Ripping a CD to PC in mp3

[David Banner]

Can I find what program i used to rip a cd last February.? Or if not what would be best to rip a cd. it has cda's. I know they are not files. Don't want to use MS media player. Tried Vlc but it did not work except for one at a time. The cd has 40 tracks!

[flashandpan007]

Eac cdex audiograbber ...

[abolibibelot]

Can I find what program i used to rip a cd last February.?

In your... memory ?
Or if memory fails, go to your installed programs directory, sort by date, and see what was installed around that date...
Or perhaps the name of the program can be found in the ID3 tag.
Or try one that was suggested above, all three are well established and reputed (although I've never tried Audiograbber). I could add Feurio!, which was a personal favorite when I ripped a lot of CDs some years ago : for some reason, it produced the best results with heavily scratched CDs (usually better than EAC, which was specifically designed to provide the best possible accuracy ; and I also found out that in EAC – at least with the version that was current then – the “burst” mode could sometimes produce a better result than the “secure” mode, probably because in “secure” mode the reading rate would slow down so much that the beam would be put off track, due to the scratches, whereas the “burst” mode tried to keep reading at the highest speed possible, making it bypass the not-too-deep scratches). But apparently Feurio has been discontinued for a long time...

[David Banner]

Can I find what program i used to rip a cd last February.?

In your... memory ?
Or if memory fails, go to your installed programs directory, sort by date, and see what was installed around that date...
Or perhaps the name of the program can be found in the ID3 tag.
Or try one that was suggested above, all three are well established and reputed (although I've never tried Audiograbber). I could add Feurio!, which was a personal favorite when I ripped a lot of CDs some years ago : for some reason, it produced the best results with heavily scratched CDs (usually better than EAC, which was specifically designed to provide the best possible accuracy ; and I also found out that in EAC – at least with the version that was current then – the “burst” mode could sometimes produce a better result than the “secure” mode, probably because in “secure” mode the reading rate would slow down so much that the beam would be put off track, due to the scratches, whereas the “burst” mode tried to keep reading at the highest speed possible, making it bypass the not-too-deep scratches).

if my memory worked i wouldn't need anything else. I think i must have done it one by one with vlc
I will check out these programs. Audiograbber not updated since 2004

[David Banner]

eac worked. It said a couple had errors but they play OK?

[abolibibelot]

eac worked. It said a couple had errors but they play OK?

What did the error message say exactly, if memory serves right ? Does the disc look damaged, or dirty, or possessed by demonic forces ? Is it a pressed CD or a burned CD ? Is the drive old (not obsolete) ?
With EAC you can do a test extraction and an actual extraction, it calculates the CRC checksums, if the CRC values match you can be pretty sure that the extraction was flawless, because, as Mr. Tolstoy would have put it, happy DAEs are all alike, but each unhappy DAE is unhappy in its own way. When I did that a lot, I first ran a complete test extraction (for all tracks at once), then did the actual extraction (for all tracks at once) ; it's quicker than doing the test followed by the extraction for each track, because there's no slowdown to reposition the laser beam at the begining of each track, so it can reach full speed (if the disc is in good condition).

[lingyi]

eac worked. It said a couple had errors but they play OK?

Exact Audio Copy was designed to do just that, make an exact error free copy of the every bit and byte on the CD. There's an insane setting that will keep trying until it doesn't encounter any errors at all. You can even test and calibrate your drive so the program can compensate for drive errors.

If you're converting to MP3, anything short of a complete failure message will likely be okay. Try playing some of the tracks with errors before converting to MP3. If they sound fine, you're good to go.

Note: Even though I always remind posters that a rip is an exact bit for bit copy of the original DVD/Blu-Ray, that's not necessarily true. The eyes are more forgiving about visual errors than ears are to aural errors, so a DVD/Blu-Ray rip doesn't have to be as perfect as a CD rip.

[hello_hello]

DVD/Bluray have much better error correction than CDs do. For CDs I don't think there's a way to verify if the data being read is 100% correct. That's why programs have different modes for ripping CDs. For foobar2000, when ripping security is disabled it just reads the disc once and what you get is what you get. Standard mode re-reads sections of the disc until it gets the same CRCs twice. For paranoid mode it's the same CRCs four times. You can verify a rip with AccurateRip (it lets you know if your rip matches the rips of the same disc by other people).

Ripping CDs With Foobar2000

If EAC does your head in, which it might trying to configure it, CUETools/CUERipper might be a tad less likely to make you suicidal.

I've no idea how accurate this is, but as a guide....
Comparison of CD rippers

[lingyi]

When I first started using EAC, the quest for accuracy was endless, including specifying which drive models with which firmware to use. I'm sure there are some that still go to those extremes, but I think the hardware has gotten good enough to be really close to exact enough for the majority of people. Besides, anyone seeking a 100% accurate rip wouldn't bother with .mp3 or conversion to any other format. They want those bits and bytes exactly how they were on the CD.

[hello_hello]

I always rip CDs to flac as a lossless backup, then convert the flac files to MP3 for my portable player. I'd recommend always doing something similar. Aside from having a lossless CD backup, if you decide you want the audio in a different format at some stage, you don't need to re-rip the CD again.

[abolibibelot]

When I first started using EAC, the quest for accuracy was endless, including specifying which drive models with which firmware to use.

Even then most drives were 100% accurate when ripping CDs in good condition, i.e. the actual audio streams were identical from one model to another (actually, if anything, optical drives had a better build quality, were made for optimal reliability as they were thoroughly tested in magazines and online, and they were much more expensive ; now this market has totally dwindled, most prominent manufacturers – Plextor, Yamaha... – have outsourced or just plain abandoned, the units are cheaply made and the reliability / accuracy is probably a good step down from what it was in the years 2000-2005 or so). Those extra configuration steps were mostly meant to deal optimally with damaged discs, and to determine and correct the value of the slight offset at the very begining (a few hundred samples at most so totally inaudible), which varies between different models, which then allowed to build a database of checksums.

[David Banner]

What did the error message say exactly, if memory serves right ? Does the disc look damaged, or dirty,

Don't remember the error. The disk is new - first time using it. Working OK

Thanks all for replies