Convert your own CDs to MP3 with an MP3 Coverter

This page may take some time to load.. Please wait

If you would like your CDs professionally converted, please see details of our Conversion Service

The best and easiest converter for your CDs to MP3 is Audio Catalyst.

Audio Catalyst is here here for $29.99, about £19.

If you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you must also install the following patch to enable Digital Audio extraction. By default these versions of Windows do not allow Audio Extraction direct from CDs. Once this patch has been installed, audio extraction will work fine.

ASPI Audio Patch Download

This is an exe file, please click open or run from location when a box pops up. If you would like to keep a copy of the file for later use, feel free to click save as or download. Once you have downloaded, run the file from your computer to install.

You may have to restart your computer, so please make a note of this page to return to finish off.

1) Load up Audio Catalyst

2) Click on Norm, tick the box Use Normalizing and set to 98%. This will prevent different tracks from CDs playing loud then quiet as you play your music. All tracks are set at a similar level so that changing the volume between tracks should not be necessary.

3) Click the MP3 button, set to Grab to 'MP3 file', then constant bit rate and then drag the Encoder to 192 KBs. 192KBs is the same quality as a CD so when playing back, no degradation of quality will occur. If you would like to use 320KBs, this will allow for the highest sound quality playback of audio as this is what radio stations use. Please bear in mind, the higher the rate the bigger the file.

192KBs will be about 5mb for each 4 minute track.

Now click the advanced button:

4) In the advanced box, tick the top 5 boxes including the 'Force simple stereo'. Click OK, then OK.

5)    Now click Settings, then General

6)    The directory to store files in should be the one you want to store all your music. Make a new folder on a spare hard drive, and then click the browse button to point AudioCatalyst to save mp3's there.

The ASPI box should be ticked, select the CD-Rom unit you want to use for extracting.

The default settings usually work fine, though if you're having problems when extracting you can experiment with the Rip Method.

Now click on Naming on the bottom menu. Tick every box in the 'Create filenames from' and put them in the Order using the up/down buttons as shown below. This makes for a sensible folder structure when you come to play music. In the directories section, tick both Artist as directory and album as directory.

This will create folders with the artist name, along with a sub folder with the album name, with the tracks within the folder as below.

7)    Now click Rip Offset and tick the Spin up disc, click OK.

8) Now click on settings CDDB, and then put a tick in the box for 'Auto-Query'. This will obtain the track names automatically when you insert a CD saving you a lot of time and effort typing them in manually.

Once a disk is detected, the program will automatically retrieve details from the Internet. This is how you you will see the details below, all you need to do is simply click 'Grab'. Once finished, insert the next CD and again click Grab.

That's it! You are now ready to go and convert all your CDs to mp3s....... Enjoy.

Once you have your files, take them with your everywhere, use an apple Ipod or Archos MP3 Player, even Pocket PCs play CD quality audio via the headphone socket.

Alternatively, If you would prefer that we professionally convert your CDs details here

Apple Ipods

 All New Apple iPod 20GB

All New Apple iPod 15GB

All New Apple iPod 40GB

Archos Mini Players

Archos Gmini 220 MP3 player/recorder USB2.0.

AV380 80GB MP4/MP3 player recorder with Video recorder module

Send mail to sales@cd-mp3.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: April 11, 2006