Burning and Ripping CD's

Burning is the process of adding files to empty CDs and ripping is extracting them. This has created the first ever human to human files transfer system. Basically, someone buys an album and rips it to his computer and when his friend wants the same album, the owner can simply burn the album to an empty CD and voila--the friend gets the album for free. Nowadays, however, this is barely used as everything we could ever need or want is on the internet--either by torrents or by Limewire. Nonetheless, burning and ripping are commonly used processes and here is a brief description of both processes.

Let us start with the ripping process. First of all, you will need a program and a CD-ROM drive to do this. A typical software might be a simple Windows Media player or other free software that you can get on the internet. Firstly, you insert the CD into the CD drive and then using the extraction program, you can select the song or songs to extract. What the program will do is to play the song and then simply record it again. The quality diminishes a bit as the file is usually changed into the MP3 format or WMA format, although the music is still very much clear and of audible quality. This entire process is completely legal as you are allowed to do pretty much whatever you want with your bought CD. It is however, a violation of copyright when you use this ripped music and burn it into another CD.

CD burning comes in two slightly different aspects. As mentioned above, the ripped music is in formats like MP3 or WMA. These formats don’t work on ordinary CD players; they would work on CD players that have MP3 or WMA compatibility. However, if you have a CD burner, you would be able to create AUDIO CDs and these would be able to play on ordinary players. The other type is a Data CD where the ripped songs are stored like one would store MP3 files onto an MP3 player, like an IPod. To burn a CD, you must have a CD burner software like NERO. Simply insert the CD into the CD-RW or CD burner drive and follow the software’s instructions. You can also burn using a CD, but for this you would require 2 drives.

A lot of things can go wrong with burning CDs and that’s why sometimes you just need to do over the whole process. Furthermore, the speed at which you burn will affect the quality of the finished CD; the slower you take to burn, the better the final quality.

A Computer Guy

Burning and Ripping CD's