Converting your LPs, cassettes or tapes to CDs is a great way of storing and playing your favourite music. You can now listen to your LPs in the car, on the computer etc. - anywhere you have a CD player - and the sound quality does not deteriorate like it does with vinyl or tape.

If you convert to MP3, Windows Media (WMA) or a similar compressed format you can store the equivalent of a dozen LPs onto a single CD. With a software MP3 player like WinAmp or a portable MP3 player you can play any mix of tracks you like.

Either way, you can play your music as often as you like, without damaging the originals.

If you have already tried to do this you'll have discovered how fiddly and time-consuming it is, recording each track as a WAV file to record to CD or converting it to an MP3 file.

LP Ripper is a Windows program that makes the task much easier and quicker. Just record each side of your LP as a single WAV file on your computer using a program like LP Recorder. LP Ripper automatically splits the file into a separate WAV file for each track. If you have a command-line MP3 or WMA Encoder, LP Ripper will use that to produce an MP3 or WMA file for each track.