How to Rip a CD in Windows 8

Synopsis: You can convert your audio CDs to a format suitable for storing in your Windows 8 music library and playing on external MP3 players using Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player has features for managing your music, videos, photos and more. It is particularly well suited to accessing media in your Windows 8 libraries.

For media that are not currently part of your Windows 8 libraries, there are facilities to convert and import them. One such facility enables you to convert the tracks on an audio CD to a format suitable for storing in your music library, a process known as ripping.
(Note that you need to be aware of any copyright issues when making copies of media, and you are responsible for dealing with any such issues.)

To start Windows Media Player start to type the word “media” on the Windows 8 Start Screen. When you see “Windows Media Player” in the list of results click or tap it and the Windows Media Player application will open.

Now insert the audio CD you want to rip into your CD/DVD drive. Wait a moment and you should see a track listing as in this example.

Provided that you are connected to the Internet, Windows Media Player will try to get both album information and the album cover art from the appropriate database sources on the Internet.

Usually, the information and cover artwork will be found, but if it can’t you can enter it yourself manually.
If the album information and track listings are not found, right click (or tap, hold and pull down a little if you’re using touch) on the album cover and select the option “Find album info”. Click “Edit” and you will see this dialog.

Enter the album information and track names and click or tap “Done” when you have finished.

If Windows Media Player can’t find the album artwork you can paste it in yourself at a later stage, as we’ll show you later.

Now select the options you require for ripping the CD. Click or tap the “Rip settings” button and you will see this menu.

Choose the required Format and Audio Quality from the appropriate fly-out menu. You can also specify whether Windows Media Player should eject the CD after ripping.

Click on or tap “More options…” and you will see a fuller list of options, including some for copy protection.

Having made all of your selections, finally choose which tracks you want to rip using the check boxes next to the track names. By default all tracks in an album are ripped. Click “Rip CD” and the conversion begins. As it progresses you will see progress bars against the tracks as Windows Media Player works its way through the selected tracks. The progress bars are in a column labelled “Rip status”.

When the rip is complete, the album will be added to your music library. Select your library and you will see the ripped album there.

As we saw earlier, in this case Windows Media Player could not find the album artwork. If you have a copy of the artwork in a suitable format copy it to the clipboard, right click on the album cover in the library (or tap, hold and pull down a little if you’re using touch) and select the option “Paste album art”.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!