CD Ripping Software

[Base]

I expect to get flamed for this, but I'll ask anyway...

 

Can anyone recommend some software to rip protected cd's??

 

I don't file share and have no plans to rip off anyone, I even pay the subscription to Napster for what I listen to but I just want to put my CD's on my mp3 player!! I've paid for the damn things, how dare some overpaid record exec. dictate how I listen to them!!!!!

 

Can/will anyone please help??

[Mats Olsson.]

Have you tried the old school method?

 

Audio CD Player output --> cable --> Computer Audio Input

[John Sayers]

check www.majorgeeks.com I'm sure there will be a free ripper there.

 

cheers

john

[Base]

Mats, I could do that straight to the player, but it is a pain in the arse, esp. when part of the point of them is how easy it is supposed to be to plonk songs on via your PC with all of the track info on there...

 

John, thanks, will take a closer look tomorrow and see what I can find. Otherwise it's the magic marker...!

[theblue1]

You've got a right -- as far as I'm concerned -- to listen to tracks you've paid for the way you want. And the base of copyright law essentially protects that right. While it's technically illegal to digitally 'bust' copy protection, if you can do it, and it's for your own use, I say, go ahead.

 

But even if you can't or want to follow the letter of the law, you can probably make a very clean copy using analog ripping/recordng. In the old days, most CD ripping was done via the analog connections from folks' CD drives.

 

In fact, I use a 'stream-ripper' called Replay Music (it's not actually a ripper, since it uses the analog signal and records it into either straight wave files or various MP3 formats). It has the almost magical capability of recognizing songs by their audio patterns (or some such voodoo) and then automatically tagging them with title and artist info. (It's about $30. After you've made 1500 copies [i think it is] you have to buy a new license for the softare... so each copy you make costs about a half cent a track.

 

I use it to make 'copies' of albums I have on vinyl.

 

But, actually, as per a reading of the Millenium Copyright Act, making analog recordings of TV, radio, and audio streams -- for your own purposes only, of course -- is still technically legal. (But busting digital copy protection is not.)

[fantasticsound]

I just picked up exCDripper off a link from my dad, IIRC. I've only used it once or twice, but it worked well and is shareware. I'll check for the link tomorrow, but a Google search of ezCDripper will find you plenty of places to download the trial version.

 

It rips to mp3, ogg, wma, wav and more.

[DC]

Let me get this straight, you want to turn wave files from your CDs into MP3s?

 

Search Lame and Razor Lame which is the front end to let you just use your mouse and click a command line program. Works great and sounds extra good, unreal free ware program that actually sounds better than any other I've heard.

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by DC:

Let me get this straight, you want to turn wave files from your CDs into MP3s?...

One technical point. .cda files on a CD are not wave files. Standard, non CD-rom, CD players will not play wav files. They must be converted to .cda's to burn onto a disk that will (or at least should) play in any audio CD player.

[Base]

Yes, I want to convert audio cd's into sound files to play on my PC and mp3 player. If they were already .wav's I could just copy them straight to my player and they would work (be a bit big tho!) and I already have Media Monkey which will convert between file types. It's just some cd's have protection to prevent you ripping them in the first place

 

I'll try ezCDRipper later, thanks FS!! If all else fails, my player can record from line-in and save them as mp3's, so I'll get them one way or the other, I just resent having gotten the technology to do this and having to go back to long winded methods....

[Mats Olsson.]

Since audio CD's dont contain error correction, the results can vary a lot between different players and/or speeds. My Plextor Premium almost always gives me better results than my brand new NEC 3500.

 

I'm not sure, but I think jitter correction is part of the problem. The physical condition of the disc also matters.

[Base]

A friend suggested MusicMatch jukebox for ripping as it ignores copy-protection. It doesn't in the slightest, yet he had no trouble ripping protected cd's with it?!! Could it be the hardware and not the software that allowed it?!?

 

It is ridiculous, I also use Napsters subscription service and my g/f was told before buying the player that it was compatible with Napster-to-go (lets you use the subscription service on portable devices by checking the licenses once a month). It now looks like they just outright lied, if so I'm not going to have an qualms about using line-out to record albums straight into my player and copying them back to my PC (effectively downloading Napster content without any protection).

 

It will get to the point that whenever I go to buy a CD and see a label claiming it has anti-pircay protection on it, I'll just go straight home and rip it off in this way. Seems the best way to send a message to the record companies to get their act together

[philbo_Tangent]

Try Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

 

It's freeware (from the LAME website) and you can tell it to persistently reread sectors till it gets the proper data.

 

It may work better if you have a Plextor Premium CD drive since that has hardware support for detecting and using level C1 and C2 error correction (CD technogeek jargon), which EAC knows how to use.