There are many reasons for wanting to convert your audio CDs to MP3. All those stacks of CDs are bulky, CDs can be easily scratched or damaged, and you can only play up to 74 minutes at a time, without having to switch CD. http://www.philipsmuseumeindhoven.nl/phe/products/e_cd.htm Plus, CD’s, and especially recordable CD’s, deteriorate over time, meaning you might not even be able to play your disks after a few years http://www.myce.com/news/cd-recordable-discs-unreadable-in-less-than-two-years-6450/. Storing your MP3s on your computer allows you to mix and merge your music, using less space, make safety backups of your music, and allow for easy, continuous playback. Even better, combined with a Whole House Audio system, you can become a Disk Jockey in your own house, using your Computer as the nexus of your Whole House Audio system.

But before you can achieve that, you need to convert your CDs to MP3 format, and store them on your computer. There are many programs that will help you with this. This guide will show you how to convert a CD to MP3 for the most widely used, free programs.

Apple’s iTunes is one of the most well known Digital Media management programs. It allows you to scan your computer for existing digital media, connect to the iTunes store for purchasing songs, and connects your computer to Apple products like the iPod and iPhone. By default, iTunes does not allow connection to third-party MP3 players. iTunes is free of charge, and can be downloaded from the apple websitehttp://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ However, iTunes is not configured to encode MP3 files by default.


In order to successfully convert a CD to MP3 using iTunes, follow these steps:

1. Open iTunes
2. From the menu, select “Preferences...”
3. Click “Advanced”, “Importing”
4. At the “Import Using” option, select “MP3 Encoder”
5. At the “Setting” option, select “Good Quality (128 kbps)”. This setting is fine for every-day audio playback. If your CD collection comprises of High Fidelity music like Classical music, you might consider selecting 192 kbps. With this setting, the resulting MP3 files will take up more space, but quality will improve.
6. Deselect “Play songs while importing”
7. Select “Create file names with track number”. If you deselect this option, the order of MP3 songs within the album may different from the original album order.
8. Click “Ok”.
9. You are now ready to start converting CDs to MP3. Insert an audio CD into the CD/DVD drive.
10. iTunes will detect your newly inserted CD, and propose to import the CD. Click “Import”. This will start the actual conversion process.
11. After a few moments (up to some minutes, depending on the speed of your computer and CD drive), the conversion is finished. The resulting MP3 files are now stored on your computer, and available in your iTunes. Additionally, you can have iTunes search for the album cover, which will then feature in the cover flow.

Your CD has now been succesfully converted to MP3 files.

Windows Media Player, or WMP, is a free digital media player by Microsoft, which runs on the Microsoft Windows platform. WMP allows users to record and play back digital media, distribute media to handhelds and consoles, and supports audio- and video-streaming.

WMP can convert CDs to MP3 format, but is set to its native WMA format by default. In order to use WMP to convert CDs to MP3, follow these steps:

1. Insert your Audio CD. If Windows pops up with an ‘action’screen, select “No action”.
2. Start Windows Media Player
3. Select the “Now Playing” tab.
4. Select “Rip”
5. If WMP doesn’t automatically list the correct album information, select “Find Album Info” to force it to do so. This will make WMP to query the internet for Album information on your audio CD. Almost all commercially available audio CDs are listed, so unless your CD is already home-made or extremely obscure, the correct album information should be retrieved.
6. Go to “Tools”and select “Settings...”. This will bring up an Options screen.
7. Select the “Rip Music” tab.
8. Below the “Rip settings”, you should find “Format” with a drop-down box. Select the drop-down box, and select “MP3”. Click “Ok”.
9. You are now ready to convert your CD to MP3 format. Click “Rip Music”. This will take a little time, up to several minutes, depending on the speed of your computer and CD drive.

When done, you have successfully converted your CD to MP3 format, and the MP3 files are now available in Windows Media Player, and on your computer’s hard disk.

If you don’t want to use proprietary programs like Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, there are still many alternatives, which are either free, or for a small fee. One of these alternatives is Smart Audio Converter. Smart Audio Converter is free to try, and can be bought for $19,90 http://www.smartaudioconverter.com/. The program can convert CDs to MP3 format, but can also convert between WMA, MP3, WAV, OGG, and several other formats.

Direct CD to MP3 conversion is only available in the ‘Pro’version, which is also free to try, but will cost $29,90 for the full version. The free version is limited to 60% of any set of files, while the full version does not have this limitation.

As Smart Audio Converter is not proprietary, it doesn’t require re-configuration to create MP3 files. Once a CD is inserted, Smart Audio Converter shows a screen with the files on the CD. On the main screen, you can select the format output (MP3 by default), and Output folder. Once you select “Convert”, your CD will be directly converted to MP3 files.