Download iTunes & Insert Your Audio CD

To convert your audio CD to mp3, first download the free iTunes music program to your computer. You may already have iTunes on your computer, but if not, it’s definitely great software to have to manage mp3s and other digital music and media formats. Best of all, it’s free. You can easily convert the audio CDs you already have to mp3, but you can also purchase and download music and movies to your computer in the iTunes Store. iTunes is available for both Mac and PC, and you can download it here.

Once you have downloaded, installed, and opened up iTunes, insert your CD into your computer’s CD or DVD drive. iTunes will automatically recognize your audio CD and display it in the navigation column on the left-hand side of your iTunes window. You should now see a track listing on the main part of the iTunes window, and on the bottom right-hand side of the window, you should see two buttons. One will say “Import Settings…”, and the other will say “Import CD.”

Audio File Formats

If you really need to have your music in mp3 format (rather than another audio format – AAC, in particular), you will need to adjust your Import Settings before converting your audio CD. If you have an AAC-compatible digital music player, such as the iPod, you don’t need to worry about the settings. If you aren’t sure, try a google search, or this article on AAC-compatible digital music players. mp3 and AAC are essentially the same other than their compatibility with various digital music players. mp3 is more widely compatible.

So, if you do prefer the mp3 format, 1) click on the “Import Settings…” button. A dialog box will appear. 2) Where it says “Import Using,” choose “MP3 Encoder.” 3) The “Setting” preference below this changes the audio quality that your audio CD is converted at. If you have limited space on your hard drive or music player, and aren’t worried about the quality of the sound, “Good Quality (128kbps)” should be fine. Most people won’t notice the change in sound quality between this and “Higher Quality (192kbps),” but you may want to experiment just to be sure you are satisfied. If you click “Custom…” you can go as high as 320kbps, or even lower than 128kbps, if you like. Spoken word and audio book CDs can usually be enjoyed just fine at 96kbps, and take up far less space – which is good because audio books are often very long. Choose the settings that are right for you, and 4) press “OK.”

Import Your CD

Once you have the right settings, 5) click “Import CD.” iTunes will now convert your audio CD to MP3 (or AAC, whichever you chose), and organize it by Artist and Album in your iTunes Library. When the conversion is complete, you can find the digital copies of your music by clicking on “Music” on the left-hand side of your iTunes window. Click through and play a track!

You can now eject your CD by clicking on the eject icon next to it on the left-hand navigation of your iTunes window.

You now have your music in a digital format – ready to enjoy on your computer, laptop, iPod, or whatever digital music player you prefer. It’s that easy.

Follow these easy steps, and you’ll soon be listening to your favorite vinyl records on your CD player, or even on your iPod.

The Harder (but free) way to convert vinyl to CD

The cheapest way to transfer your vinyl to CD is to use a free audio program, such as Audacity, which is available for both Windows and Mac. This is what I’m going to show you below.

The Easy (but cheap) way to convert vinyl to CD

Using Audacity will require some manual slicing up of the audio, and cleaning up of noise, as well as finding another tool with which to burn the audio to a CD, so if you’re willing to pay some money, you can buy Golden Records Vinyl to CD Converter for Windows or Mac, and it will make the process go more smoothly.

The Easiest (but most expensive) way

If you’re really hardcore about converting vinyl to CD, and don’t mind spending a few hundred dollars, you can buy a turntable that will record your LPs to CD directly.

Here are the things you’ll need convert your vinyl to CD

That is, if you’re going the easy, or the harder way. I don’t have an LP to CD turntable, so you’re on your own if you buy one of those (though I’m sure it’s not that tough).

