Downloading From The Internet; Ripping' Audio Cds - Creative Sound blaster wireless music User Manual

About Music Files
Downloading
from the
Internet
'Ripping' Audio
CDs
You can download music files from Internet music sites, or 'rip' music files from
audio CDs to your computer. However, you can only play back MP3 and WMA files
with Sound Blaster Wireless Music.
MP3 and WMA files are music files that have lossy compression encoding, which
means that some data is lost during compression. Using standard sampling rates
and bitrates will ensure that these music files retain much of their audio quality.
The standard bitrate of most MP3 files is 128 Kbps, although some are set higher,
at 160 or 192 Kbps. The standard bitrate for most WMA files is 64 Kbps. Higher
bitrates will result in better audio quality, but this means that file sizes will be
larger.
To get MP3 files from the Internet, use a search engine to locate sites with MP3
content. You can also try out these sites (web sites listed here are correct at the
time of this document's release):
• NOMADWorld (www.NOMADworld.com)
• SoundClick.com (www.soundclick.com)
• Soundbuzz.com (www.soundbuzz.com)
Follow the instructions on the sites to download the music files to your computer.
The first phase of 'ripping' is extracting audio data (usually WAV files) from an
audio CD. Encoding is the second phase, where the audio data is converted into
MP3 or WMA files. To 'rip' audio CDs, you will need a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive that
can extract digital audio data, and a program such as Creative MediaSource that
can extract and encode this data. With Creative MediaSource, you can 'rip' most
audio CDs, as well as organize and transfer these 'ripped' files.
The time needed for a successful audio extraction depends on:
• CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive speed
• defects, like scratches on the audio CD
• error-checking features on the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
About Music Files A-1