Imation

Thanks to the digital music revolution, you no longer have to buy an entire CD when you only like one or two songs, and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your living room. On your home computer you can download MP3 music files from the Internet, store them and play them back on a PC, transfer them to a portable MP3 player, and/or burn them onto a blank CD and listen to them on your stereo. You can even create an entire MP3 library from your existing CDs. What are you waiting for? Here is some information for anyone just getting started with digital music.

What's an MP3 file anyway?

How can you fit one minute of music from a CD into 1/10th the space on disc or CD-R? The answer is simple: MP3. The MPEG layer 3 audio code significantly compresses the original audio source with very little loss in sound quality. The compression up to 12:1 produces a very little degradation. Tighter compression can be achieved, but it will result in sound degradation. MP3-format music can be played on computers, handheld MP3 players, and special CD/DVD players that are specifically designed to play MP3 files. Generally speaking, MP3 cannot be played on older CD players and in many car stereos.

Downloading Music from the Internet

To begin downloading and using digital music (MP3 files) from the Internet you need:

A computer with plenty of RAM, lots of free disk space, a sound card, CD-ROM burner drive and an Internet connection. If you plan to edit sound files, keep in mind that each minute of uncompressed audio in WAV format requires about 10MB of disk space.
A software application that can manage and play your MP3 files. The latest versions of many new computers arrive with an all-in-one program like AudioCatalyst, iTunes, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox or Real Jukebox that includes everything you need to create and play MP3 files.

Choose a safe place to download music from a growing list of Legal Sources for Downloadable Music - subscription-based sites like EMusic.com, Apple (iTunes), or MusicNet offer thousands of downloadable songs in MP3 format, most priced between $1 and $2 each. The sites offer quick and easy tutorials for downloading music specific to their service-usually as easy as registering, searching for songs and then downloading them. If you have a default MP3 player installed, the song may download to a temporary folder and begin playing automatically. If you want to save the file so you can listen to it later, right-click on it and choose 'Save Target As' to download it to your hard disk.

After you've downloaded your MP3 files, you can listen to them right away on your hard drive or portable MP3 player.

Storing your music files

If you want to put your music onto a CD that you can play in your stereo, you'll need a CD burner and the software that came with it. Most applications support MP3 music files and can write them directly to CD. However, most stereos are not set up to understand MP3. You'll need to convert your MP3 files into CD audio files. Using the CD creation software (i.e., Easy CD Creator, Nero, or Sonic Record Now) that came with your burner, select audio layout, the MP3s will be decompressed back into .wav files and then can play on most stereos. If you use Data Layout the files will remain compressed and you can backup many more songs onto a CD. There are also several inexpensive applications (such as HyCD Play&Record and PTS-Audio CD MP3 Studio) that allow you to directly burn audio CDs from MP3 files. The software guides you every step of the way and requires only general computer use skills.

Backing up and archiving your music on removable optical music ensures you have your collection for years to come. Plus it keeps your hard drive happy-audio files are very large and can eat up space. Choose write-once CD-R (recordable) media is you are burning the one disc to share or give as a gift. Choose rewritable CD-RW media is you are backing up your system or testing out sound quality issues. Currently, you can fit about 150 four-minute MP3 songs on a single CD (at 128 kbps).

Creating MP3 Files from Your Existing CD Collection

Music is stored on a CD in a specific audio format. While you may be able to play CDs from your computer, to transfer them to a portable MP3 player, you need to convert your existing CDs into MP3 files. To do this, your CD burner must have the software for ripping (extracting) audio from CDs and encoding software to convert the ripped files to MP3. There are a few all-in-one programs available, such as Media Jukebox and Windows Media Player that can play, rip and encode to MP3 from your audio CD.

To Convert Existing CDs to MP3s:

Rip the CD audio to WAV file format. This converts a track from the CD into data (WAV files) stored on your hard drive.
Play back the WAV file. It is a good idea to play back the WAV file to check the sound quality. If you hear any popping or clicking, it means that you need to adjust the settings and rip it again. You may have to try this a few times to find the settings that work best on your system.
Encode WAV files into MP3s. Once you have the music tracks ripped from the CD onto your hard disk in WAV format, you need to encode the WAV data into MP3 data. This will compress the data into a file 1/12 the size of the WAV format by discarding bits of the recording that the human ear is incapable of detecting. The size and sound quality of the MP3 file is a function of the bitrate used-the higher the bitrate, the larger the file and the better the sound quality. The general standard is 128 kbps (kilobits per second). It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours to encode an entire CD, depending on your system and your software.
Delete the WAV files. Once the encoding is finished, delete the WAV files from your hard drive to free up space. Then rename your new MP3 files so they mean something to you.