MANAGING MP3 FILES

How do I create an MP3 file?
YOU NEED A RIPPER and AN ENCODER.

RIPPER - A CD Ripper copies the audio data digitally from an audio CD to your hard drive. The reason you will want to do this is that when the song(s) have been copied your computer, you will be able to convert, or encode, it to an MP3.
Check out our list of recommended rippers.

ENCODER - A program that is capable of converting WAV files into MP3 files (or any other compressed format) are called encoders. Your choice of encoder, and quality settings (the most important one is of course bitrate will decide how well your MP3s sound. Some encoders are free, others are shareware or pay-ware. You can have a look at some of them on our encoder page. Older encoders (and some of today's) use a command-line interface (DOS), but you may sometimes get a frontend (graphical interface) for them. The most famous makers of encoders today are XingTech and Audioactive. The most important features of an encoder is of course quality, and the second most important one is speed.
Check out our list of recommended encoders.
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If your player skips when playing MP3s, then you may try some of the steps below. The specific instructions are for Winamp, but the main idea is to:

1. Increase the priority class of your player, giving it access to more computer power at the cost of other programs running at the same time.
2. Close any other programs you may have running.
3. Reduce the load on your system caused by the player, by decreasing sound quality.

Don't get scared off by the length of the instructions. You may only have to do parts of it to make things work OK, and I think everything should be pretty clear.

1. Press CTRL+P while running Winamp (it has to be the active window).
2. Select "Options" on the left hand side of the window that just opened.
3. On the bottom right hand side, pull the "Process Priority Class" to "High" or "Realtime"
4. On the left hand side, under "Plug-ins", select "Input" (double-click "Plug-ins" if "Input" is not visible). Doubleclick "Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder" on the right hand side.
5. In the new window, drag the "Priority" bar to "Highest".
6. Click "Ok" to close that window.
7. Select "Output" on the left hand side.
8. Double-click "Nullsoft waveOut plug-in" on the right hand side.
9. Set Priority to the highest level. ("Time-Critical")
10. Now experiment with the settings (if necessary):
    
    

11. Click "OK".
12. Click "Close" (make sure that the waveOut plugin is still selected - the DirectSound plugin works, but isn't made for ordinary listening).
    
    Did that help? If not, then keep going:
13. Close as many programs as you can. Look at the bottom right hand corner of your taskbar to see if there are any other programs still running if you have closed all the windows. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and try to close any additional "hidden" programs running. (dont try to close "Explorer" or "Systray" though)
    
    Better, but still not ok? You will have to reduce sound quality to make MP3s play on your system: (this should NOT be necessary unless you have a very slow Pentium or a 486)
14. If your computer is very slow, then try adjusting the settings under "Output Mode" (follow instructions 1-4 to find it), and select the Decoder tab. First disable Stereo and press Ok. Start playing an MP3. If it is still skipping, then return here again and reduce the quality setting aswell. Do not disable 16 bit output, as it will not lower the CPU usage. Also make sure that the correct CPU type is selected.

Still not working? You may have a graphics card problem. This typically appears when scrolling in Netscape or Internet Explorer. What happens is that your card interrupts your system so that it cannot deliver sound data to your sound card in a steady stream. Try disabling smooth scrolling in IE. Select Internet Options under the Tools (IE5) or View (IE4) menu. Then select the "Advanced" tab, scroll down to "Use Smooth Scrolling" and deselect the checkbox next to it. If this does not help, then you will probably have to get a new graphics card.
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First, you will have to decode (convert) the MP3-files into WAVs and write them as CD tracks using your CD-R or CD-RW and burner software. There is a very good program called PTS AudioCD MP3 Studio, which automates the whole procedure. You can fit about 74 minutes of music on one audio CD.
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CD-->WAV
One of the most crucial tasks for producing high quality MP3s is the conversion from CD audio to .WAV format. This step is necessary. There are some programs that can produce an MP3 directly from CD audio but they are also using an MP3 to WAV conversion to accomplish that.

The crucial point in this conversion is to do it digitally and not using analog methods. That means that it is NOT correct to connect your CD audio to your line-in of your sound card. This kind of a connection would result of an analog to digital conversion, and the quality of the result greatly depends on the quality of your soundcards' ADC (analog to digital convertor).

