[leapfrog]

Hi, I'm attempting to copy tracks off of audio CD's to transfer to an MP3 player. I assumed this would be an easy task, but when I click on "record" useing Windows Media Player. It doesn't give me the choice of decideing what format I would like and automatically saves it as a .WMA file which of course is not compatible with an MP3 player. The same thing happens when I use Real Jukebox too and I haven't tried Quick Time yet. What am I overlooking?

[kwdrum42]

Transferring from CD to mp3 is not as easy as recording from CD to cassette tape. In order to truly get digital music, you need to EXTRACT it from the CD. This is a seperate process from READING the data, and not all drives support it. It usually requires a CD-R or CD-RW drive although some of the newest CD-ROMs can also handle digital audio extraction. Then you will need to get a hold of an extraction program. My favorite is Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/), although CDex (http://www.cdex.n3.net/) is also popular. These people's websites will take you through how to rip the audio data off the disc.

Audio data on a CD is stored in raw .wav format. To get it to mp3, you need to compress it. Popular compressers are BladeEnc, LameEnc, and MS's Frauenhoffer. The reason I like Audiograbber is that it can compress immediately, all in one process, and it can support almost any compresser.

Hope this helps.

- Kevin


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"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."
- Werner Von Braun

[leapfrog]

Thanks, I appreciate the help. Do you think a 32X max CD-ROM would be able to do the trick?

[Gurnerworld]

Leapfrog,

RealJukebox can pull MP3s from CDs (but at 96Kbs as opposed to 128Kbs). The default setting in RealJukebox is to convert to Real Audio files, but this can be changed in the Tools, Preferences menu.

Select Audio Quality and choose MP3.

Jukebox will now work in the same manner as AudioGrabber and will extract the raw data and convert it to MP3 (even while it's still playing).

Hope this helps.



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Gurnerworld
Brainbench MVP for MS Excel
http://www.brainbench.com