Tutorial - How to import CDs

Importing data from CDs
Users new to audio editing are often surprised to find that they cannot import the audio from CDs into Audacity with the command. In fact, most operating systems don't actually allow the import of data from the CD tracks into applications, because audio CDs don't have files or a file system like computer media, but consist essentially of a stream of bits on the disc. That is why when you look at an audio CD in a file manager like Windows Explorer, each CD track will appear only as a small .cda "file" 44 bytes in size, which is merely header information for the stream.

In order to import tracks from an audio CD, you must first usually extract (or "rip") the tracks to a WAV or AIFF audio file using CD extraction software; then you can import those WAV or AIFF files into Audacity with the usual command.

Windows
For users on Windows, CDex is a fully featured CD extraction program which can extract to the WAV format you need for editing the audio in Audacity.

In the CDex window, simply select the CD tracks you want to extract to WAV and press or. Normally, every CD track will be extracted to its own audio file, but CDex also has a nice feature that lets you extract any range of audio (including all of it) to a single file. So if you want to extract a sample of two CD tracks that starts in the middle of one track and ends in the middle of another, you can. To do this, select or press.

Make sure you know where to look for the exported WAV files when you import them into Audacity. By default CDex saves the WAV to one of your Documents and Settings folders for whatever account you are logged into at the time. Choose  or shortcut  then click on General > Directories & files. Look in the second text box from the top (marked ".WAV -> MP3") and you will see the location where it saves its output files from CD extraction or file conversion.

OS X
OS X users have a quick way to import CDs, because when a CD is put in the drive, the CDA tracks are mounted as AIFF files in the Finder. It's thus possible to either drag the AIFF files from the Finder into Audacity, or use the command, instead of extracting the audio.

Another possibility is to use Max, a free software CD ripping and encoding application. It has full support for encoding into the FLAC lossless audio format. Click here for help adding FLAC support to iTunes.

Linux
On Linux or other Unix-like systems you can use K3b for the KDE desktop or RipperX or Sound Juicer for GNOME. Or use any built-in CD extraction utility that comes with the distribution.