Hi, I want to record all my music CD's onto a hard disk but without losing any quality - is there something which will do this and also provide ability to play the music AND allow me to record back to a CD-R if required?

If you want 1-1 quality as you say then all you have to do is rip to WAV without encoding to other formats.

But consider that you need a lot of free space

One minute of music, will make a file about 10 MB in size. With most songs playing an average of 3 minutes that's going to take up a lot of space on your hard drive.

There are a number of prgrams you can use for copying (Ripping) music onto your PC without loosing any quality what so ever.

My personal favorate has to be Steinberg's Wavelab 4
Unfortunatly, Wavelab 4 can no longer be baught, it is now Wavelab 5.

You can rip a cd in minutes and you can either save the music as .wav file or as .mp3 file.

If you get a low level recorded song you can also use wavelab to increase the volume and again, without any loss of quality.

There is a lot more to wavelab than just ripping cd's. It is a complete audio editing program so to find out more visit the wavelab website.

Click here to find out more about Wavelab 5

IMO, one of the easiest, most secure (and free ) ways is to extract the full CD with Exact Audio Copy (EAC), configured for ripping in secure mode.

Using the function Copy Image & Create CUE sheet, you create one large WAV file and a small CUE, which is essentially a small text file containing the song time positions and eventually CD-Text.

The CUE/WAV combo allows you to do a lot of things. Some of them are:

• burning an exact copy of the original CD using most burning softwares (EAC itself, Nero, Plextools XL, ...)
• mounting them as a virtual CD using e.g. Daemon-Tools, so that you can listen to the CD with your favorite software CD player
• splitting the large WAV file (using EAC's function Split WAV by CUE Sheet) into WAVs containing the individual tracks: in this way you can create e.g. MP3s or FLACs (lossless) of single songs, make CD compilations, etc.

Another option would be of course ripping directly into splitted WAVs, but I personally prefer the method above.

Of course, using softwares like Nero you can create a NRG disk image (and the same with other programs, DiskJuggler, CloneCD, etc.) which can be mounted in the same way using Daemon-Tools, but IMO the CUE/WAV combo is the most transparent and convenient way to store audio data.

If you want to know more about the wonderful EAC, visit the Coaster Factory for lots of useful tutorials about the program.

BTW, welcome to the forums b1gman!

Regards,

ET

one vote for EAC from me too

Wavelab is NOT freeware, you can do the same things with Audacity, Audacity is free ! Wavelab is a professional and advanced editor, with the money it takes to buy this program you could buy a new PC

EAC maybe is the best out there, but it's NOT the fastest and neither the easiest to use, and that's a fact !

Well, about the 'easiest' maybe you are right. EAC needs a bit of knowledge to be properly configured for secure ripping, but it is well worth the effort. This is why I suggested the tutorials.
It's not pretty fast (but I didn't say it was) but it is accurate, and since I take into great account quality audio rips, I don't worry spending a bit more time for it.

However, I wouldn't suggest an audio editor to b1gman, since he asked how to 'record his music CDs without losing any quality' (that is with no processing - either D/A conversion or digital processing), 'playing music' and 'record back to a CD-R'... Of course Audacity can do that (well, can it burn CD-Rs?), but it is not the more appropriate tool for the question arised. Again, IMO, of course.

Regards,

ET

.

Yes you are right all the way, EAC is accurate, stands out when a cd is in bad shape or the drive is crap, although CDex can do the same thing with the same results.
I use and prefer CDex for my ripping, i do a lot of ripping, artists and bands send me their stuff to review, i rip and convert to mp3 so that i can evaluate the music from my many portable players, while working or doing sports etc.

So i need something that is free, fast, accurate and simple to use !

EAC has some advanced features that really crack other programs, but most of these features are merely used by the masses

Again i agree, i just wanted to point out that Wavelab is not a suitable option for a person that wants to rip a cd, and if so that there are programs that can do it for free.

maybe it's asking to much from a freebie, don't you think so ?