• Vinyl records or LPs you want to convert
• A record player with some sort of audio output. You probably have RCA outputs, but if you have USB, that’s great.
• A computer with some sort of audio input. You probably don’t have RCA inputs, thus you will need the next item.
• Appropriate connectors to get the audio from your record player into your computer. This is the most variable part of the instructions. Chances are, your turntable has RCA outputs; and your computer doesn’t have RCA inputs. Chances are, your computer has a 3.5mm microphone input, and your turntable doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio output. I use female-to-female RCA couplers, which connect the RCA outputs on my turntable to an adapter that converts male RCA connectors to a 3.5mm male connector. I then connect that male connector into the microphone jack on my computer. Ideally, I would use a female RCA to 3.5mm male connector, but I use what I have on hand.
• A CD burner – either internal, or external to your computer. This is of course optional, if you are fine with just having digital files, such as mp3′s to put on your iPod, iPhone, or other portable music device.
• Software. If you’re going the harder route, you’ll need Audacity, and iTunes. If you have another program other than iTunes that you use to burn CDs, you can of course use that instead.

Here’s how to convert your vinyl to CD using the free Audacity. You’ll of course have to download and install it first.

Get the music flowing into your computer

After you’ve downloaded, installed, and started up Audacity, you need to make sure the audio from your record player is being picked up by audacity. Choose whatever configuration of adapters you need to get your turntable audio going into your computer. You’ll probably be using an RCA to 3.5mm adapter. Plug the RCA cables from your turntable into the RCA plugs on your adapter, and plug the 3.5mm adapter into your computer’s microphone, or “line in” jack.

Now start up your record player. You probably can’t hear much because your record player isn’t being amplified. But, it is providing a signal to your computer. In Audacity, look at the options that are available in the drop-down box. One of them should be “Line In.” This is the option you will want to have selected. On my Mac, the correct option is “Default Input Source,” but I had to first change my input source by going into Preferences > Sound > Input and selecting “Line In.”

Press the record button on Audacity. If you have selected the correct input source, you will now hear your music playing. You’ll also see waveforms of your music on the new Audio Track that has been formed. If not, you may need to play around with your input settings a little, either within Audacity, or at the System level. If you’re on Windows XP, you may need to adjust the Default Device for Sound Recording in your Control Panel > Sounds, Speech, & Audio Devices > Sounds & Audio Devices > Audio.

Optimize your audio settings

Press Stop on Audacity, and celebrate just a little. But now you want to make sure you’re getting the best quality audio into your computer. Look at your sample audio track. It should say that it is a “Stereo, 44100 Hz 32-bit float” track. If it doesn’t, most commonly, it probably says it’s a mono track. You need to change this in Preferences > Audio I/O. Under Recording > Channels, change “1 (Mono)” to “2 (Stereo).” While you’re there, make sure that Device is set to “Built-in Input.”

Now you should optimize your input levels. Ideally, you want the loudest parts of the music to be as tall of waveforms as possible, without “clipping.” So, delete that last test audio track, and let’s make another. This time, keep an eye on the Input level monitor on the top right hand corner of Audacity. Adjust the slider with a little microphone on it underneath the record button so the monitor never quite maxes out – only coming close when the music hits loud points. If the monitor maxes out, a little vertical red bar will appear at the end of the monitor. Make a note of the input level you’re at, move it down a bit, and make a new audio track, adjusting until the red bar doesn’t show up anymore.

Record the music

Once you’ve got your audio settings optimized, you’re ready to start recording. Stop your turntable, delete your sample audio track, then press record again before starting up your turntable (you’re going to need a sample of that initial bit of noise from your turntable). Start up your turntable and record your first track. If you want to record the entire side, go ahead; but it will be easier to break your music down into tracks if you do them one at a time. Unfortunately, there’s no way to speed up this process, you just have to sit and enjoy the music.

Remove noise from the music

On your audio track, click and drag on that bit of audio that was recorded just before the music started on your LP. Then, go to Effect > Noise Removal…. Since you’ve already selected your bit of noise, click on Get Noise Profile on the dialog box.

The dialog will disappear. Delete all of the sound you just sampled, so that the actual audio of the song is at the beginning of your audio track (you want to do this so that your Preview will have music in it when you’re tyring the Noise Removal).

