How to Convert Music CDs to Digital Files

By Lisa Porter

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Convert your music CDs to digital files so that you can listen to them on your computer and easily transfer them to personal media devices. Importing or "ripping" CDs onto your media player is easy, but you will have to deal with one CD at a time. Depending on what media player you have, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, and the edition you have, the steps involved will vary slightly.

Step 1

Open your media player and connect your computer to the Internet.

Step 2

Insert the first CD you want to import. With your computer connected to the Internet, the media player will be able to identify the CD and import all the track, album and artist information.

Step 3

Notice that each track has a checkbox next to it that is already checked. Un-check a track's checkbox if you do not want to import that track. If you want to import the whole CD, leave all the boxes checked.

Step 4

Select the file format you want to save your music as. In iTunes, click "Import Settings" next to "Import CD" at the bottom of the window, and select the file format you want in the "Import Using" drop-down menu. You can choose between AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), MP3 (MPEG -- ½ Audio Layer 3) and WAV (Wave Audio Format). AAC is the default setting. Windows Media Player will give you the option to change your format settings later.

Step 5

Click "Import CD," "Rip CD" or "Copy From CD." In Windows Media Player, a new window will open asking if you want to keep your original format settings or alter them at this point. You can choose to change the format settings for higher or lower file quality and a different file format. You can choose WMA (Windows Media Audio), WAV (Wave Audio Format) or MP3 (MPEG -- ½ Audio Layer 3) file formats.

Step 6

Click "OK," "Import" or "Rip" and the media player will begin copying each track to your music library.

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