How to Rip a CD with iTunes & Import MP3s on Mac & Windows

How to Rip a CD with iTunes & Import MP3s on Mac & Windows

Do you have some audio CDs laying around that youd like to digitize and convert to mp3? Ripping a CD and turning the audio into MP3 or M4A tracks is remarkably simple with iTunes, and the process its he same on both a Mac and Windows PC. This is a great approach if you want to digitize a CD music collection to bring onto a computer for archival purposes, listening through iTunes, or even for later copying to an iPhone or iPad. Now I know what youre thinking, not many modern Macs and PCs have CD or DVD drives anymore, right? But that shouldnt stop you from ripping a CD if your really want to, because you can use any , a SuperDrive (you can also ), or even . To use this tutorial to convert a regular audio CD into MP3s, you will need the following: Assuming you meet those simple requirements, youre ready to convert the audio CD into MP3 files on the computer. Lets get started. The process of ripping a CD and turning the audio into MP3 files is the same whether iTunes is on a Mac or Windows, heres how it works: When completed, the progress bar will vanish from iTunes and the audio tracks will have a little green checkmark next to them in iTunes. Youre done, you now have MP3s of your songs from the CD! Now you can eject the CD from iTunes and youll find the mp3 tracks in your regular iTunes music library. If youre ripping a large collection of CDs repeatedly, once youre done you might want to so that the iTunes library looks like its supposed to. As a quick side note, iTunes will default to import an audio CD using an MP3 encoder with high quality settings at 160 kbps. Those iTunes import settings can be changed if necessary, to either raise or lower the quality and bitrate, or to change the import format from MP3 to M4A if desired. Once the songs are stored in your iTunes library, you can do whatever you want with them. Listen and enjoy, copy them to your iPhone or iPad, (just remember that and its a little different), whatever you want. Enjoy your freshly ripped music! And if you have any questions or comments about using iTunes to rip CDs into mp3 format, let us know in the comments below.