When you insert a CD in an optical drive, Windows normally displays the AutoPlay dialog box . You can click the Play Audio CD Using Windows Media Player button to start the CD playing in Windows Media Player. You can select Always Do This for Audio CDs check box if you want each CD you insert to start playing in Windows Media Player. Once you’ve inserted a CD and dealt with AutoPlay if it runs, you can play a CD in Windows Media Player by double-clicking its entry in the left pane. If your computer is connected to the Internet, Windows Media Player attempts to retrieve the CD information when you insert the CD.

Using the Graphic Equalizer and Sound Effects

Windows Media Player includes a graphic equalizer for improving the sound that emerges from your speakers or headphones. When a song is playing, click the Now Playing button to display the Now Playing screen, and then click the Now Playing drop-down button and choose Enhancements  Graphic Equalizer. The graphic equalizer is straightforward to use:

•    To turn the graphic equalizer on and off, click the Turn On link or Turn Off link.

•    To apply a preset equalization, choose it from the Select Preset drop-down list.

•    To apply custom equalization, drag each frequency-band slider to an appropriate position. The frequency bands start with the lowest frequencies at the left side and progress to the highest frequencies at the right side.

•    To specify whether the frequency-band sliders move independently or together, click one of the three buttons on the control to the left of the frequency bands. Click the top button to make the sliders move independently. Click the middle button to make the sliders move together in a loose group. Click the bottom button to make the sliders move together in a tight group.

•    To close the graphic equalizer, click its Close button the  button.

To apply sound effects, click the Now Playing drop-down button and choose Enhancements SRS WOW Effects. Windows Media Player displays the SRS WOW Effects panel. From here, you can use the Turn On link and Turn Off link to turn the effects on and off, set bass boosting with the TruBass slider, set the WOW effect with the WOW Effect slider, or choose a different speaker setting.

Ripping a CD

Windows Media Player makes it easy to rip an audio CD to your hard drive and encode it to the compressed format you specified on the Rip Music page in the Options dialog box- for example, WMA.

Expert Knowledge: What Can You Legally Do with Digital Audio?

If you’re going to enjoy digital audio, you need to know what you can and cannot do with it. Here’s what you can legally do:

•    Listen to streaming audio from a website or an Internet radio station, even if the site or person streaming the audio is doing so illegally.

•    Record audio from a medium you own for example, a CD to a different medium for example, a cassette so that you can listen to it at a different time or in a different place.

•    Download a digital file that contains copyrighted material from a website or FTP site provided that the copyright holder has granted the distributor permission to distribute it.

•    Download a digital file from a computer via P2P technology provided that the copyright holder has granted the distributor permission to distribute it.

•    Create digital-audio files for example, WMA files or MP3 files of tracks on CDs you own for your personal use.

•    Distribute a digital-audio file to which you hold the copyright or for whose distribution the copyright holder has granted you permission.

•    Download or copy legal digital-audio files in other supported formats to portable audio devices or PDAs.

•    Broadcast licensed audio across the Internet.

Here are some of the key things that you cannot legally do with audio:

•    Download a digital-audio file that contains copyrighted material if the copyright holder has not granted the distributor permission to distribute it.

•    Distribute a digital-audio file that contains copyrighted material if the copyright holder has not granted you permission to distribute it.

•    Lend a friend a CD so that they can create digital-audio files from it.

•    Borrow a CD from a friend and create digital-audio files from it.

•    Upload digital-audio files from a portable audio player that supports music uploading which most portable players don’t to another computer. In this scenario, you’re using the portable player to copy the files from one computer to another. CD-quality audio files are huge, taking up about 9MB per minute. This is why about 74 minutes of audio fits on a 650MB CD. WMA and MP3 files can be encoded at various bit rates, either using a constant bit rate or a variable bit rate. A variable bit rate allocates the available space more intelligently to the content, with more complex audio passages taking more space than simpler passages, but a constant bit rate is compatible with more hardware and software players. The higher the bit rate, the more data is saved, and the higher the quality. WMA Lossless encoding saves the most data of all and delivers the highest quality. For putting music on portable devices, you’ll probably want to use either WMA or WMA Variable Bitrate with either the Best Quality setting or the next setting down the scale. If the device has minimal memory, use the Windows Media Audio Pro format. To copy a CD, follow these general steps:

1.  Load the CD in your CD drive. If the AutoPlay dialog box appears  earlier in this article, you can click the Rip Music from CD Using Windows Media Player button if you want to rip straight away, but it’s usually a better idea to check the tag information before ripping so that you’re sure it’s correct.

2.  In Windows Media Player, click the Rip tab. Windows Media Player displays the Rip page. Windows Media Player automatically retrieves the CD information and displays it.

3.  If necessary, edit the information retrieved. You can edit any of the changeable fields such as the track names, the artist’s name, or the genre by clicking the field twice with a pause in between- not double-clicking or clicking once and then pressing the F2 key. Windows Media Player displays an edit box around the field. Type the correction and press the Enter key.

4.  Select the check boxes for the tracks you want to copy. Use the check box in the column header to change the status of all the individual check boxes at once.

5.  Click the Rip button. Windows Media Player starts ripping and encoding the music, adding the tracks to the Media Library when they’re finished. If you notice a problem, click the Stop Rip button to stop ripping the tracks.