How to copy (or rip) a music CD to a Windows computer.
In an age of streaming and digital downloads, many of us still have a collection of music CDs. Whether it’s to preserve your favourite albums, create a digital backup, or simply listen to your music on a modern device, ripping CDs to your computer is easy to do and completely free.
This guide will walk you through the simple steps to convert the tracks on your physical CDs into digital audio files.
How To Copy A Music CD
To copy a music CD onto your computer, load an audio CD into the CD drive. Depending on how your PC is configured, the CD might start playing automatically, or maybe a File Explorer window will open.
Whatever happens on your PC, just close any windows that open and stop the CD from playing. You just want to be at your desktop with the audio CD in the CD/DVD drive.
Click the Start button and type “media player“. Click Media Player (App).
Rip CD With Media Player
- If this is the first time you’ve used Media Player it’ll probably open at the Home screen.
- Click the title of your CD in the navigation menu in the left hand panel.
- On smaller screens the navigation panel could be hidden. Click the 3 horizontal lines to open the navigation menu
Rip Settings
Before beginning to copy your audio CD, check the Rip Settings. Here you can select which audio format your want to rip the CD in and also change the bitrate (where applicable).
Click the Rip Settings button. If you’re using a smaller screen you might need to click the “See More Options” button (3 horizontal dots).
On the Rip Settings window you can change which audio format you’d like to save the ripped CD in. By default Media Player will copy the CD in the AAC format, but you can opt for either MP3, WMA, FLAC or ALAC formats.
Click the drop down arrowhead and select the format you want to use.
Some of the formats allow for different Bitrates to be used. Higher bitrates produce better quality rips but at the cost of larger file sizes.
Audio Formats.
When ripping music CDs you’ll have to decide which audio format to use. There’re two main types of format, lossy and lossless.
Lossy formats permanently remove some of the audio data and then compress the resulting file to reduce the file size.
Lossless formats do still use compression, but the decoded audio is an exact bit for bit replica of the original.
When you’re happy with the rip settings, click the Rip CD button.
Media Player will start copying the CD to your computer.
You can see the progress of each track in the right hand column.
Summary
As Media Player copies the CD, it’ll create a folder with the artist name inside your Music folder to save the audio into.
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Something For The Weekend
Change the folder icons of your music folders to the CD covers.
When you’ve finished ripping your CD collection, make them really stand out by using the CD cover art as the folder icon.
Simply download the cover art by searching Google Images and then follow these guides to create stunning icons.