I gave only a quick look at CDex some time ago and it looked nice, but I can't speak about it. I've used mostly EAC and PlexTools, which both can even correct offsets (I use only Plextor Premiums and an old UltraPlex 40max SCSI for ripping, and PlexTools is a killer-ripper). But it's nice to have an opinion from someone who uses it 'at work'.

Sorry, I don't get the point. What do you mean? Ah, ok! I read 'newbie' instead of 'freebie'.

Oh, just to remark that I LOVE Audacity! It is a great multiplatform open-source program!

ET

LOL - I would recommend Poikosoft's Easy CD-DA Extractor using Advanced Audio Recovery/Resync modes ... but even they don;t get to the "accuracy" factor of EAC - but it sure is easy and burns CD's

Guys (N gals), many thanks for all the help here - really do appreciate it.

I've just seem a review of the yamaha CDRHD1500 which is a CD-r and Hard Disk (250Gb) recorder so can store around 400 CD's in native format, so that looks interesting for me. However, it doesn't have ability to get the titles from the net, and I dont fancy having to type in 400 cds worth of track titles !!! Lol :-).

Hi, everyone!

Do you still thinking EAC is the best choice for this purpose or meanwhile a better program arrived? i’m asking it because this thread is a little bit old (about one year old).

I’ve transferring the music of 3 audio CDs to my hard disk using Nero 7, in .wav format. The result was not very bad, but it could be better. It will be better if i used EAC or other program instead of Nero?

Meanwhile i’m reading the EAC tutorials, but as my English is very poor , i found it is hard to me install this program correctly . This is the reason i’m asking if there is another new program doing the same EAC do (very good quality), but easier to install.

Another question is: Each time an EAC new version is coming do we need to perform all the steps we did before for the first installation or we need just download the new version?

Thank you in advance .

Yes, EAC is the best if you want accurate. You must read the tutorials and learn how to use all the features. I use EAC, but usually in the burst mode, which is not "accurate". I rip to wave with the Copy Image and Create CUE sheet Uncompressed (.wav). Then I can back up the CD using the image and CDText (which is often not on the original). Of course, there are other rippers (CDex seems to be popular). Stay with FREEWARE rippers. There is no reason to pay with the good freeware programs available in this category.

You can use "burnatonce". It is very simple to use, free, and does a good job.

Dears gamma1, wobble and furballi: Thank you very much for your information and help!

Dear imkidd57: i'm very sorry, but it was not my intention cross-post and still less delibreately. Simply after put the question here, i just thought maybe here was not the right place to put the question, because this thread was old, and nobody will read this. i was wrong and i apologize this fault.

Erm, does FLAC not count as a lossless audio format? I thought it was...

Use this guide:

http://jiggafellz.isa-geek.net/eac/

with FLAC as the encoder

Just use windows media player, with the lossless wma encoder. It uses a zip compression, rather than cutting bits... so it's truely a lossless backup solution, just a compressed wav pretty much. I use wma CBR at 192kbps, and my music sounds flawless from the original disc.

Yes FLAC is lossless, and I prefer it.

The main reasons I avoid WMA-Lossless is because WMA is pretty much a closed Microsoft thing. Initially, WMA was not to be converted/decoded [except by propietary tools]. You might experience this if you use Nero to File Convert between audio types. Other older utilities also had problems converting WMA at speeds greater than 1x. Prefer FLAC because it's open source, but even zipping / raring or acing waves works ... just the minor inconvenience to unzip them.

Some audio tests have also noted that WMA has a problem about being erattic with treble response. Personally, I'd take lossless anyday and then MP3 256kbit/s for compatibility (some site I had read before noted that using 320kbit/s also resulted in some mucking up of transient responses) or better yet, VBR it!

Shorten, Wavepack are also lossless formats which people currently use.

...in my signature.

Exact Audio Copy along with FLAC.