks you want to convert to MP3. After selection, you click on the Rip Music button just above the tracks. The tracks will be ripped to the default Windows Media Audio.
To rip to MP3, you will need to go to Rip Music – Tools – Setting and choose the Rip Music tab. From here you can click on the drop down menu and choose MP3. When you click OK the ripping of the MP3 begins. The default folder the MP3 files will be saved to is My Documents/My Music.
You’re now ready to retrieve your MP3 files from the folder.
