1. If your CD has music data files on it (as versus music audio files–that is, the original files as if you just purchased an audio CD at a music store): put the CD into your computer and open up the folder holding them (likely the D: drive folder); connect your Clip to your computer; and then simply drag and drop the songs to your Clip, storing them in the Clip’s Music folder or where you want (you can also store them in their own folder, to keep them separate from other music you add).
2. If you are taking about music audio files: (a) first you need to “rip” (in essence, convert) the audio files and create their equivalent as data files, for use on a digital audio player (DAPs play data files, not audio files); and then (b) drag and drop the data files to your player. If you haven’t ripped music before, you need to learn how to do it–it’s easy, and CD rippers are available all over via the Internet, as freeware (try a search here or with a search engine for “CD rippers” ); you also can purchase CD rippers, in software suites such as Nero. Windows Media Player includes a ripper (although I prefer others); I use CDex (freeware available on-line)–a bit more complicated than other rippers but nice and powerful. Other popular rippers include Mediamonkey and Winamp. The ripping process generally will do 3 things: convert the audio file to a data file; compress the file size, as audio files are large (but note: the greater the compression that is done (you generally can choose the degree of compression), the greater the loss of audio quality–it’s a trade-off); and add “tags” to your music data files providing album, song title, artist, year and genre information for each song, which DAPs use to sort the music.
Sorry that it’s likely not as easy as you thought. But it’s really not hard, and once you get a ripper and learn how to use it and set it up as you want (amount of compression to apply, etc.), it’s a very easy and automatic process.
Message Edited by Miikerman on 08-15-2008 10:25 AM
