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Wednesday
24 July1
To rip tracks from an audioCD, first
insertthe disc into your drive. A
new window shouldopenwith a list of
the songson it.^1 Selectthe correct
album(sourced from Freedb) at the
top.^2 You can swap the artist and title
information if they’re the wrong way
round.^3 ClickOK,^4 and the software
will add your albumto its database.2
Now you can listen to any of the
tracks in the player. To rip the
songsto your hard drive, click Rip
Audio CD.^1 You can changethe
destination^2 and choosewhich
format to save your tracks in.^3 Tick
Level Track Volume^4 if you want to
keep the audiolevel consistent across
your tracks,then click OK.^53
To write audiofiles to disc, select
the tracks you want and click Burn.(^1) This opensthe Disc BurningWizard.
Choosethe audioCD option,then step
throughthe wizard until you reach the
authoringscreen. Inserta blankdisk,
makingsure your drive is selected,^2
and tweak any final options.Click
Burn^3 to create your audioCD.
MINIWORKSHOP|Rip and burn CDsin MediaMonkey
and a mini-player that can stay on top of
your open windows.
Our favourite Groove Music feature is
the ability to display artist artwork on the
Windows 10 desktop and lock screen,
changingit automatically with the song.
To enable it, click the settingsgear and
switch on ‘Display artist art’ on the lock
screen or desktop (or both).
MediaMonkey
http://www.mediamonkey.com
MediaMonkey is probably the best known
of the iTunes alternatives. It allows you to
organise and play your digital music
collection,create and export playlists,
convert tracks from one format to
another, rip and burn CDs, automatically
add tags, album art and other missing
information, and synchronise with iOS
and Android devices. The developers say
it can handle libraries of over 100,000
songs withoutslowing down.
There’s even an Auto-DJ and Party
Mode, which finds and plays additional
tracks when the current playlist ends.
While the free version should be good
enoughfor most users, a Gold edition is
also available. This has extra features
includingbit-perfect audio rips and
on-the-flyconversions.It costs £26 for
the current version or £52 for a lifetime
licence that includesall future updates.
We explain how to use MediaMonkey
to rip and burn audio CDs in our Mini
Workshop, below.
Converttracksin MediaMonkey
MediaMonkey is great for converting
audio tracks from one format to another.
Select a song, then go to Tools, Convert
Format and choosewhetherto replace
the originalfiles or save the new ones to
a different location. Select the new
format you require from the drop-down
menu – optionsincludeMP3, WMA, OGG,
WAV, ALAC, FLAC, and AAC. You can
changethe namingstyle, as well as the
bitrate, variable bitrate (which aims to
maintainsound quality while removing
data that shouldn’tmatter too much),
and mode (stereo, mono and so on). You
can also normalisethe track to reduce
extreme changesin volume, and add your
converted tracks to your library.
Groove Musiccandisplay artist artwork as wallpaperon your
Windows desktop andlockscreen
MediaMonkey makes it easy to convert your audiofilesfrom one
format to another
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