Have some commercial cd's want to make copies of and also want to copy tracks to hdd for storage.

Would appreciate help and advice to the following.

1. What is the best media (CD) for backing up and best compatibility, and are CD audio's required?(I just got 300 taiyo yuden's from Rima...will these be fine?)

2. I have a toshiba dvd/cd ROM and a pioneer A09 dvd/cd burner. What is the best ROM drive to read from and the best burner or does it matter? Am I ok with what I have?

Now for the ripping of the singles to hdd.

1. Same hardware question, is the A09 fine for this?

2. I understand that mp3 is compressed and wav is not compressed, that wav is lossless or almost lossless. I don't care about size of file, when I copy the singles to the hard drive I want the best copy of each single with NO loss of quality or anything. Is wav the way to go for that or is there a better one?

3. Is wav ok now for HiFi? if not what?

4. Copying the singles like this to hdd is there any loss in things such as channels, dolby or any of that stuff?

I just want to make the best copies and singles I can as I am going to sell my collection of originals, and want dependable backups.

5. Is there any way other than listening to the cd all the way thru to determine if it is a perfect copy or not?

6. Same thing in 5, for the singles copied to the hdd, any way to make sure they are perfect copies?

BTW I am using SOnic Recordnow deluxe to do the burning and ripping. Is this ok software or is there a better one?


thanks for all the help.,..t

If you care about HiFi, convert the wav files to FLAC. FLAC is a lossless compression method, unlike mp3s. With FLAC, you can then convert to any other format you like, i.e. mp3, ogg, etc.

A good source of information for audio tech is www.hydrogenaudio.org

Hi,
These TY would be fine. The media, that are sold as "audio CD-R" or similar, are intended to be used in standalone CD-recorders.
I think, your hardware is okay. Get "exact audio copy", this is not only one of the best rippers (concerning quality) available, it also tells you, which drive it would prefer.

WAV is practically the original format. For archiving purposes you can also try a lossless encoder, that will decrease file size by up to 50%.
It is the best possible format, besides lossless compressed files. I assume, you will connect your computer to your HiFi-equipment?
No. Not if the source is standard audio-CD
If you use Exact Audio Copy, you get the best quality. EAC compares the data and rereads them, if there are errors.
Concerning ripping, use EAC. It is also capable to write on CD-R, but there you can use your favourite burning app.

Michael