How can I import selected songs from a CD in Apple Music on my Mac mini?

Hi,

See Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac – Apple Support (UK). Note specifically that to import selected tracks you untick tracks that you don’t want.

Failure to import the last track suggests either faulty drive or disc. You could try an app such as XLD to import the music.

Jim

CharlieBrown63 wrote:

Any good recommendations for external CD/DVD drives?

Other World Computing – 24X OWC Mercury Pro USB 3.2 (5Gb/s) Super-Multi DVD/CD Burner/Reader External Optical Drive with M-DISC Support

Has its own power supply, so it's not finicky about being plugged into hubs (unlike the Apple USB SuperDrive), and doesn't require you to hook up two USB cables so it can suck extra power from your computer (like some other portable drives do).

The power supply and the cable are detachable and individually replaceable. The USB-A to USB 3.0 B (double decker, full-size B) cable that comes with it is very short, but it is easy to find longer

• USB-A to USB 3.0 B, or
• USB-C to USB 3.0 B

cables on places like Amazon.

They offer it in a CD/DVD version and a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray version. Macs can play CD-Audio and DVD-Video discs but do not have built-in software to play Blu-Ray Video discs. If you wanted to do that with a computer drive, you would need not just a drive, but extra software.

I have this drive. One caveat: I had to put a power strip on top of the back of my desk because the cords on the power adapter weren't really long enough to reach the power strip that I have on the floor.

That OWC drive appears to be for sale on some other sites, such as

• The B&H Photo Video site ("In Stock" / "Free 2-day shipping")
• The Adorama site ("FREE Delivery by Fri, May 16 to (my area code)")
• Amazon Marketplace

The OWC site was down much earlier today, and still seems to be down ("Sorry. We're currently making some improvements…")

CharlieBrown63 wrote:

The last song is probably 5-6 minutes long and it's only importing a little over two minutes of it, cutting it off. What is going on?

Try gently washing the disc with a mixture of water and diluted hand dishwashing soap (like Dawn – just a small dab and a lot of water). Then dry it thoroughly before trying to read it again.

Sometimes if a disc is scratched up, cleaning the dirt off the disc is enough to let an optical drive "read through" the scratches.

CharlieBrown63 wrote:

Also, if I want to custom import certain songs, what is the easiest way to do this? I keep getting prompts for various settings and I have no idea what the right settings are for a simple audio CD to listen to in my car.

The import format and settings will determine the quality of the audio.

If you use a lossy compression format like MP3 or AAC, to save space on your Mac's drive, you can still prepare a standard audio CD to play in your car. But there will be some sound quality lost when you import the music – and you will not get it back when you convert the music back into audio CD form for the car.

Whether this matters will depend on how quiet your car is, and how good your hearing is. For a lot of people, the 256 Kbps AAC format has very close to original sound quality even if you are listening in an environment which is much less noisy than a car. But with drives being so large these days, you could import the music in either Apple Lossless or full-size AIFF/WAV format, if you like.

LG and Asus are good choices for dvd drive.