best way to rip cd files onto computer?

vpolineni · « **on:** 17 Mar 2003, 01:57 pm »

hey everyone.. i'm wondering what is the best way to rip cd files onto my comptuer to play in winamp. Windows media player offers "lossless" wma file conversion, but that won't play in winamp. There is a program that will do "lossless" mp3 conversion-but I couldn't get that to work. Can anyone tell me how I can conver the cd file to a .wav file? From what I've read, that seems to offer the highest quality playback. thanks.

Phat Phreddy · « **Reply #1 on:** 17 Mar 2003, 02:44 pm »

The tool you want for the best ripping options and ability is EAC = Exact Audio Copy.

A close second in quality is Media Centre (or Media Jukebox) in digital secure mode... I prefer EAC but it is a hair more complex to set up...

A CD is a collection of WAV's so no conversion is required...

You could use APE or other lossless formats FLAC Shorten etc even WMA lossless but this is not truly lossless at default setting it performs all kind of funky normalizations and equalizations that takes some serious registry work to sort out... Typical MS but at least they are getting there...

If using APE it will handle tagging etc and gains about a 45 to 50 % compression with 0 quality loss... Think of it like Zip files for audio..

Personally I would move to media Centre or Media Jukebox... they have built in ASIO interface to stop the windows KMangler problems in all post 98SE windows OS's and it is developed by a very responsive team... Plus they employ Matt who is the developer of Monkeys Audio (ape format) and so it seamlessly integrates with APE files.

dogberry · « **Reply #2 on:** 17 Mar 2003, 03:50 pm »

CDex is a great tool, easy to use and configure. It will rip MP3s or WAVs (which are uncompressed). I use CDex to rip WAVs and then burn them onto Black CDRs. I use WinAmp to play both MP3s and WAVs.

http://www.surf.to/cdex

Thump553 · « **Reply #3 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 02:39 pm »

Personally, my experience with Exact Audio Copy has been mixed at best. I have spent hours scouring the net for info on it, and configuring it, but I still get a very noticeably click at the start of every cd I copy with it. Others swear by it, but I gave up out of frustration.

I use the SHN (shorten) format frequently. Its a lossless format and currently in vogue among those who trade concerts. Its files are roughly half-way in size between mp3s and WAVs. There is a very nice free utility called mkw Audio Compression Toolkit that makes converting from SHN to WAV or to MP3, or vice versa, a simple matter of drag and drop. There is a simple patch or mod to WinAmp available to allow WinAmp to play SHN files directly. Go to www.etree.org for more info on SHN and these utilities.

JoshK · « **Reply #4 on:** 9 Apr 2003, 02:50 pm »

Thanks for the info! I had been looking for this tool. I had heard about it but didn't know what it was called. I think I will use this to rip all my LPs to my hd. I have a few 75 gigers lying around unused.