HOWTO: Converting music CD's To MP3

Making good quality but small MP3s for your mobile from your CD collection.. (with LAME and EAC encoders - FREEWARE)

Intro:

Converting your CD collection into MP3 (for listening on your mobile) is a daunting task for the uninitiated.

For this reason, we will provide you a step-by-step guide to help you on your way.

Please note, this is not a definitive answer to the problem (as there are more ways to do this than to skin a cat), but it is one that:

1. Produces top-quality MP3 encodings

2. Works on most recent Window PCs.

3. Comes at low/freeware cost.

(If you have a copy of Ahead Nero, or Roxio Easy CD or equivalent then you may find one of those all-in-one commercial applications a better choice for you).

NB. Actually, my own favourite commerical PC Media app is JRiver's Media Center. (see http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/ 

Requirements:

Before you start, make sure you have the following components:

Windows 95 or better PC	(the faster the CPU the better. MP3 encoding is a very CPU-intensive task). The newest Pentium IV 3Ghz + will encode a lot faster.
PC Hard drive with at least 800MB of space	(the more the better. .WAV flies are uncompressed music files, and an average CD is max 650MB of music files.)
Access to the internet to download the necessary softwareand join FreeDB.Org	Our HOWTO uses the following software: Exact Audio Copy - http://www.exactaudiocopy.org Lame MP3 Encoder - http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/11/1/2/11-1-2-15.shtml FREEDB.ORG Membership
Your vast collection of CDs to convert to .MP3 format	NB. Remember that obtaining your MP3 files from other sources than your own CDs is a copyright infringment, and fails to reward the original artists for their creativity.

Step 1: Download the software and install on your fastest PC

Use the links above to download the latest LAME MP3 encoder (at time of writing v.3.97 ), and the Exact audio Copy software.

Also, to be able to use the great online reference for CDDB information (this is all the information on tracks, artist, music category), make sure that you register at FreeDB.Org (or equivalent). It will save you a bundle of timew and effort, because most of the CDs in the world have been classified on here, which saves you the trouble of re-typing all the information off the Album sleeve.

When you run Exact Audio Copy for the first time, it will ask you for your FreeDB.Org login information.

Also, it will attempt to locate the Lame encoder on your PC hard drive.

Step 2: (From CD to PC Hard drive)

Extracting the audio tracks from the CD-DA music cd to your PC as .WAV files.

There are many "ripping" applications that will perform this task for you, but a decent and v. cheap (send a postcard cheap!) one is called Exact Audio Copy (written by student, Andre Wiethoff).

This program will focus purely on extracting the audio track contents of your music CD onto your PCs hard drive as .WAV files. However, it also can be used to extend the extraction to call an external MP3 encoder, to turn the newly created .WAV flie straight into .MP3 format. This is a very convenient feature, and means that disk space requirements can be minimized (as it will delete .Wav files as it converts to .MP3 one at a time).

It also has some very powerful functions for controlling the verification of damaged or error-strewn areas of the CD that it picks up, this enables the user to get clever with the different Digital Audio repair software available to fix the .Wav file before its conversion to MP3.

Having opened up Exact Audio Copy, place your first CD into your DVD/CD drive, and the list of tracks will appear in the EAC display window. If you have registered your details with FreeDB.Org, then it should now be able to extract the necessary track information.

This track information will be encoded into the .MP3 files by default.

If you select all the tracks on the CD, and press the MP3 button, it will prompt for the location where you want the output files (.MP3) to be written to.

Then, away it goes, and converts to .Wav format (all the time checking for error correction issues), and onto .MP3 format.

By default, EAC will convert to the alt-standard preset of Lame. This is a very high quality setting for portable player use, and created an average bit rate of around 160kbps for most sources.

Storage space is still at a reasonable premium for mobile phone use because we are limited at the top-end MMC cards to 1Gb of space. Also because carrying your music with you, and listening on the bus, on the train, or outdoors means it is a noisy listening environment, anything above 128 ABR is probably just a waste of valuable space.

