I have a few CDs that are "touchy". In the car CD player they might "skip" or error. But on my computer they play fine. I'd like to save them as MP3 songs before they get worse.
Windows Media Player 9.x (for XP) has an option to save them as .wma files (which is Windiws Media Player's own format). But I dont want to be locked into WMP.
I want them to be converted to a standard format (MP3). What FREE software can I use for this? (Must be compatible with Windows XP.)
CDex
Audiograbber
Audiograbber might be a bit more user friendly for you.
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The process is called "ripping". You need to specify a bit rate when doing so, it determines the degree of compression. I would suggest 128 kbps for you as it results in files which are a bit more that 1/12 the size of the song on the CD; it also provides decent sound.
Back in the olden days Winamp would make a WAV file but I am not sure if it still does. I bought a copy of sound forge a while ago and it does all of my sound stuff. It does far more than ripping CDs
There are many CD rippers out there. One of my favorite free ones is Exact Audio Copy
There are many free CD rippers, but as with most free software, but you get what you pay for... :)
On the paid side, I have been using "EZ CD Audio Converter" for several years. It works great for ripping CD's and converting to MP3 files, as well as converting existing audio files into MP3 format:
Anthony Watson
I have to respectfully disagree with you. 128 kbps sounds like shit compared to VBR anyday of the week. The VBR results in slightly larger mp3s, but, still much smaller than the original source .wav they were generated from.
or
You can hear a big difference for yourself in the quality. Also, neither of the apps you suggested offer secure mode rip as EAC does. Without that, you can't guarantee the rip to be dependable.
EAC for the ripping, Use secure mode rip once you've properly configured your drive. Use CDEX and lame 3.90.3 alt present standard (or if you'd prefer) alt preset extreme. so you can batch encode them. Use Morgoth renaming/tagging if you want to make them 'scene' grade.
The result will be high quality mp3s. I recommend that version of lame due to the fact it's had the most testing done including many double blind tests. The engine is also refined for maintaining high quality audio (for an mp3 anyway) while using a lossy compression algorithm. Later versions were hit and miss and none received as much testing as the v3.90.3 version did. In fact, some later versions were so poor, anything marked as encoded by them wasn't even submittable to dump sites and other 'scene' release avenues.
I don't expect you to just take my word for any of this. Instead, I invite you to checkout this url and download something to sample with your own ears:
Or
If you're uncomfortable downloading via torrent, pick something from that list and provide me another way to send you the mp3(s) associated. Anything from a single song to the entire album.
Except that EAC is free and beats the shit out of your 'EZ CD audio converter" anyday as it offers whats called secure mode rip.
Combined with LAME codec, v3.90.3, specifically, using either alt preset standard or alt preset extreme, theres' no competition whatsoever. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
VBR can certainly effect an improvement depending on the target bit rate. Same for ABR. Joint stereo can improve too.
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The only ripper I have ever used/heard that consistently did a bad job was Audiocatalyst.
Might need to use older versions.
And:
- Exact Audio Copy
- AudaCity
Both the suggested programs will "rip". Both need an encoder to convert the ripped music to MP3. IMO, the only encoders worth considering are LAME and Fraunhofer. It is unlikely that you would find the Fraunhofer and even if you did, there are more than one version and I no longer recall which is the desireable one. That leaves LAME which AFAIK still comes with CDex, with Audiograbber it may be a separate download.
Should you want more info, here is a link to a tutorial I wrote more than 15 years ago. It was a help file I hosted on my web site - which no loner exists - but Shareup asked for and received permission to convert it to html and host it. What they have is not the latest version but it does contain info that may be useful to you.
That could be. I haven't ripped a CD in years, but the EZ CD program worked fine to rip the CD, convert to MP3, and automatically name the files. I never had a problem with it, so I had no reason to try anything else.
These days I use the EZ CD program mostly to convert music from iTunes to MP3 files. It was one of the few programs that could make the conversion and keep the album art.
I'll have to try EAC one of these days if I ever need to rip a CD again.
Thanks,
Anthony Watson
Technically VBR can sound just as bad or worse than a 128 kbps constant bit rate. It depends on the min/max bitrates you use.
VBR just means variable bit rate, using fewer bits for sections that don't have as much detail to encode, and more bits for sections that have more detail. A VBR with 128 kbps min and 320 kbps max won't sound any better than a constant 320 kbps bitrate. The file size will just be smaller. It will also take longer to encode (though the difference will probably be inperceptable on todays computers).
As I mentioned earlier, a 7MB or 8MB MP3 file size doesn't matter much these days. You can still fit a hundred MP3's on a CD, or hundreds on a flash drive.
Anthony Watson
And the codec. It actually has several variables I didn't bother going into. The links I provided are actually scene (as in pir8) spec rips. I'm one of the co founders of the group responsible for the albums available at the links I provided...
So for me, your attempt to educate is wasted. I know this stuff, intimately. You don't run a 14 year old group because your material sucks.
It only matters to me concerning sound quality. I don't care that I might lose the ability to fit a few more on a single cd because I opted for better sound quality.
Thanks for the educational effort, anyhow.
You need to do a bit more googling and do some reading then. As I said, secure mode rip exists for a very specific reason. I didn't pull the suggestions out of my ass, in other words.
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