How to import CDs

Importing data from CDs
Audacity does not contain any function for importing (ripping) audio from CDs. This can, however, be achieved by using other programs to extract the data into a file format Audacity does support.

Users new to audio editing are often surprised to find that they cannot import the audio from CDs into Audacity with the File > Import > Audio command. In fact, most operating systems don't actually allow the import of data from the CD tracks into applications, because audio CDs don't have files or a file system like computer media, but consist essentially of a stream of bits on the disk. That is why when you look at an audio CD in a file manager like Windows Explorer, each CD track will appear only as a small .cda "file" 44 bytes in size, which is merely header information for the stream.

So in order to import tracks from an audio CD, you must first usually extract (or "rip") the tracks to a WAV or AIFF audio file using CD extraction software. Then you can import that WAV or AIFF into Audacity with the usual File > Import > Audio command. You can also extract CDs to the much smaller MP3 format, but this is not recommended if you want to edit the audio in Audacity, because every time you encode to MP3. some of the quality is lost. On the other hand WAV and AIFF are lossless. You can always export your audio from Audacity to MP3 after you've edited it, but to save un-necessary losses, import the audio in the first place as WAV or AIFF.

Windows
For users on Windows, CDex is a fully featured CD extraction program which can extract to the WAV format you need for editing the audio in Audacity.

In the CDex window, simply select the CD tracks you want to extract to WAV and press or Convert > Extract CD track(s) to WAV. Normally, every CD track will be extracted to its own audio file, but CDex also has a nice feature that lets you extract any range of audio (including all of it) to a single file. So if you want to extract a sample of two CD tracks that starts in the middle of one track and ends in the middle of another, you can. To do this, right-click on any of the tracks >, or press.

Make sure you know where to look for the exported WAV files when you import them into Audacity. By default CDex saves the WAV to one of your Documents and Settings folders for whatever account you are logged into at the time. Choose Options > Settings or shortcut  then choose Filenames. Look in the second text box from the top (marked ".WAV -> MP3") and you will see the location where it saves its output files from CD extraction or file conversion.

You can also extract audio CDs to WAV with Windows Media Player 11 (click Tools > Options > Rip Music and choose "WAV (Lossless)" in the Format drop-down in "Rip Settings"). Earlier versions of Windows Media Player are not appropriate for extracting CD audio for editing in Audacity, because they are unable to extract to WAV.

Alternatively you can use the Windows version of iTunes to extract audio CDs to WAV or AIFF.

OS X
OS X users have a quick way to import CDs, because when a CD is put in the drive, the CDA tracks are mounted as AIFF files in the Finder. It's thus possible to either drag the AIFF files from the Finder into Audacity, or use the File > Import > Audio command, instead of extracting the audio.

Another possibility is to use Max, a free software CD ripping and encoding application. It has full support for encoding into the FLAC lossless audio format. Click here for help adding FLAC support to iTunes.

Linux
On Linux or other Unix-like systems you can use K3b for the KDE desktop or RipperX or Sound Juicer for GNOME. Or use any built-in CD extraction utility that comes with the distribution.