Uploading music CDs to computer

Topic

New Reply

I have a new Dell Inspiron laptop. I have Win 7. I’m not the smartest person about computers, so I’ll try to explain my problem the best I can. I want to put my music CDs on my computer so I can put them on my Philips brand 4GB MP3 player that I’m getting for Christmas. I have your book Windows 7 for Dummies the 8 in 1 version. I haven’t found anything that tells me exactly how to do this.
I have put a music CD in the CD/DVD burner and all the little icon says is “reading”. I want to put it in my music library, along with many other CDs I have. I made a folder and named it but the CD didn’t go there. Just an empty folder with the name. Can find nowhere that gives me that option. I did go to Win Media Player and the CD was there, but it disappeared when I took the Cd out of the player. So what I want to know is how do i upload and have on my computer the CDs I want to put on my MP3 player? Am I going to have to do just one at a time? I really need to get my music for my MP3 player from my CDSs. I can not afford to pay for every song I want.
My old pc had win XP and there was alot of things I couldn’t do with XP. Just because I’m not good at computers. If anybody answers this question PLEASE talk to me like I’m a 5 year old. In very simple terms.
Thank you.
sfinley74

Reply | Quote

Replies

You will need to ‘rip’ the CD into the My Music area of your Documents library as MP3 tracks.

There are several ways to do this but many use Exact Audio Copy to create satisfactory MP3 files of each track. It will also look up a database on the Net and label each file with the track name ( in most cases).

Google for ‘Exact Audio Copy’ to find a download site.

Bryan

Reply | Quote

Fire-up Windows Media Player. Press and release the ALT key on your keyboard to bring-up a pop-up menu, and select Tools -> Options from that pop-up menu. Click on the “Rip Music” tab along the top of the Options window. The top section is where you want the music to be stored on your hard drive. Click on the “File Name…” button to determine how you want the song files to be named when they are on your hard drive. I only click on “Track Number” and “Song title”. I make sure that Track number is listed above Song title (click on one of these and then use the Move Up or Move Down buttons). I also like to use a Dash as a seperator. At the bottom of this window is a Preview of how the file names will look. With my settings, they will appear as “01 – Sample Songe Name.MP3”. Click on the OK button at the bottom of this window.

Under the “Rip Settings” section, under “Format”, click on the little down-facing triangle at the right side of the “Windows Media Audio” button, and choose MP3.

I click on the box to “Eject CD after ripping”.

Then go down to the “Audio quality” slider and move it to the right until it is set for 192 Kbps.

Click on the OK button at the bottom of the Options window.

Insert your CD into your computer.

In the upper right corner of Windows Media Player, look for “Rip CD” on the toolbar near the top of the window. All songs with a check mark to the left of their name will be copied to your hard drive as MP3s.

Have fun!

Reply | Quote

Fire-up Windows Media Player. Press and release the ALT key on your keyboard to bring-up a pop-up menu, and select Tools -> Options from that pop-up menu. Click on the “Rip Music” tab along the top of the Options window. The top section is where you want the music to be stored on your hard drive. Click on the “File Name…” button to determine how you want the song files to be named when they are on your hard drive. I only click on “Track Number” and “Song title”. I make sure that Track number is listed above Song title (click on one of these and then use the Move Up or Move Down buttons). I also like to use a Dash as a seperator. At the bottom of this window is a Preview of how the file names will look. With my settings, they will appear as “01 – Sample Songe Name.MP3”. Click on the OK button at the bottom of this window.

Under the “Rip Settings” section, under “Format”, click on the little down-facing triangle at the right side of the “Windows Media Audio” button, and choose MP3.

I click on the box to “Eject CD after ripping”.

Then go down to the “Audio quality” slider and move it to the right until it is set for 192 Kbps.

Click on the OK button at the bottom of the Options window.

Insert your CD into your computer.

In the upper right corner of Windows Media Player, look for “Rip CD” on the toolbar near the top of the window. All songs with a check mark to the left of their name will be copied to your hard drive as MP3s.

Have fun!