So i would strongly recommend changing the default settings for the Lame Encoding within EAC. To change this, open the menu item :

[EAC-Compression Options]

Go to the tab: [External Compression]

1) Make sure you have the Lame.exe available for use
2) Go to EAC | Compression Options | External Compression and check the box that says Use external program for compression
3) Make sure the box marked Parameter passing scheme says User Defined Encoder (not Lame Mp3 Encoder)
4) In the box marked Program, including path, used for compression, show the path to Lame.exe, so that EAC knows where it is
5) In the box marked Additional command line options, enter your preset first, then a space, then %S (source file), then another space, then %D (destination file) so that EAC knows which file(s) to process. As an example:

--alt-preset fm %S %D

This should average 112kbps (using ABR variable bit rate processing), and will make very condensed files.

(around 2.5mb for every 3min of music on average from my experience.)

However, if you find the sound quality is just not good enough for you, the next up in quality is:

--alt-preset hifi %S %D

(These MP3 files should average 160kbps, so files will be about 3.75mb per 3min of music)

Best thing is to experiment and come up with a setting that produces a sound quality you are happy with. Remember, the lower the bit rate, the more albums you can fit on your MobyMemory card.

Also, make sure that the [User CRC Check] is selected, and if you have tag info, ID3 Tag Info should be selected too.

Now you are ready to churn through your CD, converting to MP3 format.

I suggest that you output the Album track files to distinct folders, as this will make copying and pasting by album onto your memory card much easier.

Step 3: MP3 Files From PC to MobyMemory Card

This step is where a MMC card reader becomes invaluable to you. Transfers of MP3 files from PC to your MMC via your PC-Mobile connection is almost guaranteed to be painfully slow (This is certainly true for the Siemens SX1, Nokia nGage, and Nokia 6600, amongst others). Transfer speeds below 100kbps seem the norm here.

You may be lucky enough to have a newish laptop or desktop PC that has a built in memory card reader. (My Samsung Q20 laptop has a combined Memory Stick/SD slot which works great with our MMC cards).

If not, then look for a USB2 or PCMCIA Memory card reader. Most of these devices will be compatible with MMC, SD, Compact Flash, and maybe Memory Stick and xD, and SmartMedia.

Try and avoid USB (1.1) readers, as these will mean the transfer of your MP3 files could be up to 5X or more slower.

With a USB2 or PCMCIA reader, you are only likely to be restrained by the speed at which your memory card can write (or read) the data to its solid state memory. In terms of our cards, that is up near the 2MB per second for read, and 1.5MB per second for write.

So plug your reader into your PC, and plug the memory card into the memory cards reader.

Windows 98 / XP / 2000 systems should recognize the reader as a new [Removable Disk], and assign you a Drive letter in Windows Explorer.

Then, it is as simple as dragging and dropping your newly created MP3 files into the [Removable Disk] icon.

When you have transferred all your MP3 files onto your memory card, then you should stop the plug and play device from your Windows Task bar by double-clicking on the [Remove Hardware] icon (Green arrow).

This will open up the [Unplug or Eject Hardware] dialog.

Select your memory card reader from the list of devices and press stop.

Now you can safely remove your memory card reader from your PC, and then remove your MobyMemory card from your memory card reader.

This is the safest way to disconnect your memory card from the PC, and avoid any open applications which were accessing the memory card, from causing possible file corruptions.

Now all you have to do is get your MobyMemory card back into your mobile...

Please check the specific mobile forums listed at http://forums.mobymemory.com if you need help with this.

In the newer mobile phones now being released (like the Siemens SX1, Nokia 7610, and sharp GX-30), they have more convenient and accessible card slots for swapping in and out your memoryc cards.

We hope this helps you at least try out the MP3 music players on your new mobiles! It may even convince you that you now have a genuine alternative to carrying a separate dedicated portable music player...