Quick way to rip CDs to WMA?

Anybody done this? I fiddled with a few programs that take .wav files off a CD and convert them to WMA files, but they take forever!

I'm looking for something that can just rip an entire disc in a few minutes and store the entire thing as a WMA file with track markers/titles.

Why am I bothering? Well, my new Panasonic DVD player handles WMAs and I'm just itchin' to see if I can cram 10-15 discs worth of music onto 1 CD and use if for background music.

 

Does it use MP3 too? If so, don't bother with WMA. Holy moly.

But anyhoo....

http://www.mediatwins.com/products/1707-4.htm

 

Soundstream from Roxio will do this for you. If you have CD Creator Deluxe 5 or 6, it also has it.

 

Thanks Scott & Grant. I use Nero, it will burn WMA, but I can't figure out how to make it rip or rip/burn at the same time (if this is even possible).

Yeah, my DVD player will do MP3 too, but I've been told WMA is much more listenable.

The more I think about this, the more I may be off my rocker.....I spend too much money just to buy expensive (read DCC) discs that don't use compression/limiting and here I am trying to do this to my own CDs!

Part of me just want to here how badly WMA will mangle the music.

 

In my tests I found that WMA destroys the natural decay and ambience of the music and makes it sound unnatural. It also lessens the bass response.

mp3 tends to have the effect of compressing the sound, but it also sounds the most natural to me. It won.

I used 128kbps constant bit rate for my tests. Obviously, the higher the bit rate, the better the sound.

Ogg Vorbis was the same as WMA to these ears.

mp3PRO is useless to me. It just makes the sound thin and trebly.

 

Do the others (WMA, Ogg) have a way to vary the bit rate?

I can't stand MP3 files at 128k, but can listen to 192k with no problem. I'm hoping the next in-dash I buy can play MP3 at a high bit rate (256 or 320), since it would be neat to have a higher capacity to play in the car. Thing is, my car system is ultra-sensitive to recording quality, and it may just make the MP3s sound worse. (Or not really worse, but will make me hear its shortcomings all that much easier.) That's one reason why an in-dash SACD player would be something I'd be interested in--badly mastered CDs are very fatiguing over my car system. For serious listening, it's an issue, but if I'm just driving along and need some background music at lower volume, MP3 would be perfect.

 

The freeware program CDex will rip those tracks directly to WMA, I think, but I've found it to be *very* slow. You can try Googling for it if you're interested.

I used to have an all-A&M Live365 internet broadcast station, but had to discontinue it when they started asking us to cough up money for it. I've considered my own Shoutcast stream (which I can do from my server here at home), but might encounter the wrath of Comcast (since they don't like servers running on their service ) or ASCAP/BMI. I might consider speakeasy.net, a DSL service that will let me run a server if I wish.

 

Yes, but it depends on the software you use. SF 6.0 lets you adjust the bitrate of wma. I never checked this in Cool Edit. SF does Ogg and it also lets you adjust the bit rate.

 

I agree... its a better codec at all bitrates...

 

All you need to do is do your own tests like I did and decide for yourself.