Just want to rip a CD!

I'm a novice and finding this a bit frustrating. I run Windows XP and have been trying to rip a copy of the DCC Aqualung.

Spent quite a bit of time researching how to do it with EAC, and can't seem to do it. It seems to burn the tracks but can't write them without an error and locking up my whole system.

So, I was able to do it using Windows Lossless, and I played the CDR on my CD player. It sounds pretty good, but perhaps a bit more digital. I checked the acoustic guitar bits on "Mother Goose" and the CDR sounds slightly different to me. Am I hearing things?

I used a Philips CDR.

Can anyone take a minute to point me in the right direction? I just want to copy a CD. Period. No changes, just a straight copy.

 

I’ll try.

Ripping means to copy data from a source disc to your hard drive. Once a disc (audio or video) is ripped, it can be converted into another format.

Copying a disc is different. It doesn’t require ripping, at least not on the visible end that you need to know or care about.

To copy an audio CD (Redbood), you can NOT do it with MS Media Player or anything similar because that is illegal for the most part and most companies are not willing to ‘go there’ so you want and need to use an application that is designed for copying discs.

Nero 6 (http://www.nero.com) is a good application for Windows. It has a disc copy feature that will simply copy disc to disc, at least it will if the disc contains no copy write application that inhibits it. For Audio CD’s this is very rare and legally you are doing so for archival purpose. You have the right to make a copy for your own usage. You will find that the copy write protection for DVD’s is wide spread and allthogouh you have the right to make an archival copy of your store bought DVD’s you will need another application to do this. SlySoft Clone DVD is a great application and a real asset for making archival DVD copies of your DVD property. (http://www.slysoft.com)

Back to audio Redbook CD’s. Nero 6 will certainly work. There are others that will work too. Two things to understand.
If you have only one CDRW drive you can not copy the data directly from disc to disc since you need to use the same drive to read then write. In this case it will write (rip) the data to your PC’s hard drive and then write it to a blank CDR.
If you have two CD drives in your PC then you can configure Nero (for example) to read from one and write to the other, you must make sure the option to ‘record on the fly’ is chosen or the application will still write (rip) the data to your hard drive and then write it to a blank CDR defeating the purpose of having two drives. Also, make sure you write the CD slowly for best quality transfer. 2X write is best, 4X is also fine, 6X or 8X is ok and anything faster definitely degrades quality.

Many writers today will not go any slower then 8X, this is unfortunate. Making a ripped ‘image’ of the CD on your hard drive and then copying it to a blank CDR also degrades quality although technically it shouldn’t but it does.

Hope that helps.

 

I had trouble with EAC too, but only with some discs. Nero works fine for me and I think you can get 6.6 for 40 bucks at BB.

 

Okay, thanks, this helps...

But let me ask what might seem to be stupid questions:

I can rip the DCC Aqualung just fine in Windows Media Lossless and then write it to a CDR. What is wrong with this method? Am I losing something that makes Nero better?

I have a DVD drive and CD drive in my PC. I would presume this would enable me to use the DVD drive for playback and the CD drive for record if I have Nero and bypass ripping to the hard drive?

 

One thing to know about EAC: You may need to install a special driver from Adaptec for it to work properly. At the moment, I cannot recall which driver it is.

If you just want to rip a copy for the car or whatever, there's no reason to use EAC unless you are anal about the accuracy of the data being copied. For most cases, most rippers will do just fine.

 

It is best to rip to the totally lossless .wav format, but you may not be able to do it with the Windows Media Player. I don't know since I never use it for ripping. Nero does what you want.

 

Why is that? I've not encountered that opinion before.
I'm a rip to drive-defrag-x4burn fella

 

I would think that you would be more apt to introduce errors if you did a copy straight from disc to disc rather that saving to the hard drive first.

 

That was my thinking. I don't recall ever researching it. It just seemed the logical thing to do.

 

Comon, guys, when you make a disc image, the data is the same. However, there is the issue of jitter...

 

Jeff, here's a bunch of info. regarding what you want to do. I went through this myself. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Driver+for+using+EAC+on+Win+XP&meta=

 

Okay, thanks. It looks like I'll be able to download a driver to use with XP from this list above.

So Dave, if I rip and burn a CDR of my DCC gold of _Aqualung_ using EAC. will I be able to tell the difference when I listen to them?

 

Well, I certainly want to get a copy that sounds as close to the DCC as possible. Does anyone here know about Windows Media Lossless? I ripped it to my hard drive using that and then burned a CDR, and it sounded pretty good, but I thought I heard a subtle difference in quality.

 

Jitter is a playback-only phenominon. It does not affect disc copying.

 

I think if you mark the edges with a green marker before copying, you are OK!

I copy tons of .wav files from my own personal CDs (using EAC) to my 300 gig internal HD, and make compilations from these files. There is NO degradation in sound...

 

There are a LOT of engineers and other audio pros whoo will disagree with you.

 

Do you use XP? If so, can you point me to a link that walks through the process?

 

Ebkesq is right. Grant, we've been here before. Jitter is a phenomenon that occurs where the interval between samples is critical, i.e. when 44.1 kHz is required on playback for example. Not one single process of copying a disc within a computer is a realtime process - the samples simply need to be collected in the right order, because there IS no "interval" between samples.

Where a PC / Mac is concerned, you can only get jitter on the soundcard - and there are soundcards out there that are designed to minimise this (by RME for example). Anyone who has written software and included a "jitter" checkbox, has got the terminology mixed up.

 

Perhaps, I know I can.

 

This might Jeff.

 

We seem to be wandering off the topic here!


Jeff... EAC should work. However, if it doesn't then you can download a trial version of Nero which lasts a month.

Once you've installed it, select the "copy CD" icon and follow it from there.

Good luck!

 

The difference is a subtle as burning between 2X and 8X, some will hear it if their gear is very revealing and others won’t. copying a CD on the fly streams the data directly from the original CD to the CDR without buffering to the hard drive.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fussy and I don’t necessarily care either but I know lots who do. They keep their old Plextor writers working because they write at 2X.

 

Modern CDR drives can extract audio data at rates well above 32X so if you are recording at 4X or 8X there is no way (unless your computers is painfully slow or bust doing other things while copying) your computer will under run data.

If I get a chance I will unearth some articles about the drawbacks of audio buffering to the HD compared to direct transfer. It’s subtle and certainly nitpicking and may not be worth any further conversation but converting to wav or to image on a HD and then back to CDR is not better, only worse.

 

Walker Audio Vivid lotion is sitting on my shelf, used once. I thought I'd give the potion guys another chance after I couldn't hear the Audience Auric Illuminator.

I'm getting a pretty honest listen through my ATC gear. I may try your disc to disc method just for fun boead. I used to think I heard subtle differences very consistently with different CD types, gold, black, etc. But now through a reclocking/upsampling Benchmark DAC1 I no longer can detect any changes at all regardless of special treatment. That's good, I like the simple life.

 

Thanks Dave!