Hi Gregg, i wrote down your instructions and followed them to the letter. it worked! i have one CD on my laptop. i will have to wait until Christmas Day to actually try to put it on my MP3 player. i am assuming that “sync” is the tab i hit to actually put songs on my mp3 player. the other 2 tabs are for listening to music and downloading to a CD.
Thanks so much for the very simple directions. that’s what i needed.
sfinley1951

Reply | Quote

………. i will have to wait until Christmas Day to actually try to put it on my MP3 player. i am assuming that “sync” is the tab i hit to actually put songs on my mp3 player. the other 2 tabs are for listening to music and downloading to a CD.
sfinley1951

Your assumption would be correct. When you get your Christmas gift, after fully charging it (may take up to 12 hours), when connected via the supplied cable to your PC, it will display in My Computer as an new drive letter. Simply open Media Player and click on the sync tab. Your device will be on the right side of the screen and you just click on Sync List in the upper left to display your music library and add the MP3 files to the left side of the screen. Click Start Sync and sit back.

Reply | Quote

I want to put my music CDs on my computer …

To add a couple of pix to what Gregg posted, although I didn’t get these in the “exact” same steps that he wrote about. I put an OLD Christmas music CD in my drive and opened Windows Media player. As you can see, I selected the disk in the left pane (it doesn’t have a name and only has a few tracks):

I then opened the Rip Settings only to show that you need to select MP3 if that’s the format you want. Of course there are other settings there too.

I hope the graphics help a little.

Reply | Quote

I forgot an addition to Bryan’s suggestion, if I may. I have periodically had trouble getting WMP to rip a CD while in XP. Have not done any ripping since Win 7, but just in case…

Many of us rely on third party software for CD/DVD burning and ripping. My software of choice is Ashampoo Burning Studio. I won’t put a link here but instead tell you that you will often find free or reduced prices and offers for the software as shown in this thread of not too long ago: Ashampoo Burning Studio.

Some Loungers have “complained” about the volume of emails from them but they DO honor it if you opt out of their notifications system. It’s excellent software.

Reply | Quote

I forgot an addition to Bryan’s suggestion, if I may. I have periodically had trouble getting WMP to rip a CD while in XP. Have not done any ripping since Win 7, but just in case…

Many of us rely on third party software for CD/DVD burning and ripping. My software of choice is Ashampoo Burning Studio. I won’t put a link here but instead tell you that you will often find free or reduced prices and offers for the software as shown in this thread of not too long ago: Ashampoo Burning Studio.

Some Loungers have “complained” about the volume of emails from them but they DO honor it if you opt out of their notifications system. It’s excellent software.

I had started to use a Virtual CD drive supplied for free by slysoft.com but I had no idea how to create a Virtual CD, and secondly, how do you load a disc into a virtual Drive; Anyway, most of my CDs are converted to directories I created on my secondary drive; the main problem was always the discs had no names unless recognised by a CDA database, and even then it sometimes got the details wrong, the only thing it did was track 1, track 2 etc, which required editing if I expected to keep track of multiple discs with numeric listing instead of names as well. Anyways, this was also the source a source of problems for ipod loading, since the tracks got endlessly placed in an unknown album place, and since I have a lot of discs, it has been a gradual edit process, but once done it works out well. Also, works for data sources as well. Hopefully if I can get the virtual CD drive thing sorted out then I can do a number of things. Maybe even a Virtual CD Carousel ?

Reply | Quote

I think it is reasonable to assume that you may want to retain the library on your computers as well as copying it to your player. Certain programs are far better than others at identifying the CD you are ripping, providing you with a playlist for it, and even an album cover to match what you have. Much of this will depend on your musical tastes as well as your software. Songs of the Pogo may be vastly better supported than certain classical CDs, no matter how exquisite the playlist. Furthermore, you may want to make up your own playlists, so that the sequence of works is not the same old same old from a given CD (you will typically have a setting to randomize it if that’s all you want). You may want to create entire programs, which is to say extended playlists, from your own catalogue of CDs. You may want mush music for purposes of increasing the population, you may want lullabies to put the kids or yourselves to sleep, and you may want strike-up-the-band music to get everyone up in the morning.

