Music CD copied as Data

[LadyAngel]

A friend of mine made me a Music CD but instead of coping it as music he copied it as Data and I can only play it on my Computer.

My question is can I re-copy it as Music so that I can play it on my CD player?

Thanks so much
LA

[mcfox]

Try ripping it to Windows Media Player. If successful you should be able to burn it to another disk.

[nide44]

McFox- I never fool around with music on my computer (I leave that to my younger kids & grandkids) but lately I've learned how to record from a mike, and have used it to practice my music lessons and play it back.
I wanted to upload one song to a website, (for a critique - the banjo forum) and found that its a real pain in the a$$ to do so.
I don't understand the process (I tried-didn't work).
In some of the instructions it says to 'rip' or 'ripping' a file.
What does that mean?

[Matt A]

A CD music song is stored on the CD as a .cda file. When you rip it to the computer it converts the song to an .mp3 file. If you've ever heard of an MP3 player, this is what they play. An MP3 file is compressed so it takes up a LOT less room than a .CDA file.

What it sounds like happened is you have a disc of mp3's that will only play on the computer. You need a program that will make them into a music CD which will automatically convert them back to the correct files you need for a CD player. Windows Media Player will do just this for you if you want to do it yourself. You will need a blank CD to record on, and of course a CD burner in your computer....

[Matt A]

Bob, all "ripping" means is to change the format the music is stored in. If the music is on a cd that plays in a cd player, you have to "rip" it into another format to be uploaded to the website. Usually this means it needs to be converted to an mp3 file. Occasionally it means a .wav file, but mp3's are extremely compressed without losing sound quality. You can sometimes fit a hundred mp3 songs on a CD where only maybe 8 songs of regular CD format. The quality of the sound is the same, that's just how compressed the mp3s are. That's why they can store hundreds of mp3 songs on a tiny player the size of an old pink pencil eraser!

[LadyAngel]

Matt..Are you saying I can burn it just like I would burn any other music CD?

Yes he mentioned something about a MP3 player of songs that he did for his wife.

[Matt A]

You'll first have to look on the disc to see what's on it. If it's mp3's, all you have to do is copy them to the computer somewhere then burn them just like any other music. As long as your software says "make music CD" you're good to go.

[LadyAngel]

Since I'm kinda new at this, can I rip them to my Media Player Library and then burn them to a CD?

[mcfox]

You should be able to do that, LadyAngel (I think).

Bob - 'ripping' and 'burning' are pretty much the same as copying and recording tapes - that's the easiest way to think of it. You can also change formats from one to another - e.g. from a .wmv to .mp3 - but the bottom line is copying and recording.
:)

[LadyAngel]

mcfox...it didn't work...said to put in an audio cd....I left the cd in for awhile and nothing happened............so back to sq. one I guess....:(

[nide44]

You should be able to do that, LadyAngel (I think).

Bob - 'ripping' and 'burning' are pretty much the same as copying and recording tapes - that's the easiest way to think of it. You can also change formats from one to another - e.g. from a .wmv to .mp3 - but the bottom line is copying and recording.
:)

Isn't a special pgm needed to 'rip' a file to .mp3?.
Just changing the file with 'save as' (.mp3) didn't work for me.
It needs to be specially compressed, doesn't it?
Someone mentioned "Audacity", "Despreate Measure"
& "Music Accord"-
I tried to work Audacity, but really got confused as I'm not 'in' with
the right terminology.
The 'learning curve' wasn't as quick as I thought, and I gave up.

[Matt A]

I just use Windows Media Player (ver. 10.) to rip music CDs to the hard drive. Just open up Media Player, put the disc in the drive and go from there.........

[mcfox]

Isn't a special pgm needed to 'rip' a file to .mp3?.
Just changing the file with 'save as' (.mp3) didn't work for me.
It needs to be specially compressed, doesn't it?
Someone mentioned "Audacity", "Despreate Measure"
& "Music Accord"-
I tried to work Audacity, but really got confused as I'm not 'in' with
the right terminology.
The 'learning curve' wasn't as quick as I thought, and I gave up.
The only program you need is, as Matt says, Windows Media Player. That should be installed by default so it's on your computer anyways.

The terminology is more confusing than anything else but essentially, ripping a cd is the same as copying it would be to tape, and burning is the same as recording.

The extension thing you could probably think of much like 45rpm and 33rpm records (remember them - life was so much simpler *sigh) - you couldn't play a single at 33rpm and expect to get the proper sound and likewise and album couldn't be played at 45rpm - they both had to have the record player set to the proper speed (i.e. format).

The 'universal' music format if you want to use them across different devices - e.g. your computer and also on an mp3 player, is .mp3.

Now here's where Microsoft manage to make life difficult for everyone. By default, Windows Media Player is set to .wmv and licencing (Media Rights Management) is turned on.

"Aha!" says Bob, "wtf are you talking about now?!"

.wmv is the default format for Windows Media Player but sometimes it doesn't transfer too well to another device.

DRM, or Digital Media Rights (Management) is because of pressure from the music companies who were most p***** off that their products were being copied left and right so if, by default, music applications such as Windows Media Player applied DRM to all music copied (ripped) from CDs, it would lessen the number of pirate copies being made. That's the theory anyway.

What you have to do is set Windows Media Player to rip (record) cds in the .mp3 format without DRM being applied.

So how do you do this?

Launch Windows Media Player

Tools > Rip Music tab > mp3 (from the drop-down menu)

(Set the Audio Quality according with consideration for the amount of space you have on your hard drive)


If you are using Media Player 11, I think that should do the trick. If using an earlier version, you may need to find the option that only allows music to be played on your computer and disable it (I think).

Insert your CD into the drive with Windows Media Player already running.

You should see a menu across the top, one of which says, 'Rip'. Click on that. The album info from the cd you have inserted into the drive should be displayed.

Click 'Rip now' (or begin rip, or something like that :o )

[LadyAngel]

Thanks mcfox....I finally got it copied to a music cd, however I had to do it on 3 cd's as she had so much on the original one she made for me......:) :)

LA