Now, select all of the audio track, and go again to Effect > Noise Removal…, and this time Step 2 will be highlighted. You can adjust how much noise you’d like to have removed. You may want to hook up some headphones to your computer at this point to Preview a couple of times to make sure you’re removing the right amount. If you remove to much, you may hurt the integrity of the music – too little, and, well, you’ll have noise. Once you’re satisfied, select “Remove Noise.”

Export the music

Now that you’ve removed the noise, you’re ready to export your track. Go to File > Export as WAV…, and save your track, making sure to name it in some way that makes sense. If you’ve recorded an entire side, you can just select a song, and choose “Export selection as WAV….” If you’re going to skip CD burning entirely, you can export directly to MP3 if you wish.

Burn to CD

Once you’ve recorded all of your tracks, it’s time to bring those tracks into iTunes, which is also free, and will help you burn the music to a CD. Create a new Playlist by going to File > New Playlist, and name the playlist. I like to go with the format: “Artist name: Album name.” Now, with that playlist selected, drag all of your files to your iTunes window. This will add those songs to your iTunes library, but also add them to your Playlist.

If you really want to get all of the metadata correct on your CD, select all of the tracks in your Playlist, then right click on them and choose “Get Info…” this will bring up a dialog box where you can set the metadata for all of the tracks on the album. Fill out this information, press “OK,” then repeat this process for each individual track, to get the track data correct. Of course, you can skip all of this entirely if it’s not important to you.

Now, click “Burn Disc” on the bottom right-hand corner of the iTunes window, choose “Audio CD,” and click “Burn.” You’ll of course have to have a blank disc handy.

So, that’s a free, though somewhat complicated, process for converting vinyl to CD. If you want to simplify the process, you can buy Golden Records Vinyl to CD Converter, or buy a Vinyl to CD turntable.

Mind you, there’s a number of different methods that someone can use to do this; but many of them are complicated, and they often require multiple software programs.

The Free (though more complicated) Way

One method, which is outlined in this great article, involves first getting the FLV file from YouTube. You can do this by using various software programs or browser plugins, or manually extracting the FLV file by hacking the URL a bit.

Another method, as described in this blog post, involves installing a bookmarklet. When you visit a YouTube video, you click on the bookmarklet, and it will generate a link from which you can download an MP4. Alternatively, you can also install a greasemonkey script – if you’re a Firefox user – to automatically place the link next to YouTube videos that you watch.

The Cheap (and easy) Way

The tool that I like to use is called Cucusoft YouTube Mate. You can download videos off of YouTube with it with the free trial; but to convert to the many available video formats, you can purchase it for a small price. You can try it out for free – it will simply put a watermark on your converted video.

First, download Cucusoft YouTube Mate for Windows, and install it on your computer.

Next, find the YouTube video that you want to download, copy the URL onto your clipboard (Edit > Copy).

Now, download the video off of YouTube. Go to Download > New Download Job… on YouTube Mate. The “Video URL” field will be automatically populated with the URL that you copied, but if not, just paste it into the field (Ctrl + V), and press OK. Depending on the size of the video file, it may take awhile to download the video. It will download the file as an .flv, which YouTube Mate will be able to convert into a number of other formats in the next step.

Now, convert the YouTube video into an iPod compatible format. Make sure the video you just downloaded is selected in the file list, and choose the appropriate format in the “Profile” drop-down menu. You can convert the video into a format compatible with iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV, PSP, or Zune. MOV, WMV, MPG, and MP4 are just some of the formats you can convert YouTube videos to.

Now, load the YouTube video into your iTunes library, and sync it with your iPod – or, if you sync manually, drag the video from your iTunes library onto your iPod. You’re now ready to enjoy your YouTube videos on the go.

So, there’s a simple way you can download and convert YouTube videos, and load them onto your iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, or other device.

Just a reminder, make sure you review YouTube’s Terms of Service and Copyright Notices to ensure you are using content within their guidelines.