CDs

You need a so-called "CD Burner" that comes with most recent computers.
If you do not have one, you can purchase an external one, to plug into your USB port -- make sure you know what your operating system is, and whether your USB port is USB1 or USB2. (A cable or an adapter card may be needed additionally.)
Each CD Burner is from a different manufacturer and comes with its own software and instructions. So we cannot give detailed guidelines here.

Purchase blank CDs -- select a good brand such as SONY or MEMOREX:
CD-R: burn once, read often -- very inexpensive. Use these to make disks for your students.
CD-RW: rewrite -- more expensive. Use these for your own backups.
(You can buy preformatted disks for either Mac or PC, or unformatted disks which you need to format yourself:: takes about 20 minutes each.)
A CD can accommodate about 600 MB. (By contrast, a floppy has a 1 MB capacity.)

DVDs: WAIT.

Currently, three formats are warring to gain the dominant market share. Remember Betamax versus VHS tapes?

Note: you might want to google burn CD.

"Ripping" -- I believe this means converting audio or commercial music files to another format:

You might want to google rip CD. Here is a good current site I found:
RADIFIED Guide to Ripping and Encoding CD Audio (July 05): http://mp3.radified.com/

Notes culled from the article "My Songs, My Format" by Sean Captain, New York 10/6/05 on choosing a format that works on your computer and on your player:
Apple's iPod can play music files in AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) and MP3 format. AAC is an Apple format, MP3 works for both Apple and PC players.
Apple's iTunes software by default rips/converts music to AAC. Change the settings to convert to MP3.
Most PC music files are in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format, sold online by stores such as Napster and Yahoo.
MP3 works for both Mac and PC. The author recommends buying CDs and converting files to MP3 format, with better though still lossy quality.

Better quality: Music in iTunes is encoded at 128 kb per second -- EMusic, Rhapsody, Yahoo: 192 kbps -- CDs: 1,400 kbps.
Best quality: CD.

Converting to different formats --

As with images, leave the original audio file untouched. Convert a copy, once. Generally, you convert to a compressed format, thus losing data. Therefore, with multiple conversions of a previously converted file, you incur ever more loss of quality.
Try the free NCH Switch Sound File Conversion Software -- http://nch.com.au/switch/index.html -- then perhaps upgrade to Switch Plus (full version).
This software will let you convert many formats, including AAC, WMA, and MP3.

Oct 2005