1-59863-169-1_CH08_127_01/27/2006 Portable Media Devices 8 Ripping, Mixing, and Burning 1-59863-169-1_CH08_128_01/27/2006 CHAPTER 8 Ripping, Mixing, and Burning Sounds violent, doesn’t it? One might think from the title that this chapter is a guide to being a good Viking baker! It’s not as bad as all that. In fact, one of the most satisfying (and nonviolent) aspects of digital music collecting is the ability to easily create playlists and mixes using your own music. If you like to create compilations of your song collection to fit your mood, create the scene for a party, or if you just want to burn a disc for the car, you’ll appreciate the tools I will discuss in this chapter. Digital music is unique in that it can be reproduced in exact detail from one medium to another. Music CDs can be copied (or ripped) with little or no loss of fidelity. The songs can be combined with other songs to create your own unique compilations. Sync the songs to your iPod or portable music player or copy (burn) them to another disc to take along on the road. Burn them in CD Audio format or simply copy a bunch of digital files directly to disc. Many car CD players can now accept CDs created with digital media players, playing the MP3 or WMA formatted songs right off the disc. This allows you to take hours of music on a single disc where the original CD format can only support 70–80 minutes. RIPPING YOUR CD COLLECTION What I’m Listening To Title: Tom Sawyer Artist: Rush Source: CD Player: Windows Media Player 10 Ripping music is not the violent act that the name seems to imply. When you copy your music to your computer it is simply converted from the CD’s audio format to a more compact digital format that lets you store your music more efficiently. Some music formats, as you learned in earlier chapters, do not reproduce the full fidelity of the original tracks. There are variations in codec and bit rate that can create perceptible changes in the music. I will discuss format and bit rate selection to help you decide which is best for your needs. I will also show you how to rip music using the three most popular media players. Media Player 10 The CD ripping features of Windows Media Player 10 offer you a large selection of available codecs and bit rates for copying your music. You can choose MP3 and WMA formats in bit rates from 48Kbps (AM radio quality) all the way up to lossless WMA which preserves every detail of the original track. Most users of Windows Media Player find the variable bit rate (VBR) settings 128 1-59863-169-1_CH08_129_01/27/2006 Ripping Your CD Collection to be the best for quality and file size. Variable bit rate encoding uses lower bit rates for slow or quiet passages, and higher bit rates when necessary to faithfully reproduce complicated parts of the music. Windows Media Player uses a quality slider to allow you to select the recording quality you wish to achieve (see Figure 8.1). You can locate the quality adjustment on the Rip Music tab in Windows Media Options. Figure 8.1 Use the quality slider in Windows Media Options to choose the encoding quality you want. Choices, Choices When you insert a CD into your Windows XP computer you usually receive a choice of actions that you can perform (see Figure 8.2). If you have media applications installed in addition to Windows Media Player, their options will also be displayed here. If you simply want to play the CD, you can choose to do so here. If you choose one of the rip options you will rip the disc using the default settings you have set in Windows Media Player (or the alternate applications you have chosen). Some applications like iTunes don’t use the word “rip.” Instead, they use the more politically correct “import.” While the thesaurus doesn’t connect these two words, trust me, they mean the same thing to your computer. 129 1-59863-169-1_CH08_130_01/27/2006 CHAPTER 8 Ripping, Mixing, and Burning Figure 8.2 Windows XP will ask you what action to perform on an inserted CD. The Rip Tab Windows Media Player 10 organizes ripping functions on the Rip tab (see Figure 8.3). When a music CD is inserted, the tracks from the disc are displayed on this tab and can be selected for ripping. Select the tracks you want to rip and click the Rip Music button. Figure 8.3 The Rip tab is the control panel for CD ripping in Windows Media Player 10. 130 1-59863-169-1_CH08_131_01/27/2006 Ripping Your CD Collection Note To select or deselect all the available tracks, click the small checkbox at the top left portion of the window. The Find Album Info and View Album Info buttons perform pretty much the same task, listing tracks and providing additional information about the album. The View Album Info goes one better, though. You can actually buy one or more of the tracks from the MSN music store. (Wait, don’t you already have the CD?) To Rip Songs in Windows Media Player 10: 1. Insert a CD into the computer’s CD drive. 2. If the system prompts you for an action, click Cancel to close the action window. 3. Open Windows Media Player and select the Rip tab. 4. Select the tracks you want to rip and click the Rip Music button. Note If you simply want to rip all tracks to your music library, you can choose the Rip Music From CD option on the system action window when prompted. Windows Media Player will rip all songs using the default settings that have been configured on the Rip Music tab in the Windows Media Player Options window. Windows Media DRM When you rip songs from a CD, you can choose to use Windows Media DRM to copy protect them. In the Rip Music settings (see Figure 8.1) you can check the Copy protect music option to use Windows Media DRM to copy protect the songs. This will keep anyone from playing these songs on a non-licensed system. Take care when making this change, as the license keys used to encrypt these songs exist only on your system. If you ever need to move them to another computer, you will need to move the license keys as well. This could be a problem if the original system has crashed. iTunes As I mentioned earlier, iTunes doesn’t “rip” music. Apple is much more refined than all that. With iTunes, we “import” tracks. 131 1-59863-169-1_CH08_132_01/27/2006 CHAPTER 8 Ripping, Mixing, and Burning When a CD is inserted and iTunes is chosen to import tracks, the tracks are displayed on a selection screen. Clicking the Import CD button at the top right of the screen begins the import process (see Figure 8.4). Tracks are imported and placed in the iTunes library and added to applicable smart playlists automatically. Figure 8.4 iTunes is a bit more genteel with its ripping process. iTunes can import tracks in AAC, Apple Lossless Codec, AIFF (an older Macintosh format), and MP3. Tracks copied from disc do not carry copy protection and can be transcoded to MP3 or another format by tools such as Winamp to allow them to be played on devices other than the iPod. Alternatively, songs can be imported directly into a compatible format such as MP3. Default selections for import codec can be made on the Advanced tab in iTunes’ Preferences (see Figure 8.5). Choose the Importing sub-tab to make these selections. To Import Songs Using iTunes: 1. Insert a CD into the computer’s CD drive. 2. If the system prompts you for an action, click Cancel to close the action window. 3. Open iTunes. Select Audio CD under the Source column heading. 4. Choose the tracks you want to import and click Import CD. Note The option to import all tracks is also offered as a choice when a CD is first inserted. Choosing this option will import all tracks using the current settings configured in iTunes. 132 1-59863-169-1_CH08_133_01/27/2006 Ripping Your CD Collection Figure 8.5 iTunes default import set- tings are maintained in the Preferences menu. Winamp As you might expect from a media player that you actually spend money for, Winamp offers a few more choices when ripping music from CD. In addition to the ability to simply rip selected tracks, the Preferences menu can be accessed from the same selection menu (see Figure 8.6). Format options are also more extensive. Default choices of MP3, WMA, and AAC can be extended by adding encoding plug-ins. These are available from Winamp’s website. You can pick up encoders for OGG/Vorbis and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) there. There are free versions of Winamp, but these come with limitations. With the free versions you cannot rip media to MP3, and ripping and burning speeds are limited. Also, without the ability to encode MP3, transcoding options are severely limited. These versions are an excellent way to see if you like Winamp, but at $19.99, the professional version removes any limitations. When you’ve completed ripping tracks from your CD, Winamp creates a playlist based on the ripped tracks, and gives you an option to burn the ripped tracks to CD.