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Christmas DivertimentoBy Francine Schwieder |
If you have a new Mac with a built-in CDR drive and an OS that will run iTunes, you can make not only backup CDs (which I strongly advise you to do), but audio CDs as well, which can play on a regular CD player. All you need to buy are the blank CDs. You can copy tracks from your favorite audio CDs onto your hard drive, then combine all your favorites from a number of CDs, and burn your own custom musical extravaganza. You can convert them into MP3 files, and, if you have OS X, burn these onto a CD using the Finder, and play them with an MP3 player. This will give you hours and hours of music on just one CD. You can collect MP3 files off the Internet or from kindly friends (which is where my first batch came from), and use these files to make either a regular audio CD or an MP3 CD. If you have audio-in jacks on your Mac you can transfer your collection of LPs (or tapes or whatever you play on your stereo) to your Mac and thence to the modern digital world. Now I know almost nothing about the technical aspects of doing this sort of thing, and I managed to make playable CDs, so I know you can, too. Of course I have friends and family who do know a great deal about all this, and I consulted them freely. I will just as freely share what I discovered with you.
Let's start with music that is already on a CD, and, if you are like me, there will be songs you love, some are OK, and a few you really can't stand. You have several CDs by some artist that are like that, and you want to combine all the ones you like, some of the OK ones, but leave out all the one's you don't like, and end up with a truly enjoyable audio CD.
Launch iTunes and insert the first CD into your Mac's CD drawer. You'll see the Audio CD icon appear on your desktop, and in iTunes the CD will appear in the Source pane, and a list of all the songs will appear in the Playlist pane, with the total time and total size (in MBs) displayed at the bottom. If you double click on the disk's icon on your desktop you will see a bunch of file icons with the same names as in the iTunes window, but with .cdda at the end of the name (e.g. "Track 01.cdda"). That means the files are regular audio CD files. If you're not sure if you want to include a song you can play it by double clicking on it in the Playlist. If you know which songs you want you can select them from the CD and drag them to a new folder you create for that album. Let's say you want tracks 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17 and 18. Open the Audio CD, view the files in icon view, hold down the shift key and click on the icon for each song you want, then drag the lot to your new folder. Your Mac will copy them there. Eject the CD, and drag your new folder into the Library Playlist pane of iTunes, which will now display your additions, with name and time, and maybe other information as well. If iTunes is calling them Track 1, Track 2, etc., and doesn't have any of the other information, it will make life easier if you add the titles and what not. If you simply click in a Playlist row the song it will be selected. Now click directly on the name (or other item) and it becomes editable. Type in the information you want in each column. You can organize your music library by song, artist, album, etc., by simply clicking on the column name at the top of the iTunes window. Organize so your additions are all together, and select them. Now go to the File menu, select "New Playlist From Selection" and name your new collection. In this case I'm calling it "Irish Tenors" and at the bottom I see I already have 35:40 minutes of playing time and 360.7MBs, and I've only got through one John McCormack CD, with 10 songs. I put in the second album, make a new folder, select nine more songs and drag them to the second folder. After they're copied I drag this folder into the Irish Tenors Playlist, and discover I now have 19 songs, 618.9MBs, and a playing time of 1:01:12. The Imation CD blanks I got for Christmas are rated for 700MBs and 80 minutes. I could probably get a few more songs, but I don't have any more McCormack CDs, and I don't want the CD so full it won't burn right, therefor I'll take what I've got and make a new CD, featuring just my favorites by McCormack.
With your Playlist active you will see in the upper corner a thing that looks like a camera iris, which says "Burn CD." Click on it. It changes to a button that looks like a radiation warning, and the iTunes title bar tells you to insert a blank CD. Do so. The title bar will shortly tell you to click on the Burn CD button again. Do it. Your Mac will begin burning the CD. If you are running iTunes in OS X you can then switch to another program and do something else (I'm writing this article while the CD burns). In a remarkably short time you will have a new audio CD. Eject it, trot over to your stereo system, insert the CD in the CD player and enjoy listening to all the songs you like and none of the ones you don't. Don't you feel clever?
Now let's consider MP3 files. For Christmas one of my savvy friends gave me 3 CDs, full of MP3 files he had collected. There were a batch of blues songs, a whole bunch of Rolling Stones songs, some U2, and lots of other things as well, but those just mentioned all seemed to go together nicely. I used iTunes to sort through things and decide what I wanted to go on an MP3 CD. I then made a folder called Blues, inserted CD 1 and copied the MP3 files I wanted, ditto for CDs 2 and 3. I dragged my blues folder into iTunes, made a new Playlist with these files. The total was 352.3MBs, which would play for 6 hours and 6 minutes and 19 seconds. A quick calculation will show you that if you have enough material to fill a 700MB CD you will have about 12 hours worth of music! While iTunes can help you sort through your MP3 files, and make them into audio CDs if you want (just make sure the playing time is under 80 minutes), and it can take a number of sound formats and convert them into MP3 files, you can't use iTunes to actually make an MP3 CD. For that you need the OS X Finder.
Once your MP3 files are organized to your satisfaction in their own folder, with a helpful name which includes .mp3 at the end (this is muy importante, the files must be named something along the lines of "Ain't Nothin' But the Blues.mp3"), you are ready to make a CD. Insert a blank CD into your CDR, a dialog box will appear asking you to name the CD, and there will be a drop-down menu where you can choose the format. Name it and select the "MP3 CD (ISO 9660) 666.8 MB" as the format, and click the Prepare button. Open your MP3 folder and drag the contents onto the blank CD's icon. If you've organized the files into seperate folders, by artist for instance, drag all the folders to the CD. The Finder will proceed to copy them. When it is done, make sure the CD is selected, go to the OS X Finder, File menu, and select "Burn CD..." A dialog box will inquire if you want to burn the CD. You do. Click the yes button. You will shortly have hours and hours of music on one CD. You say you don't have an MP3 player? Well, my CD player was dying, so my Christmas present to myself was to be a new player. I discovered that for $100 I could buy a machine that plays CDs, DVDs, and MP3 files. Far out! Wiring all the components together--player, TV, stereo--is beyond the scope of this newsletter. But it can be done. Have fun.