User manual

(2) Encoding audio CD tracks
Select the 'Save Tracks' command in the 'Extras'
menu. A window will open and show all the disk
drives installed, i.e. the recorder, the 'normal' CD-
ROM/DVD drive and (if appropriate) a Nero
ImageDrive. Select the CD drive containing the
original audio CD and click on 'OK'.
A window will now appear with a list of the audio
tracks that can be found on the original CD. Clicking
on the play button will play the highlighted track, so
that you can check which tracks need to be encoded
before you start the encoding process. Highlight the
file(s) to be encoded. Click on the dropdown button
in the 'Output file format' and highlight 'mp3PRO
(*.mp3)'. At 'Path', specify the target directory where
the MP3 files are to be stored. In the 'File name
creation method' field, specify how the name of the
MP3 file is to be created. If the CD is recognized
and the name of the artist and title of the track are
known, the 'Manual' method can be used to create
an MP3 file in the 'Artist – Title.mp3' format.
In a similar way to the encoding of files on the hard
disk, you can specify which parameters should be
applied when encoding. Click on the 'Settings'
button to display the parameters.
Click on the 'Enable mp3PRO' button again if
mp3PRO is activated and if you want to encode files
in the MP3 format.
Encoding audio files as MP3 files is always bound
up with losses. When encoding, psychoacoustic
models are used to remove "inaudible" acoustic
elements from the audio file. Most test listeners can
hardly (or not at all) distinguish between the sound
from MP3 files that have been stored with a
sufficiently high bitrate from the original files.
Nevertheless, a certain loss of acoustic information
is unavoidable. The size of the loss depends very
much on two factors. These are first, the quality of
the psychoacoustic model used for data reduction
and second, the bitrate of the MP3 file.