What is the difference between burning and ripping?

Question

What is the difference between burning and ripping?

Answer 1

Burning refers to the process of storing information on an optical disc like a CD or DVD. It's called 'burning' because a laser is used to encode the information on the dics.



Ripping refers to the opposite. That is, pulling information such as song tracks off of a disc.



So, you would 'rip' songs from multiple cds and 'burn' them to a mix cd.