Ripping Songs from CD to Your PC

If you have a decent compact disc collection and a CD-ROM drive in your computer system, you can make your own digital music files from the songs on your CDs. You can then listen to these files on your computer, transfer the files to a portable music player for listening on the go, share them with other users via the Internet, or use these files to burn your own custom mix CDs.

The process of copying files from a CD to your hard disk is called ripping. You use an enhanced digital music player program, such as Musicmatch Jukebox, to rip your files.

How Ripping Works

The ripping process is fairly simple. You start by inserting the CD you want to copy from into your PC's CD-ROM drive. Then you launch the ripper program and select which songs on your CD you want to rip. You'll also need to select the format for the final file (MP3, WAV, or WMA) and the bit rate you want to use for encoding; the higher the bit rate, the better the sound quality. (And the larger the file size!) After you've set up everything, click the appropriate button to start the encoding process.

caution

After you've started the ripping process, do not use your computer to do anything else while encoding; doing so runs the risk of adding "skips" to your digital music files.

Ripping a CD with Musicmatch Jukebox

The most popular ripping program today is Musicmatch Jukebox. That's because it's so easy to use practically the entire process is automated.

Musicmatch Jukebox rips in MP3, WAV, and WMA formats. To rip a CD, follow these steps:

1. Connect to the Internet, then launch the Musicmatch software, shown in Figure 32.1.
   
   

   Figure 32.1. Use Musicmatch Jukebox to convert a CD to digital audio files.

   
   
   

2. Click the Rip from CD button; this opens the Recorder window, shown in Figure 32.2.
   
   

   Figure 32.2. Getting ready to rip a CD with Musicmatch Jukebox's Recorder.

   
   
   

3. Insert the CD you want to copy from into your PC's CD-ROM drive. Musicmatch will now synch up (over the Internet) with CDDB, an online database, to obtain track information.
   
   

4. To set the bit rate and format for recording, click the Options button to display the Settings dialog box. Select the Recorder tab, pull down the Recording Format list, and select a file format; you can then select the desired quality level, below this list. Click OK when ready to proceed.
   
   

5. Back in the main window, check the boxes next to the tracks you want to copy.
   
   

6. When you've selected which tracks to rip, click the Record button.
   
   

Musicmatch now copies the selected files from your CD to the My Music folder on your hard disk. That's it you're ready to listen to digital music!