CD to mp3

[corkybstewart]

I have a Pioneer 300 disc CD changer and lots of CD's sitting around.  I'd like to record the music onto a computer(or external hard drive) but I'm an old guy and not real sure how to go about it with the lest expense and effort.  Any of you young compooter literate engineer types have any suggestions?

[jaybeerman]

have itunes? pop disc into puter, wait a moment and click on "burn cd." that's about it - get a 6er of good beer and some snacks and burn as many as you can before it gets monotonous

[corkybstewart]

No itunes for me.  What I want to do is get all my music-CD's and albums-recorded onto a computer, and one at a time is something I really don't want to contemplate.  I have about 400 CD's and 400 vinyl albums to deal with.

[punatic]

If you are running a Windows operating system you can use the Windows Media Player and the CD player on your computer to "rip" (copy) your music CDs to your hard drive.  You can configure Media Player to copy any music CD it hasn't seen before to your music library.  Pop a CD in and the Media Player automatically creates a copy of the music in your music library on your hard drive.  The Media Player will even go out on the internet and find the album information and artwork.  

It should only take a few minutes per CD to copy to your hard drive.  That will depend on the equipment in your computer.  Newer machines work faster.  I copied my CDs to my hard drive  years ago by letting Media Player run in the background while I worked on other things on my computer.  Every few minutes the drawer on the CD player would slide out, I'd take out one CD and put in the next.  That's all there is to it, once you tell the Media Player where to copy the music to (your music library).  

When you want to listen to your music, you just open up your music library, click on the album you want to listen to, and the Media Player starts playing it.

There are lots of fuctions available in the Windows Media Player.  They allow you to organize your music in some great ways, e.g. you can take a bunch of your favorite songs and create a playlist.  A playlist is like creating the album you wish you could have bought.  

There are lots of programs out there that will copy your CDs to your computer.  iTunes is another popular one.

I suggest Windows Media Player because there is a very good chance you have it installed on your computer already. It is easy to use with a bit of instructions reading  and a lot of people are familiar with it, so there are a lot of people who can help you if you need help.

[corkybstewart]

Is there no way that I can somehow plug the output from the CD player to my computer, push the play button on disc 1 and let it record all the way to Number 300?  I've burned CD's to my computer, that's what I'm trying to avoid.  It's not just that I'm lazy but I really don't have time to do hundreds of CD's one at a time.

[a10t2]

Is there no way that I can somehow plug the output from the CD player to my computer, push the play button on disc 1 and let it record all the way to Number 300?

Not and have it title the CDs/tracks for you. If you think shuffling 400 discs in one at a time is going to take a while, imagine typing in all the song titles.

There's a setting in iTunes that will rip any CD as soon as you put it in the drive. Turn that on, then just switch discs every time you walk past the PC. If it's a reasonably modern computer, each disc will take <5 min.

Be careful using Windows Media Player. MS loves their proprietary formats, and you could get yourself in a situation where you'd have to re-encode to play the music using anything else.

[denny]

Is there no way that I can somehow plug the output from the CD player to my computer, push the play button on disc 1 and let it record all the way to Number 300?

Not and have it title the CDs/tracks for you. If you think shuffling 400 discs in one at a time is going to take a while, imagine typing in all the song titles.

There's a setting in iTunes that will rip any CD as soon as you put it in the drive. Turn that on, then just switch discs every time you walk past the PC. If it's a reasonably modern computer, each disc will take <5 min.

Be careful using Windows Media Player. MS loves their proprietary formats, and you could get yourself in a situation where you'd have to re-encode to play the music using anything else.

Not to mention that the quality will be lower than just ripping them.

I have never had a situation where Media Player ripped to a proprietary format that couldn't play elsewhere.

[bo]

You can set media player up so it's almost automatic. You just have to be the disk changer.

[mtnrockhopper]

We burned about 400 cds on our desktop. I set it to automatically start burning when the cd is inserted and to open the door when finished. It usually starts playing the music while ripping, and stopped when the door ejected - providing a cue to insert the next one. It sounds boring, but you can do something else at the same time.

[a10t2]

I have never had a situation where Media Player ripped to a proprietary format that couldn't play elsewhere.

I believe the default setting is to use WMA. That could have changed though. I haven't regularly used a Windows machine in a while.

[euge]

If you download a player called VLC you can record what you're playing through the CD player. just hook up to aux or the microphone jack.

Edit to add another link: http://alternativeto.net/software/soundkonverter/ You ought to be able to find some nice windows ripping programs. This is the best method as mentioned previously.

[BrewingRover]

Vinyl to MP3 is a PITA. I haven't found a way to automate it. I use Audacity to record from the line-in jack, but I have to add all the metadata myself. It's a pretty powerful editor, though. My wife found an old cassette of her grandmother playing piano that I ripped. It was pretty noisy, but Audacity smoothed it out really well.

I like Media Player better than iTunes for CDs. iTunes has crappy metadata, IMHO.

[Joe Sr.]

Audacity is awesome, and it's what I've used to rip old LPs.  But you do have to put some time into it and tag all the files yourself.

Playing and recording the way you have suggested would result in one long file that would need to be edited into each song, which sounds like a lot more work than changing CDs.   Not to mention the time it would take to record all that.

I'd go with media player, and I agree with Denny that I've never had an issue with proprietary formats.

[denny]

Vinyl to MP3 is a PITA.

Have you tried a USB turntable?

[weazletoe]

.  I have about 400 CD's and 400 vinyl albums to deal with.

so uh.....when you get it all done, think you could burn those onto a disk, and send me a copy?