Ripping Your CD's to MP3 Using AudioGrabber

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Step 4: Encoding the WAV files to MP3 format.

At this point, we are ready to proceed with the encode to MP3. Your first try should have only ripped one or two CDs, so you can test them after the encode, and make sure they are going to be suitable for bitrate, naming conventions, etc. After you become comfortable with the process, you will probably want to rip a number of CDs before doing the encoding process. If you have a large number of songs to encode, this will take some time, so I generally start the encode before I go to bed, or when doing something else.

Click the File menu in AudioGrabber, choose Make MP3, and you will see a file picker dialog box like this after you browse to the folder you ripped to. We then highlight the first song, scroll to the right all the way, and SHIFT-Left Click, which will highlight all the songs in-between as well. Note: Because of a limitation with filename sizes, how many files you can encode at one time will vary. If you highlight say 500 songs, and the program does nothing, you have exceeded that limit, try selecting less files when you encode. There is no way to tell how many exactly, as it depends on the size of your filenames and path, but you will soon get a feel for how many you can encode as a general rule.

Now, click the Open button, and the encoding begins... You will see a progress dialog similar to this one, which will show you each song as it is being encoded.   As mentioned previously, this can take some time depending on the speed of your computer, so go grab a cup of coffee, and dust off your speakers...

When the encoding has completed, you will see something like this in Window's Explorer. You will notice that AudioGrabber has created subfolders under the WAVIN folder for Artist name (in this case Various, since they were compilation discs), and then Album name under artist.

You can now either delete the intermediate WAV files in the WAVIN folder, or make copies onto DVD or another external drive before deleting them (highly recommended, as you can always re-encode them again later without having to re-rip them from the original CD). WAV files take up quite a bit of space, so unless you are going to be playing them instead of MP3, you will want to remove them from your working drive.

Unless you need to further process your files for BPM or Album art, etc., you are now ready to import these files into RockIt. Click the Add Tracks button in RockIt, check the Search Subfolders button, then browse to the WAVIN folder (or whatever you called yours), and all the MP3 song files will show up in the file list, Select All and click Add.

So, that's about all there is to it. Check to insure the quality of the bitrate is good enough for your needs, and happy ripping :)

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