Nov. 2005 Meeting- Music

Making copies of Music:
Music is saved and created in many format on your computer. Some of the types are:
1: Audio CD ---- CDA normal audio of CD quality (Track 1.cda)
2: Program Computer -music-WAV music or sound file for the computer (tenderly.wav)
3: Windows Music- WMA is MicroSoft's private compressed music format (tenderly.wma)
4: IPOD---------------AAC is Apple's version of compressed music (tenderly.aac)
5: DVD/CD* players-----MP3 the most common compressed format (tenderly.mp3)
6: Portable players ---- Most can play MP3s, CDA and WMA (*.mp3, *.wma, and *.cda)
For general purposes CDA and WAV are the same with few exceptions. As you can see this makes for mass confusion when talking about coping music, since it will depend were you intend to play it after you copy it. There are least 7 more, less common formats for specific players. For this meeting we will only work with CDA and MP3 formats since they are the most common and will play on the most common play back units ( DVD, Portable and CD)
Equipment Needed:
To make copies of your music on a CD your computer must have a CD-R or DVD burner. (DVD burners can burn CD's). CD-R disks, a CD or tape of the music you want to copy. Software that converts from CDA to MP3 or MP3 to CDA. We will use Music Match JukeBox for this since it is free and handles most of the problems. You might have it on your computer or you can download it.
Converting from CDA to a compresed file (*.mp3) is called “ripping”. There are many ripping programs and as many adherents as programs. “Audio-philes” can never agree on what is quality and I won't get into that. Some still say vinyl (LPs) are the best quality. Music Match Jukebox even allows you to plug in that old “record” player and “oldies” rip them to mp3s.

Using Burner Software: Making a duplicate CD
1: The first and simplest is to use the software supplied with your CD Burner. Put the audio CD you want to copy into your CD or DVD player. Before your close the drawer, hold down the shift key and close the drawer. This will stop the CD from playing when the drawer closes. It also skips the copy write protection program on most disks. If you have a separate CD-R drive go to step two, If not you must first open explorer and open the Audio CD drive. You can then highlight and copy the files (Tracks) to a folder on your hard drive.
2: Insert a blank CD-R disk into your burner. The burning software will start and select audio CD.
3: This will open a screen like Explorer to select the drive to copy and the tracks you want to copy. This can be either a folder on your hard drive or a CD in the separate drive. There will be one box for the title and on for artist.
4: Select the tracks and burn the CD making sure that you click the finish box so it can be player on any CD player. The burner software will take over and make sure that the CD drive is fast enough to supply data to the burner, check space available, and start writing to the new disk. Depending on your burner speed it will take 2 to 12 minutes.
Don't do anything while this is going on. Don't run other programs or type, it will cause the compute to share the memory and could cause “Buffer under runs” and ruin the disk. Most modern burning software accounts for this problem, but it is still not a good idea.
5: When you see the message “Disk successful” your are done. You can eject the disk and it will play on almost all CD players.


Making MP3 or CDA disks with Music Match.
Open Music Match Juke box. The screen for Music Match varies with each version, but generally the playlist is in the upper right corner. The Library is centered across the screen. See figure 1. The upper left of the screen show the album art and functions of the program. Along the left side of the screen are additional options for viewing and playing. The audio CD is at the bottom of the screen. See figure 2.
When you then insert a music CD into the CD drive it will automatically recognize the disk and if you are connected to the internet look up the title of the album, the tracks titles and the artists. It will also provide the picture on the liner cover. This feature requires that you are online.
In the recorder box, you will see Music match has selected all the tracks. In the options menu you have the option of converting them to MP3 or CDA files. The newer versions offer other format conversions. You can also select the location for saving the file and whether you want them in your playlist. The quality of the conversion i.e. Biterate and file size can be specified.
Once you click the start button Music match controls everything. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour depending on the number of tracks and length of the tracks.
After the track are converted you select the tracks you want on your CD and burn them to a CD or MP3 CD. If you have the early free version you can make five free burns. Later version don't have this limitation. You can use you CDR software to burn the files to a CD MP3 format simply by burning a data CD and selecting the MP3 files you have created.