IN THIS CHAPTER Introducing Digital Audio 306 Finding and Downloading Digital Audio Files 311 Copying (Ripping) CD Tracks to Your PC 312 Burning Audio Files to a CD 315 Copying Files to a Portable Music Player 317 The Bottom Line 318 Listening to and downloading music from the Web is a big deal. Instead of buying a CD at a traditional music store, you can download the music you like from the Internet. Then you can listen to your favorite songs directly from your hard disk, burn your own custom CD compilations, or copy the music you want to a portable audio player to listen to on the go. There are any number of media player/recorder programs that can handle all these tasks for you. Windows Media Player (WMP) is one of them. And because it's included free-of-charge with Windows XP, why not use it? I showed you the basic operations of WMP in Chapter 14, "Using Windows Media Player." In this chapter I'll show you specifically how to use WMP to download, store, and copy digital audio files. One of the new features of the Windows XP version of WMP is the capability to record MP3-format audio files. WMP could always play back MP3s, but this is the first Microsoft player that also can record MP3s. And, with WMP 10, the MP3 encoder is built into the play unlike WMP 9, where you had to purchase an add-on encoder to record MP3 files. One more thing to like about WMP 10! |