Hi Everyone,

Could someone please tell me where i am going wrong, i feel truely thick asking this question as i should know better being a IT Engineer but i have searched everywhere with no luck, its a problem that i cant understand, usually i only copy DVD's and have no problems but a friend bought four cd's round that had music on them, he asked me to take selected songs from each cd and compile them onto one cd. First problem no track titles in explorer just cda. extensions so dont know whats what and also when i copy a cd to the hdd to compile the songs from the four cd's it just creates a cda. extension and when i try to play the songs from the hdd i get no sound just a tracktime. Where am i going wrong and how is the best way to do this.

Baggie79

Hi Baggie79, welcome to the forum.

What you're trying to do is not possible. You cannot rip an audio disc via Explorer. There used to be some trick for making this work but what you need is an audio ripper. Loads and loads of software is able to do this. Some common used applications are: Exact Audio Copy (freeware, recommended), Feurio!, Nero (although Nero is more a burning suite than an audio ripper but it does support it), PlexTools Pro (recommended for Plextor drives only), etc, etc. Does this give you enough info to start ripping?

Oh and ps: note that we don't discuss illegal things here..

OOPS,

Sorry about the illegal thing wont happen again, i think i understand just use exact audio copt to extract the files to a directory on the hard disk and then burn them with something like nero as an audio CD, please let me know if this is incorrect.

Baggie79

yes, you rip the tracks you want to WAV files.
Then burn those WAVs with any burning program.

EAC is maybe the best ripper but it's not recommended to newbies because it's difficult to set up correctly, and slow to rip in secure mode (which is not secure if you don't know how to configure it).

Feurio is the best program to make compilations, but too difficult to learn if you're only going to do this a few times.

And Nero has an ugly interface to do this.

I'd recommend a simple ripper like CDEx to read to WAV and your favourite burning program to understand the easy steps to make an audio disc.


EDIT: Use your CD burner as a ripper because they're better at reading than most typical CD-ROMs. Reading audio from difficult disc is not easy for a lot of CDROMs.

If you have Windows Media Player 9, it becomes a lot easier. On the main screen click 'Copy from CD'. Then select the tracks you want then click 'Copy music'. Once it has copied, click 'Copy to CD or device'. Then in the left combo box, select the album it should be something like 'Unknown album time/date' then select/deselect the tracks you want. Then select the burner you wish to use, then click Copy. You may need to re-rip the audio tracks on a smaller bitrate if you wish to fit all 4 cd tracks on to one cd.

Hope this helps.

why would he want a smaller bitrate?

I think he wants an audio CD, a perfect copy of the tracks, not a data disc with lossy compression files that sound similar to the original...


I've never used WMP but it doesn't sound any good coming from Microsoft...
And I guess that it's never a good idea to install those things if you don't have it...
CDEx, EAC or Feurio can be installed without care as they don't install any trash in the system, something that cannot be said of WMP...

and wow, I'm seeing that WMP8 seems that can only rip to WMA or MP3 !!! and they call 64 kbps "CD quality" !!!

what did he do that was illegal? i would recomend using something like nero to save the tracks he wants to 192kbps aac, and then burn again, virtually no different to cd-quality

If you had of read the post correctly, his friend wanted 4cds onto 1cd, and if he did that he may need to lower the bitrate.

And the version that i am using is WMP v9 not v8. Re-read the post.

well, English is not my native language, but I understand another thing:


I understand it's a compilation with the best songs from those 4 CDs.


About WMP9, does it rip to WAV? (I don't know)
Apart from that, it needs to be installed in most systems and you lose your perhaps WMP version...
while the other options won't modify anything in your system.

I don't understand ripping to lossy codecs.
You lose a lot of time compressing and you lose quality.
Probably it won't perceived, but if you rip two "gapless" tracks, you will get a small pause between, which is horrible...
WAV is the way.

If you can still find it...Audiocatalyst is also a fine program. My experience has been that both Audio catalyst and WMP have problems with protected cd's (WMP experience based on 8 not v9), EAC has pretty good workarounds for this. It's probably true that EAC is more geared to people who already fed up with other rippers...extractors, but hey...gotta cut your teethe someplace. It's one ofthe best, and it's completely free....

Haven't used furio or cdex..so can't really say good or bad..

I know I do not like interface in Roxio or Nero this kind of task.

By task I mean the ripping part.....not the burning, both actually do that part fine...

Thanks Everone,

I downloaded CDex in the end and put the cd in my DVD drive and bobs your uncle all titled tracks there, then extrated to the HDD and burnt with Nero 6 this worked well, just one question you can extract to WAV or compressed audio onto the HDD which is the best way to do this and does it affect the final cd copy quality or size.

Thanks Again
Baggie79

Well guys, its time to update your WMPs! I would suggest if you are fairly confident with WMP9 then get the WMP10 beta, its wicked.

If he can fit all the tracks he wants onto a cd, then lowering the bitrate is not needed. But if not then he will need to lower the bitrate or burn onto 2 or 3 or 4 cds.

WMPs native format (.wma) has a lossless function.

Uncompressed WAV is straight.
The same data that is read in disc, is put on the WAV file.
No "CPU process" is needed.

Compressing slows ripping because of calculations.
Typical lossy formats like MP3 or WMA can't even keep gapless features of the original disc.

WAV needs a lot more space, but if you're only going to make a copy, you only have to delete the WAV files after burning.
For storing purposes it's not suitable because of size.


WMA might be OK, but a data CD can't be read in most audio players.

I will agree with merther on this one. I have been using WMP10 beta for quite a while and really like it. It does what it intended to do fairly well. ZigZagMan also mentioned AudioCatalyst and that is another fine program that I have used on countless occassions.

What it all boils down to is use the software that you find the most comfortable using since there are many to choose from and all have their won strenghts and weaknesses.

RoC

Great minds think alike

Ive never had a problem with wmp 9/10, it does what i need and what i usually need is what he needs/needed.