Compact discs have long passed their heyday, which came in 2000, when they topped $13 billion in sales(Opens in a new window) in the US. First MP3 players and then streaming services took over. But there are still those of us with large collections of the iridescent plastic discs, and you can still find them for sale at vintage record shops and online.
Windows 11’s new Media Player app didn’t initially include CD ripping capability, but an update in preview builds of the operating system shows that it’s coming back. Here we take a look at that new feature, as well as show you some other ways you can turn your CDs into media files on your PC.
For most readers, this section will only be of interest once Microsoft adds CD ripping to the released version of the OS. Right now, it’s only in preview. But fret not: The company has committed to releasing new features to the OS when they’re ready, so you probably won’t have to wait for a major release update. For now, any Windows 11 user can already play CDs with the Media Player App, which looks like this:
(Credit: PCMag)
After the update, you get the new Rip CD choice:
(Credit: PCMag)
You can load your CD, tap that button, and you’re good to go. After it’s finished (the percent ripped displays during the process) your music files appear in the Music folder, in a subfolder created using the performer and album name, as shown below.
(Credit: PCMag)
Note that if you only want to rip selected tracks and not the whole album, you can select individual tracks (whose entries get color highlighted) and use the Rip button that appears to save a copy of the music files on your drive.
(Credit: PCMag)
Windows 11 Format Settings for CD Ripping
The new Rip tool goes beyond simple one-click operation. You have a choice of four formats for the audio files the app can create:
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AAC: Advanced Audio Coding, an extension to the MPEG-2 standard and used by Apple devices
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WMA: Windows Media Audio
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FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec
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ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec
Notably missing is MP3, which is no big loss because it delivers inferior sound quality and larger file sizes than those included.
(Credit: PCMag)
For AAC (which, like MP3 and WMA, is a lossy codec), you can also choose a bit rate from 96Kbps to 320Kbps, and for WMA you get choices from 96Kbps to 192Kbps.
For the two lossless codecs, FLAC and ALAC, there’s no such choice, since there’s no compression. Which format and bit rate you choose depends on how much disk space you want to dedicate to the music files and how picky your ears are when it comes to audio fidelity. The purists will want to use the lossless formats, but if your transferring the files to a smartphone, you may want to use a lossy codec like AAC to save on storage space.
Even if you don’t yet have ripping capabilities in the new media player yet, you still have plenty of other options …….
Source: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-rip-a-cd-in-windows-11