1. Start Audiograbber and then insert a music CD into your CD ROM drive. You’ll see an image like this:

If you’re using the shareware version of Audiograbber then you’ll have only limited capability to select the individual tracks you want to convert to the MP3 form. Registering the software will allow for complete selection.

2. If you’re not currently connected to the Internet the "track names" column will only say "Track 1, 2, etc." Connect to the Internet and click on the CDDB icon (the penguin). This will automatically download the correct CD track names, song lengths and other information right into Audiograbber.

3. Click on the Settings icon to view where your MP3s are going to be stored. Change if needed. OK out of that window.

5. Make sure the "Send Wavefile to MP3 CODEC" checkbox is selected.

6. Select the "Internal MP3 CODECS (acm or DLL):" radio button and it should show Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (advanced) in the field below.

7. If this field is grayed or dimmed out, then you don’t have the proper CODEC installed in your computer and you’ll need to follow the next set of instructions (7a). If this field is not grayed or dimmed out continue with step #8.

Here’s what happens: When you click on the Grab icon Audiograbber starts spinning the music CD and "grabbing" the music data. Audiograbber first converts the music data to a wav file, then Audiograbber uses the Fraunhofer CODEC ("COding and DECoding") software to convert the wav file to a much more compressed (12:1) MP3 file. Make sure you select "Delete wavefile after MP3 is created " in the MP3 settings box or your computer will be littered with massive amounts of wav files you don’t need!

Fraunhofer has made such a codec for MP3 creation and it is a lot faster then the L3enc program. The codec comes in two versions, the advanced and the professional. The advanced version was previously shipped with Microsoft's Netshow which is free but unfortunately it supports only low bitrates for encoding. It does however support higher bitrates for decoding.

The professional version is better and supports bitrates up to 128 Kbit for encoding. This one has to be purchased and is quite expensive however... Contact Fraunhofer directly for price information.

(It seems as Fraunhofer now has stopped distribution of this acm codec for good. I believe the reason is all the software piracy that went on with this codec. Don't ask me for information where to find a pirated version of that codec, I won't tell you. Use BladeEnc's freeware DLL instead).

The filename of the codecs are l3codeca.acm and l3codecp.acm. They should be placed in the c:\windows\system directory. The file c:\windows\system.ini must also be updated in the section [drivers32] with this:

[drivers32]

msacm.l3codec=l3codecp.acm ;for the professional one.

msacm.l3acm=l3codeca.acm ;for the advanced one.

I you want to install them in Windows NT they should be placed in the c:\windows\system32 directory.

You also need to change in the registry. The easiest way to do that is to create a textfile with the following and name it to l3codec.reg. Then you just have to double-click it.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\drivers.desc]

"L3codecp.acm"="Frauenhof L3 Codec Professional"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32]

"msacm.l3codecp"="l3codecp.acm"

Note: When I installed Audiograbber on two computers in my office, one computer already had the proper CODEC installed, the other did not. I searched the operational machine for the file called l3codeca.acm and copied it to my Windows | System folder on the non-functioning computer. When I restarted that machine and ran Audiograbber, the CODEC was recognized perfectly.