Best way to make a quality duplicate of audio CD

[JHZR2]

Hi,

I like bringing my CDs in the car. However, it is tough on the cases, the discs, etc. I have an ipod but I generally dont like to use it in the car, and only one of our cars has a real aux in...

Id like to make high quality exact duplicates of my CDs on my computer. I only have a single drive, a burner, so Id need to copy onto the HD then off. I suppose I could buy a second drive, but Id rather not...

What is the best way to do this, so that the cd plays right, it can be seen as an album, and that CDDB sites can recognize it?

Thanks,

JMH

 

[Dr_No]

Buy high quality writable cd's, don't cheap out.

Windows media player has something called "rip" where you insert a disk, it reads it then remembers. You pull out your original CD, and insert the blank one. Press Rip again and it will copy all of the music recorded flawlessly to the CD. You have the same CD but without the fancy label.

 

[JHZR2]

great! So there are no quality penalties or things I need to set to ensure I get a perfect duplicate? I dont want to end up with MP3s that then get converted back to wav or whatever other sorts of files.

Thanks,

JMH

 

[Dr_No]

Not 100% on this, but if you copy the files from your ipod to a seperate folder as back up.. you will be fine ither way.

I thought you were copying a disk to another disk, though

 

[JHZR2]

I want to take then from my original, owned CD, and put them onto a duplicate CD, so I dont have to feel bad if I leave the duplicates in a cheapo case in the car all summer or winter.

Beats ruining $10 real CDs.

thanks,

JMH

 

[Dr_No]

OK just to verify i'll go in detail
In the latest windows media player

*Three tabs across is "Rip"
*Follow directions, insert audio cd
*Menu will pop up, first option is "Rip music from CD"
*Click "ok"
*Will start ripping each song and beside the songs it will say "ripped to library"
*Remove origional CD and insert new one, on the bottom right corner will say "start rip"

You're set!


Hoped it helped,
Andrew

 

[Quattro Pete]

Do you have Nero? If so, just use its CD Copy function. Or if you'd like something free, download ImgBurn. This will allow you to create a CD image from the source CD and then burn it on a blank CD.

I would not use Windows Media Player... it will rip the CD track by track as opposed to the whole CD image as a whole. As a result, you may end up with strange gaps between tracks that were not there in the original. In addition, WMP rips it into some other format (not raw WAV), and even though this format may be lossless (like the WMA lossless), I would rather avoid any unnecessary format conversion.

The one thing that I'm not 100% sure of is if the copy will still be recognizable by CDDB.

But as far as the actual copying (not ripping into another format) difference between CD-HDD-CD vs. CD-CD, there isn't going to be any difference in quality. It's all digital. The quality only depends on the quality of your CD reader/burner and to some degree on the quality of the blank media.

Also, when you burn, try to pick one of the slower burning speeds like 4x or 8x. This will reduce the risk of possible disc skipping in some more sensitive CD players.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Dr_No

*Remove origional CD and insert new one, on the bottom right corner will say "start rip"


What? Do you mean 'start burn'?

If you are gonna rip and then create an audio disc, rip it to WAV files and then use the WAV files to assemble your audio disc compilation.

Otherwise, simply copy the audio disc with software such as Nero, Roxio, etc. I'm sure your CD burner came with a burning software.

 

[Dr_No]

Sorry yes, "start burn"

 

[Shannow]

I'll third Nero...copies the files reliably (doesn't like copy protection, so I can't copy my Iron Maiden CDs...).

The windows one works OK, but it rips them to an MPA or something like that, then reassembles them for burning.

 

[Virtuoso]

Nero rules.

 

[Pablo]

Indeed Nero or one of the competing programs (Roxio?) is the way to go. It's not "new" stuff started with CDW's came out, I pretty much always make copies for car usage, etc....blanks are so cheap compared to the original.

 

[Volvohead]

If you want a truly "bit perfect" copy or rip of an audio CD, then you must use Exact Audio Copy. It is the de facto standard of the ripping community. Computer drives have no redbook error correction and read errors occur more often than imagined.

Best part is, EAC is free.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Ahh, the good old EAC. I totally forgot about it. It may not be the easiest to use, but if you're just ripping it (without converting to something else), it's not that complicated.