Creative 73PD000000016 User Guide - Page 32

Ripping Audio CD Tracks Rather than manually entering track information, retrieve such audio CD information from CDDB before ripping tracks. Change the default ripping format and bitrate for higher or lower quality audio. See MediaSource's Help file for details The first phase in making an MP3 file is extracting audio data from an audio CD. To extract audio data, you will need a CD-ROM drive that can extract digital audio data, and a program known as a Ripper. With Creative MediaSource Organizer, you can rip tracks from most audio CDs. This program uses the CD-ROM drive to read the audio tracks from the audio CD and stores it on your hard disk. The time needed for a successful audio extraction depends on: ❍ CD-ROM drive speed ❍ defects, like scratches on the audio CD ❍ error-checking features on the CD-ROM drive Encoding is the second phase of making an MP3 file. Encoders are used to convert the stored audio tracks, usually WAV files, into MP3 files. MP3 encoding is considered lossy compression, which means that some data is lost during compression. However, using the standard sampling rate and bitrates will ensure that your MP3 files retain much of their audio quality. The standard bitrate of most MP3 files is 128 Kbps, although some are set higher, at 160 or 192 Kbps. Higher bitrates will result in larger MP3 file sizes, with better audio quality. Use Creative MediaSource Organizer to extract audio tracks and encode MP3s. You can rip an audio CD's tracks to your player, hard disk or PC Music Library. You can choose to rip an entire CD, or selected tracks from the audio CD. Transferring Tracks or Files 3-5