Listening to an Audio CD with iTunes

What iTunes has in common with its much less sophisticated cousins the boom box and the standard CD player is the ability to play audio CDs. Although the basic function is the same, iTunes has several tricks in its bag to make listening even better. So, grab a CD and give it a try:

1. Open iTunes.
2. Insert an audio CD into your computer. In a moment, the CD will be mounted on your computer, and it will appear and be selected in the Source List By default, iTunes will automatically connect to the Internet and attempt to identify the CD you have inserted. If it finds it, it will display the CD’s information, including CD name, track names, times, artist, and genre, in the Content pane (in Figure, you can see the CD’s information has been found). This is really cool because iTunes does most of the labeling work for you; this comes in very handy when you want to search or browse for music to create playlists or just to listen to specific tracks. If iTunes finds information for a CD, it remembers that information and displays it each time you insert the CD. At the bottom of the iTunes window is the Source Information display. This will show you the total number of songs on the CD, how long it plays, and the total disc space used. If the CD’s information isn’t located, you can add it yourself
3. To play the CD, do any of the following: click the Play button in the top-left corner of the window (when a CD is playing, this becomes the Pause button), choose Controls, Play, or press the spacebar. The CD will begin to play. As a song plays, a speaker icon appears next to it in the Content pane to indicate it is the current song, and information about that song appears in the Information window
4. Control the volume of the sound by dragging the Volume slider to the left to turn it down or to the right to turn it up. You can also control the volume by choosing Controls, Volume Up or Controls, Volume Down. For yet another option, use the Ctrl+up arrow and Ctrl+down arrow keys on Windows PCs or the „+up arrow and „+down arrow keys on Macs to set the volume from the keyboard. To mute the sound, choose Controls, Mute. On Windows PCs you can press Ctrl+Alt+down arrow, whereas on Macs you can press Option+„+down arrow to do the same thing.
5. To pause a song, click the Pause button, choose Controls, Pause, or press the spacebar.