This process is referred to as "ripping" and "burning". To convert MP3's into an audio CD, you can generally just copy your MP3 files right onto a CD using burning software. Most players of all types today recognize the MP3 format. If your application requires a different format, the converters here can accomplish that for you. Decoding if necessary can be achieved by using one of the MP3 utilities such as RealPlayer or Winamp. Other popular burning software: Alcohol, Roxio or AShampoo. Of course, either a CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is also required, a standard CD-ROM drive will not do. A blank CD-R or CD-RW is also necessary.

There are several factors that influence the all around quality of a burn such as the amount of free system resources, drivers, and of course the MP3 itself. Though, in most cases, your actual CD or DVD-RW drive has the most influence, along with the blank CD-R/CD-RW you choose to use. Nearly all optical drives come with a list from the manufacturer that lists which CD-R's/CD-RW's they have tested and decided work best and most the efficiently with that particular drive. This should be a starting point to deciding which CD's to purchase and use.

It is possible to edit your MP3 files, using software such as Audacity. You can break up, or split an MP3 into two separate files, add your own sounds into your MP3, mix two MP3 files together, combine two separate MP3 files, remove some part of the instrumentation, etc.

Decent discussion with more details here.

To actually play on an audio CD player, the music has to be recorded in standard audio CD format, which is different from the format used for data CD ROM disks. The audio data is actually stored as uncompressed PCM data at 44.1 KHz sampling rate, 16 bit stereo samples. This is similar (although not exactly the same) to the format of uncompressed WAV files on your computer. To play songs on an audio player, you will have to burn them to CD-R disks using burner software that supports the creation of audio CD's (most do). For many burner programs, you will first need to convert the MP3 files to WAV files, which can be done using Winamp (select the Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in as your output and then play the songs).

You can convert your vinyl discs to MP3 by using software such as Audacity.

Connect your turntable to the computer with an RCA cable into your sound card line-in input.

Launch Audacity and create a new project by clicking "File" then "New." Change the recording input to "Line-in" from the drop-down menu next to the volume faders. Make sure the volume for the microphone input is set to max by sliding the fader.

Click on the "Record" button to begin recording in Audacity, then start playing the vinyl on the turntable. When the album is finished, press the "Stop" button. In the "File" menu select "Export to MP3." Name the file and save it. That's all there is to it.

If you want to record the songs you have in MP3 format onto an audio tape for playing in your walkman, car stereo, etc., you just need to connect the line-out socket of your sound card to an input that can feed your tape recording deck and then set the record levels.

Certainly, you can change the ID3 tags on an existing MP3 file (so long as it is not a read-only file, for example something burned onto a CD-R disk, in which case you obviously can't write to it). A simple way to change the tags on a file is to select the file in the Winamp playlist, then press Alt-3 ("File-info"). This brings up the ID3 tags for editing.

GoldWave has an option to extract the audio from an AVI file to WAV audio. Use this option, save the results as a WAV file, then use an encoder to produce an MP3 file. Unfortunately, the audio in many AVI files is rather shortcoming, so the results may not sound very impressive.

Most MP3 players will convert MP3 to WAV. With Winamp, press CTL-P to bring up Preferences, From there, select Output in the left hand window, then select Nullsoft Disk Writer Plug-In in the left window. Press the Configure button to choose which directory you want your WAV files saved in. After you do this, every time you "play" a file in Winamp, it will actually be output to a WAV file in your chosen directory. To go back to actually playing files, bring Preferences up again, and select Output and Nullsoft Wave Out plug-in, which is your normal sound playing output plug-in. If you're using something other than Winamp, check the menus and look for "Options" or "Preferences".

Just plug the output from your tape player into the "Line In" socket on your sound card, plug one end into the earphone socket of the walkman, and the other into the sound card line in. Then, turn the volume on the walkman all the way down, fire up your system volume control and choose Options / Properties / Recording and select the the "Line" source. Then press play on the walkman and gently turn up the volume until you get a level which registers well but does not clip (shown by the red "lights" in the volume control level indicator) during the loudest parts. To record the WAV files you'll need a program capable of recording large files such as GoldWave. If you want "CD Quality", be sure to set the controls in your WAV recording program to 44.1 kbps, stereo, 16 bit. Be warned that you'll need about 10Mb of hard disk space for each minute recorded. Once you've recorded the file, use the WAV recording /editing program's "cut" function to trim off any excess before the beginning or after the end of the song. If you just want to put it onto an audio CD, you can do that directly from the WAV file. If you want an MP3 file, you'll have to use an MP3 encoder to process your WAV file.

Another option is "HarddiskOgg".
HarddiskOgg takes a wave input stream from any Windows 95/98/2000/XP compatible sampling device (including microphone input and line in) and converts it to an Ogg/Wave/MP3 (optional) stream. This happens in realtime, so basically it is a harddisk recorder in Ogg.

mp3DirectCut is a small tool for editing MPEG audio directly. You can remove parts, change the volume, split files or copy regions to several new files. All without the need to decompress your MP3 into a PCM format. This saves work, encoding time and disk space. And there is no quality loss through any re-compressions! Screenshot

Trim your CD grabbings or directly to MP3 recorded vinyls or tapes. Cut favorite songs from long MP3 radio or live recordings. Make multiple cuts and fades. mp3DirectCut is very fast and gives you extensive control over your MP3s.

o Several pre-listen functions
o MP3 visualization and VU meter
o Easy navigation
o Fading, volume setting, normalizing
o Direct recording of MP3 (ACM and Lame encoder supported)
o Layer 2 support
o ID3 Tag support (v1 editable)
o Supports Cue Sheets (as used by EAC or Feurio)

Submitted by USR56K

Many of our members agree that the combination of DVD Decryptor, DVD Shrink and a regular DVD burning program such as Nero Burning ROM or Roxio EasyCD/DVD is hard to beat. There are two tutorials available to help you get started. One covers transferring larger DVDs to a single DVD and the other shows how to transfer all the files from the original to an archive copy without losing anything when the source is small. While these examples use Nero Burning ROM at the end, you could use any similar program that you prefer to finish it up.
Large/Long movies to a single DVD transfer
Single Layer DVD to a single DVD copy

Here are two excellent freebies for organizing your music.

The first is MediaMonkey, available here: »www.mediamonkey.com/
MediaMonkey is excellent for tagging and organization. You can manage a library as large as 50,000+ files. The program allows you to move and rename files and folders from the MM interface. You can organize, browse, or search music by Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc. or by location on your hard drive. It will synchronize with iPods, MP3 phones and other Portable Audio Devices and has a built-in ripper and player or you can configure it to use Winamp for listening. The tagging info comes from Amazon. It handles a variety of files such as OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files.

The second recommendation is The Godfather available here: »users.forthnet.gr/the/jtclipper/
It has many of the same capabilities as above but may be a bit more difficult to use. One of the highly usable features is the ability to rename several files at once with one click.