In any case the result is not exactly the same as the source. The correct way of doing audio extraction from a CD is to do it digitally. This is the task for specialized software programs that are called CD-Rippers. The CD-Ripper reads the tracks of a CD (CD-audio) and writes them to the hard disk as .WAV. Note that a 4-minute song when written as .WAV file takes about 40-50 MB, so be careful about your hard disk space. This cnversion is made digitally and if it is done correctly should result in a perfect copy of the song.
Two things must be noted here:

1. You need a CD-ROM drive that can do this kind of extraction. The majority of the new CD-ROM drives can do that. The speed of the CD-ROM drive is the most crucial factor for the speed of the CD-Ripping. The best CD-ROM drives can Rip in speeds 8-12x so that a full 70min CD can be audio extracted to .WAV in 10min!
2. You need a good CD-Ripper program for doing the job. A collection of the best CD-Rippers are in our specialized CD-Rippers section so check them out. Each CD when ripped produces a .WAV file of a specific file size. Here you can find an extensive list with the correct file sizes of several Cds. So give a try to some of the CD-Rippers to see which one is doing better with our CD-ROM drive. You must save the files as 16-bit as 44khz stereo to ensure maximum compatibility with the encoders that you need afterwards.

LP-->WAV (Also MD, Tape, DAT-->WAV)
Yes you can also convert your old LPs and Tapes to .WAV files (and then to MP3 of course) to keep them in a digital format! To do this you must connect your sound card LINE-IN to your home hi fi Tape-Record adaptor (check your sound card manual for instructions on doing that correctly). Note that your sound card used in that case to do analog to digital conversion so you need a quality sound card for quality results.

You start the Volume Control in Accessories. Select Options and then Preferences. Click Record and make sure that all the inputs are checked before you click OK. You have sliders for each input available. Select Auxiliary - (same as LINE-IN). Set the slider near the top of its range. You have just told the sound card to record from the selected channel. Now you need a program to tell the sound card what to do with the input it gets. You can use Cooledit, Adaptec's Spin Doctror. You select the Record function, set stereo mode, 8 bits and 44.1 KHz. You must then select output to file.

Then adjust the recording levels so as the level indicator of the program never exceed the maximum. Any audio info above the maximum is lost so be careful! You adjust the recording level with the Windows Volume control and click record.

The output file that you have will be large. Note that if you play let's say a whole side of an LP you will end up with just a single huge .WAV file. You must split this file to smaller files (each one with a song) using an .WAV utility like Spindoctor, Cooledit, CDWAV etc. These programs can also help you treat clicks, hiss and noise as well as normalize the sound levels of various recordings to the same output level. All these tasks need a lot of disk space and a lot of time.

WAV-->MP3
This is done using specialized programs that are called MP3 Encoders. We have a specialized section on them to so check them out. The encoding has two major parameters. Speed and Quality. The speed and the quality of all the encoders varies so you can try some them to find which is more close to your needs. XingMP3 encoder (used in AudioCatalyst and MusicMatch also) is superfast keeping good quality. A freeware MP3 encoder you can try is BladeEnc. The most important point to consider when encoding MP3's is the bitrate that you choose. The majority of the MP3 available on the Internet are encoded at 128kbps which results in a very good quality/size ratio MP3. If you encode at 192kbps you will have a superquality result with a little larger file so I think this is the best option for keeping digital MP3 copies of your CDs. Please note that it is illegal to distribute or broadcast copyrighted music in any format (so in MP3 format also) without the permission of the copyright owner. See our legal MP3 section for detailed info on that.

MP3-->WAV This is called Decoding and the programs used are MP3 Decoders. You can find the best of them in our specialized MP3 Decoders section. The speed of the decoding varies from program to program so check them out.

WAV-->CD Almost all the specialized software programs for CDRs and CDRWs can do that task easily. Easy CD Creator, Nero, WinonCD etc. all make audio CDs from WAV files.

There are rumors that the new versions of the above programs will support direct creation of audio CDs from MP3 files. So check back often!
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Some CD players can't handle CD-Rs. This is because of the fact that burnt CD-Rs have less 'contrast' between the 0's and 1's (actually bumps or holes) on the disc than ordinary audio CDs (pressed). A low-intensity laser, such as the one in a portable CD player, will not be able to distinguish the from eachother while a good CD-ROM will do that just fine (some CD-ROMs have problems with CD-Rs aswell). You might want to try using another brand of CD-Rs before giving up.

CD-RWs have even less 'contrast' between the 1's and 0's, and rarely work in anything other than a CD-ROM. Stay away from them completely if you can. CD-Rs are still a much cheaper and easier way of making CDs.

Also make sure that you haven't accidentaly written WAV files to your CD-R. Your CD maker program has to convert them to CD audio first (this should be done automatically by your program, but it is still possible to make that mistake).
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