Recipe 11.1. Ripping Digital Music

Problem

You want to rip music from an audio CD to your computer's hard disk in other words, copy it to your PC in a digital format, so that you can listen to it on your PC, or on a portable MP3 player.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Windows Media Player offers built-in tools for ripping music and storing it in a variety of formats, including MP3 and WMA. (Note: versions of Windows Media Player older than version 10 cannot rip music into the MP3 format, without buying extra software.) Here's how to do it:

1. Run Windows Media Player by choosing Start All Programs Accessories Entertainment Windows Media Player.

2. Click the Rip button.

3. Insert the CD whose music you want to rip into your CD drive.

4. Windows Media Player will show a list of all the tracks on the CD, but there may be no information associated with each track. To have Windows Media Player search the Internet for information about the CD and each track, click Find Album Info.

5. Windows Media Player will display the name of your album. If the information is correct, click Finish. If it's not, click Search to see if it can find the information in your existing music database, or else click Edit, and you can manually enter information about the album and each track.

   

   This recipe shows you how to rip music with version 10 of Windows Media Player, which offers more features, and a simpler interface than earlier versions. If you have a version earlier than 10, you should upgrade by visiting the Windows Update site at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

   
   

6. Depending on the information that Windows Media Player finds, it may not find all the information about each track. After it populates the information, you can edit any track by right-clicking it, choosing Edit, and typing in the new information.

7. Put a check box next to each track that you want to rip, and uncheck the box next to each that you don't want to rip.

8. Before ripping your music, choose the audio format, and the quality of the files that you will rip. Choose Tools Options Rip Music, and from the Format drop-down box, choose an audio format, either MP3, or one of several WMA formats. Then choose the audio quality by moving the slider under Audio quality to the left for less quality, and to the right for higher quality. Generally, a rate of 128 Kbps is considered almost CD quality, while bit rates above that provide higher quality. The higher the quality, the larger each file.

9. When you've chosen audio quality and format, and checked all the tracks you want to rip, click Rip Music. As you can see in Figure 11-1, Windows Media Player will show you its overall progress, as well as its progress of ripping each track.

   Figure 11-1. Windows Media Player ripping music from an audio CD

   
   
   

10. When you're done, you can play your music by clicking the Library button. Your new tracks will appear there. To play any one, double-click it.

Discussion

Keep in mind before ripping music that copyright laws limit what you can do with the digital music files that you rip. You're only allowed to use them for your own personal use you're not allowed to share them with others.

You may not be able to rip digital music from every CD that you buy. Music companies have been using a variety of ways to fight piracy, and have used techniques on some CDs that don't let you rip music from them, or that limit what you can do with that ripped music, for example, by not letting you copy it to an MP3 player.

You may run into another problem with Windows Media Player when you rip music from a CD, and transfer the digital files to your portable MP3 player, those files may not work on the player. If that happens, a likely culprit is that when you ripped the music, you left on CD copy protection. An option in Windows Media Player will copy-protect any music you rip so that it cannot be played on any device except your PC, and also won't allow others to listen to the music. You can easily solve the problem, though, by turning off automatic copy protection. In Window Media Player, choose Tools Options Privacy, uncheck the box next to Acquire licenses automatically for protected content, and click OK. You'll have to rerip all of your music.

If the music still doesn't play in the portable MP3 player, you may have used a format that the player won't recognize. All portable MP3 players will play MP3s, but not all will play other formats, such as WMA. So if you're planning to transfer files to a portable player, first check what file formats it recognizes.

When ripping music, a major issue you face is what format and audio quality to choose. MP3 files are more widely used than WMA, and more players support the MP3 format. But WMA files generally offer higher quality at smaller bit rates. So you'll have to make decisions based on that. As to what bit rate to use, 128 Kbps is generally considered near-CD quality, and is suitable for most kinds of listening. Depending on the quality of your speakers, headphones, or MP3 player, you may or may not be able to recognize much of a difference between music ripped at 128 Kbps and 192 Kbps. If you have high-quality speakers, headphones, and an MP3 player, you'll notice the higher quality, but if you don't, you may not be able to tell the difference. But you most likely won't be able to tell a difference in quality of files ripped at 192 Kbps and files ripped at rates above that. Keep in mind that the higher the bit rate, the larger the file size. Table 11-1 shows you how much disk space a typical CD takes up when ripped at varying bit rates in the MP3 and WMA formats: you'll notice that WMA is listed with more bit rates than MP3 files. That's because Windows Media Player gives you a wider choice of bit rates when recording WMAs rather than MP3s. That has nothing to do with the underlying MP3 or WMA technology WMA is a Microsoft format, and the company has chosen to give you more choices when recording in that format. Other software that rips digital music gives you equal choices between the MP3 and WMA formats.

Table 11-1. Bit rate and file size for MP3s and WMAs

File type	Bit rate	MBs per entire CD
MP3	128 Kbps	057 MB
MP3	192 Kbps	086 MB
MP3	256 Kbps	115 MB
MP3	320 Kbps	144 MB
WMA	048 Kbps	022 MB
WMA	064 Kbps	028 MB
WMA	096 Kbps	042 MB
WMA	128 Kbps	056 MB
WMA	160 Kbps	069 MB
WMA	192 Kbps	086 MB

See Also

There are many pieces of software, in addition to Windows Media Player, that can rip music. Many are for pay, but there are free ones as well. An excellent free one is MusicMatch Jukebox, available from http://www.musicmatch.com. Note that there are both for-pay and free versions of the software, so be careful which version you download.