How to rip a CD to MP3 on Windows

Put the CD in, open Save audio CD as files in Burn by Zaweba and choose MP3. Burn reads each track, saves it as an MP3 tagged from the disc's CD-Text or from names you type, and puts the album in a folder of its own. It's free, works offline on Windows 10 and 11, and is meant for CDs you own.

MP3 is the format that plays on just about everything: phones, car stereos, old music players, smart speakers. If you want your CD collection on all of those, it's the practical choice.

Ripping step by step

Open Save audio CD as files from the home screen or Tools > Save audio CD as files. Pick MP3 as the format. Look over the track names. Where the disc has CD-Text, the album, artist and track titles are filled in from it. Where it doesn't, type them in, because these names become the tags that music players show.

Start the job, and Burn reads the tracks and saves them into a folder for the album. Progress shows on the taskbar button and the tray icon, and a short chime and a notification tell you when it's done, so you can work on something else meanwhile.

Scratches and unreadable spots

Reads are plain, with three tries each. If a sector still can't be read, Burn stops with a message instead of saving a track with a hidden fault. Cleaning the disc or trying another drive often helps. Burn never works around copy protection, so it's for your own ordinary audio CDs.

MP3 or something else?

Save audio CD as files also offers FLAC and WAV. FLAC is exact and lossless, and Burn decodes it back and compares it bit for bit with what was read. WAV is plain audio, also checked the same way. MP3 files are much smaller, at the cost of some detail that most people don't notice in everyday listening.

A good plan if you have the space is to rip each CD to FLAC as a master and make MP3s for devices from that. If space is tight or you only want music for the car, MP3 straight from the CD is perfectly sensible.

Tags are worth a second look whichever format you choose. Keep the artist name spelled the same way on every album by the same performer, and players will group them together properly instead of listing two versions of the same name.

From MP3s back to disc

Once your music is in MP3 form, Burn can put it back on disc in two ways. An audio CD plays in any CD player, holding about an album's worth. An MP3 data disc stores hours of songs as files with a numbered order and a playlist, for players that read MP3 discs.

The folder per album also suits a music player like Play by Zaweba, which can send playlists back to Burn to make CDs. It's a tidy loop: your CDs become files, and your files become new CDs whenever you want them.