Many others are interested in the same sort of thing, so if you run across a good source of identification of CDs, preferably complete with artwork (which is handy for at-a-glance-identification of a given CD), then I would encourage you to share your discoveries. If it is strictly hit parade then I am sure it will be well-covered, but if it is Gregorian chant or barbershop quartet, let us say, then it may not be well-supported. Good luck with it.

Reply | Quote

I think it is reasonable to assume that you may want to retain the library on your computers as well as copying it to your player. Certain programs are far better than others at identifying the CD you are ripping, providing you with a playlist for it, and even an album cover to match what you have. Much of this will depend on your musical tastes as well as your software. Songs of the Pogo may be vastly better supported than certain classical CDs, no matter how exquisite the playlist. Furthermore, you may want to make up your own playlists, so that the sequence of works is not the same old same old from a given CD (you will typically have a setting to randomize it if that’s all you want). You may want to create entire programs, which is to say extended playlists, from your own catalogue of CDs. You may want mush music for purposes of increasing the population, you may want lullabies to put the kids or yourselves to sleep, and you may want strike-up-the-band music to get everyone up in the morning.

Many others are interested in the same sort of thing, so if you run across a good source of identification of CDs, preferably complete with artwork (which is handy for at-a-glance-identification of a given CD), then I would encourage you to share your discoveries. If it is strictly hit parade then I am sure it will be well-covered, but if it is Gregorian chant or barbershop quartet, let us say, then it may not be well-supported. Good luck with it.

You might want to take a look at Magic MP3 Tagger.

Reply | Quote

You might want to take a look at Magic MP3 Tagger.

Thanks Doc. I have downloaded it but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it does look promising.

pg

Reply | Quote

For a slightly different take:

I don’t have (and don’t really want) an mp3 player. I don’t care for mp3’s (just a matter of taste) but I rip all my CD’s to a dedicated partition using Audacity, a free utility (which will convert to several formats, including mp3). You can use Audacity to cut out extraneous noise from “live” CD’s, etc. You can customize which online databases it uses for CD title and track info. I rip straight wav files, no compression. I have also used Exact Audio Copy. Audacity is a little faster, Exact Audio Copy will fill in gaps or cut out noise if the song being ripped is in the database. After a rip session, I defrag the dedicated partition.

I then let Windows Media Player find my music and catalog it. Media Player usually finds any missing album art, title info, etc. Just set it to random play if you want to hear an ecclectic playlist, or make your own. It will also burn good quality CD’s (caveat being I only use wav files), but I prefer Nero, which was bundled with my DVD/CD RW.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Your computer is new, so here is a quick tip about something at least one of us tends to forget. The keyboard layout often includes any number of keys that let you change sound settings and functions directly from the keyboard. Look around your keyboard or check the manual to see if you have anything like that.

Reply | Quote

sandee,

I’m glad that you are now able to rip CDs to MP3s using Windows Media Player. I do not have an MP3 player, so I don’t know how to help you get your MP3s from your hard drive to your MP3 player. I believe that if you had Windows Media Player open and then you connect your MP3 player (with a USB cable?) Windows Media Player will detect it. Try the Sync feature first.

Reply | Quote

Sandee, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better be nice; I’m tellin’ you why… else you may not get an mp3 player when santa comes

Reply | Quote

Your MP3 player should have software that it comes with. Using the supplied software, open a window where the songs will be transfered to through a USB cable. Open a second window where you have ripped the original songs to. Then you can simply drag and drop the songs you want on the MP3 player from the PC. This may be the simplest way to transfer your songs to your MP3 player.

Reply | Quote

I use Audio Grabber on XP. Allows me to “grab” music from CDs and automatically save them in MP3 format. It also allows for “line in sampling” which captures everything getting to your speakers.

Reply | Quote

Another great (and free) application is Foobar2000, there are one or two add-ons to install but with these in place it will do virtually anything (ripping into and converting various formats including FLAC, tagging, on-line database lookup, file rename, etc., etc.), I was using the trial version of Magic MP3 Tagger and in the end dumped it because it was no longer needed.

Graham

Reply | Quote