Copying music to a USB drive ??

[leon]

Hi Guys maybe someone here could help please.
New cars these days don't have CD Players so one can insert the CD and play there music.
However one has access to a USB socket so one has to copy music to this USB device and insert it into the socket in the car, I Think. ?
So how dose one copy the CD's they have and load them onto the USB drive.

Thank You.

Leon

[LewisM]

Generally it is through a copy program like CdWin or DVDPro or....lots of programmes out there. Need to copy the track onto computer, converting it to an mp3 then onto the usb drive directly. Most programmes do it all for you. Now this is a grey copyright area so caveat emptor. Everyone does it but that doesn't make it legal. If you have the original cd - which you seem to - and it is for personal use I believe it is 100% legal and within the end user rights.

Other option is to purchase the music via various online dites like iTunes or whatever. Easier but costs.

[lazjen (Chris)]

One possible way is to use CD ripping software to get the music off the CD. Then you can copy that to your USB.

I can't recommend any specific software though - I haven't had the need to do it in years.

[Wavytone]

iTunes. Rip and mix then sync a portable devce (iPhone or whatever).

Most car USB ports assume an iPhone or similar will be connected and the music played on that, the car receiver usually selecting it as "media" or "aux".

Basically:

1. Rip your CDs into iTunes. If you have a robust backup strategy you can trash the plastic thereafter.

2. In iTunes, create your own playlists to put whatever tracks you like in whatever order.

3. Sync to a portable music player - iPhone, iPod, iPad or an android

4. Connect to car usb.

5. Play from the player. If your car has hands free controls usually the forward/back buttons will work!to skip tracks.

[Shano592 (Shane)]

Windows media player will let you rip from cd, then you just copy the ripped files to usb.

[leon]

Excellent, thank you very much.

Leon

[Tandum (Robin)]

How old's the car?
All the new cars we rented in Europe had blue tooth for the device and a usb socket just to charge it.

RTFM

[CJ (Chris)]

Rip your entire cd collection to your pc or a NAS, add a wifi streaming audio player to your hifi & no more faffing about with cd's. Playlists to suit different listeners, moods, times of day etc. Add more players for the garage etc. It's the way audio is going.

[leon]

Thanks again, the Car is only 18 months old, and all this device and blue tooth stuff is really of no interest to me, but thanks you for the response.

I, or at least Alice, needs some music whilst we travel, for me I never ever use the audio stuff in the car, and It would die of lack of use so I said I will try and stick some of the CD's onto a USB and see how we go.

It just needs to be simple.

Thanks, Leon

[Renato1 (Renato)]

My favourite CD Ripper has always been Lavavo, but it's not free.

This article has a list of some other free rippers to check out.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cd-ripper.htm

If you do rip to MP3 format, make sure you set it at 320Kbps for best quality. Otherwise various songs will sound less bassy, or more tinny at 250Kbps or lower. 128kbps MP3s sound subaverage to my ear.
Regards,
Renato

[leon]

Thank You Renato, I will heed your advice about the quality aspect.

Leon

[AstralTraveller (David)]

If you were on Linux then 'abcde' (a better cd extractor) is the way to go. However, since you are on the dark side you'll have to take advice from others.

One issue I've found playing from a USB stick is the players ability to address folders. It's probably just a limitation of the 'quality' item I bought but the problem goes like this. I set up my music in folders like so: m:\Artist\Album\Track01.mp3. So I pretty quickly wind up with dozens to 100s of folders on a 4GB stick. However there is some small total number of folders the player can address so I found a large amount of my music (>50%) wasn't available because the player can't 'see' it. It's there when I plug the USB into the PC but not when I put in the player. They expect you to use a few large folders, sort of like m:\Rock, m:\Folk etc and then use their silly software to make a play list, or just use shuffle. Completely unsuitable for someone who grew up on LPs. As I say it probably won't happen, but if it does I've just saved you a week of hassle and lots of email to the manufacturers 'customer support'.

[leon]

Thanks David, yes, you are right, I have already experienced that, and another thing that happens is this.

If I load a disc to the USB and it has 20 songs it is numbered 1-20 which is fair enough, however if I load another disc with 1-18 songs or any amount for that matter, the first song goes under the first of the first disc and subsequent discs there after.

So I end up with a USB with 40 or so number ones under each other than 40 number two's, 40 number three's and so on.

So when I play this thing in the car, it plays the first song from the first disc loaded than the first song from the second disc loaded and when that is done it starts on the second songs of all the discs loaded until i has gone through the lot and then starts again.

Leon

[silv (Annette)]

heheheh

The Converting software-s I know download the album/song metadata off the internet while converting and then do some other magic so that the track files are not all just called "track 01"...
At least they do that since I made the software-s settings say so

- after obviously having headed into the same dilemma as you did.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by leon

Thanks David, yes, you are right, I have already experienced that, and another thing that happens is this.

If I load a disc to the USB and it has 20 songs it is numbered 1-20 which is fair enough, however if I load another disc with 1-18 songs or any amount for that matter, the first song goes under the first of the first disc and subsequent discs there after.

So I end up with a USB with 40 or so number ones under each other than 40 number two's, 40 number three's and so on.

So when I play this thing in the car, it plays the first song from the first disc loaded than the first song from the second disc loaded and when that is done it starts on the second songs of all the discs loaded until i has gone through the lot and then starts again.

Leon

My Lavavo ripper (free download to test but then you have to pay) automatically looks up the CD's song titles on the internet, then rips the songs with each song's name if I click that option - which saves me having to type the song names. Unfortunately, my old version doesn't give me the option of ripping with both track number and song title in the name - so then I manually have to go through the song titles and rename by adding 01,02, 03 etc in front of the matching song name, else the tracks are ordered alphabetically. I don't know if the newer version does this automatically.

Anyhow, there are heaps of rippers on the market which may make this simple for you. Maybe even some of the free ones.
Regards,
Renato

[CJ (Chris)]

I use Media Monkey. It looks up tiles etc, encodes to MP3, has numerous file naming options including user defined, and it's free. If you want to encode to the FLAC format you have to install a flac encoder, which be downloaded for free, but for listening in the car you really don't need the audio quality of FLAC files. 256kbps mp3 is more than good enough quality for the car but with modern usb sticks being huge and cheap you may as well encode just the once at 320kbps.
If you want to put specific songs in a specific folder, make a playlist, display the contents of that list in the right hand pane, then drag the CONTENTS of that playlist from the right pane, NOT the playlist from the leftpane, to the folder on your stick. Job done. If you drag the playlist from the left pane, it will create album name folders for each album on that playlist on your stick.

[Regulus (Trevor)]

I use Freemake audio converter from freemake.com. Simple to use and gives a good result.
Then you just have to drag them, either Album at a time, or multiple albums together, to the USB stick in the Explorer (or file manager) window Leon.
It keeps the folder (album) intact and the mp3 player in the car will let u skip track by track or switch albums (folders).
I have the same system.

Trev

[leon]

Some more good info, thank you indeed.

Leon