Ripping and Burning with iTunes

How to Import Music to your Mac using iTunes

Get the best quality compression while importing music
When you import songs from CDs to your iTunes library, you can set the type and quality of compression that iTunes uses to copy the song. To do so, open iTunes Preferences and then go to the Importing pane. From the Import Using pop-up menu, choose an audio format. MP3 provides high quality with moderate file size. AAC is the format of songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. AAC provides higher quality with smaller file sizes than MP3. Other available formats are AIFF or WAV, which are standard audio formats that provide excellent quality but generate large files. You can also choose the Apple Lossless Encoder to produce an audio file with the same quality but about half the file size of an AIFF or WAV file.

How does iTunes know which songs are on your CD?
iTunes uses an online service (known as the CDDB) that stores song identification information (also known as tags). CDDB supplies the album title, artist and track names, the year the CD was recorded, and more for almost two million albums. If you’re connected to the Internet, iTunes automatically connects to CDDB and searches for the tags when you insert a CD into your computer.

How much music can you store on your computer or iPod?
You can store more music in iTunes than most people are likely to own or ever buy in a lifetime. You can have thousands of songs in iTunes and still have plenty of room for all the other things you do on your computer. For example, you can store about 15,000 songs on a 60GB hard disk or 60GB iPod.

Copy music from a CD to iTunes by following these steps:
1. Insert a music CD into your computer. Notice that iTunes opens automatically.
2. In the list that appears, use the checkboxes to select or deselect the songs you want to import. Songs that are selected will be imported.
3. After you’ve selected the songs you want to import, click the Import button. iTunes will begin copying the music from your CD to your iTunes music library.
4. After the songs are imported, click the Eject Disk button.
5. Select Library in the Source list to view all the music in your iTunes library, including the songs you just imported.

Burning CDs with iTunes

Store more songs on a single CD
If you want to fit more songs on a CD, you can burn an MP3 CD. MP3 CDs can store about 150 songs (compared to the 12 or so a standard audio CD can store), but you won’t be able to listen to an MP3 CD in a standard CD player. You can, however, listen to an MP3 CD on your computer or in a special digital music player that uses the MP3 CD format. You can select the type of CD you want to burn in iTunes Burning preferences.

Burn your purchased music to a CD or DVD
Its a good idea to burn your purchased music to a CD to DVD so that you have a backup copy in case something happens to your computer. Simply click the triangle next to the Music Store icon in the source list, select the Purchased Music playlist, and then click the Burn button.

If your playlist is longer than the space on a CD
If the playlist is longer than what will fit on a CD, you can either delete songs from the playlist or have iTunes burn the remaining songs on one or more additional CDs (depending on the amount of space needed).

Copy a playlist to an Audio CD by following these steps:
1. With iTunes open, insert a blank CD into your computer.
2. Select the playlist you want to copy to CD. Before burning your CD, you can rearrange the songs by dragging them to different positions.
3. At the bottom of the iTunes window, check the size of your playlist to make sure it doesn’t exceed the amount of space on a CD.
4. Click the Burn button to begin copying the songs from your computer to the CD. You can watch the progress in the iTunes window.
5. When the files are copied, a CD icon will appear in the iTunes Source list.
6. Click the Eject button to eject your CD.

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