Ripping CDs

So pick one of your CDs. (If it's clean and shiny the rip will take a few minutes; if it's scratched, it will take longer as your computer attempts to use error checking on the disk to recreate the missing data.)

Next, you need a computer program to do the ripping. There are many programs that do this; and most of them are free. We'll look at two; but first, don't neglect the possibility that your computer came bundled with commercial CD-ripping software. Although the screenshots won't match anything I can show you, the concepts and terms will be similar.

Ripping Vinyl (and Shellac)

If you have, as I do, a large collection of the platters we used to call "records" and had given up hope of ever being able to enjoy them on your MP3 player, smartphone, or other device, be of good cheer! Because there are now several methods of doing so: Replacing the albums, reading records by laser, playing them on your original turntable, and playing the records on a USB turntable, are four that we'll look at.

Ripping Tapes

The final frontier, so to speak, of ripping your analog music sources, is tape—or, more broadly, any source that produces a "Line Out" signal that you used to have to plug into an amplifier, but can now (with the appropriate patch cable) be plugged directly into your computer's "Line In" jack. The actual recording/digitizing will be done with Audacity, whose use I've previously described for use with tracks taken from vinyl; the basic usage of the application is the same, of course; but digitizing from tape has special challenges of its own. Tapes, for starters, do not include surface noise like records; but they are (especially in the form of cassettes and 8-tracks) prone to "tape hiss".