Streaming music platforms have become the most convenient way to enjoy our favorite music anywhere and without taking up space on our mobile or hard drive. However, they all require a fee, except for the free version of Spotify with ads, a version that has a series of limitations that do not make it the best option.
If, over time, you have bought a large number of CDs and have a large collection that has been gathering dust for many years, the possibility of selling it should not be considered, since this format is not valued and you will barely make any money. extra. The best thing you can do is convert CDs to MP3 to always have them at hand, for example, on a NAS to access its content from any device, on a cloud storage platform or even on an external hard drive.
On the market we can find a large number of applications that allow us to convert audio CDs into MP3 files, applications that, for the most part, include a series of conversion and/or quality limitations. While it is true that these applications are very good and include a large number of functions, they are not really necessary since Windows includes an application that allows you to carry out this process with a couple of mouse clicks.
We are talking about the Windows Media Player application, also known as Windows Media Player, which is natively installed in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. And if, for whatever reason, we have uninstalled it from the computer due to not using it, we can install it again from the Microsoft Store through this link.
Convert CDs to MP3
The Windows Media Player application has received a large number of improvements over the years, allowing us not only to play music files and convert CDs to MP3, but we can also use it to play any video file that we have stored. on your computer, create playlists and much more.
If you want to convert your CDs to MP3 with the Windows Media Player application, we just have to follow the steps shown below.
- First and foremost, and logically, we must insert the CD into the reading unit.
- Next, we launch the Windows Media Player application. This application is available from the Start menu.
- As soon as we open the application, we go to the panel located on the left. This shows the Home Page, Music Library, and Video Library options. Right next, the name of the CD that we have in the reading drive will be displayed.
- Now, we go to the right panel and click on RIP Settings. Here we must set what type of quality we want to use to perform the conversion. By default, ACC is displayed, but we can select MP3, FLAC, WMA, ALAC. We can also select the bit rate, set by default to 256 and which we can increase up to 320 kbps.
- Once we have selected the format and bit rate, we click on Save and we return to the main screen of the application. Here we must click on the Copy to CD button to start the process.
As we can see in the image above, Windows Media Player automatically recognizes the contents of the CD and adds the album title and the name of the songs, so it will not be necessary to edit the files later.
Once the process is complete, the files will be accessible from the Music Library menu. If we want to copy them to an external hard drive, they are available in the Music directory under the name of the album.
