• How do I take a song from CD and save it as an MP3 on my hard drive?
• Do All CD-ROM Drives Support The Ripping Of Audio Tracks?
• How Do I Tell If My Drive Supports DAE?
• How Do I Get My Ripper To Recognize My CD Drive?
• Is It Possible To Rip A CD Directly To MP3 Format?
• How Is The Volume Controlled When Ripping From A CD?

Making MP3's off of audio CD's involves a two-step process, "CD ripping" and "MP3 encoding". The CD ripping process converts CD tracks to WAV files, while the MP3 encoding process encodes WAV files to MP3 files. Alternatively, there is software, such as RealJukebox and MusicMatch JukeBox, that have both CD ripping and MP3 encoding capabilities. Various MP3 decoders and encoders can be found here. With utilities such as RealJukebox and MusicMatch, you have the power to dictate at what bitrate the MP3's will be converted to. Remember that the higher the bitrate, the better the quality but the more room they will take on your hard drive (a standard 128 kbit MP3 will consume roughly one megabyte of hard drive space per minute in terms of length) and the longer it will take to transfer the files from a CD to a MP3.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2003-05-25 06:44:18

Unfortunately, no. Any CD drive can play audio CD's, that's true but the term "ripping" is mostly used to refer to Digital Audio Extraction (i.e. extracting the audio data digitally to the computer, rather than converting it to analogue data in the drive and playing it through the sound card directly, which is what happens when you "play" an audio CD on your computer drive). Not all CD drives support Digital Audio Extraction and even for those that do support it, the speed and reliability vary enormously from drive to drive. If your drive absolutely won't do DAE, then you can fall back on "analogue ripping" (i.e. just playing the CD and then recording the analogue signal back through your sound card) but the results won't be as good as a proper digital rip. MusicMatch JukeBox supports analogue recording from CD's, for example, or you can just play the CD and then record using a WAV recording program such as GoldWave.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:34:40

Well, if you have Roxio's Easy CD Creator, it has a nice little option in it (under "System Tests") for testing your drive to see if it performs DAE, and if so, at what speed. Also other ripper programs, such as CDEX and Exact Audio Copy, give various diagnostic messages if there are problems with the ripping process.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:35:58

If you're using Roxio, head on over to their official site and download a small program entitled "aspichk.exe", which should be available in the Download portion of their website. This program will check on your installation and report back. If this program identifies errors or version mismatches in your ASPI installation, you may need to reinstall these programs to get your burner working properly. The driver files themselves are also available from Roxio's website.

Update: Apparently Roxio's website does not have the aspi layer. It can be obtained from Adaptec's site: Adaptec
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Thanks to Frosty for the updated info.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2003-04-29 12:38:06

There are programs that are able to rip directly to MP3 format from an audio CD. MusicMatch JukeBox, CDEX, and MP3 Wizard are just a few programs that harbor this capability.

It is true that sometimes problems result from trying to encode on the fly, mainly because the digital audio extraction from the CD ROM drive is to some extent a time-sensitive task. If it works, fine. If you have doubts as to whether it's working properly, then try ripping to WAV files first and then encoding afterward. Ripping to WAV files is the simplest, since it involves very little manipulation of the basic PCM data ripped from the CD.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:35:07

If you're using Digital Audio Extraction (which is what is usually meant by "ripping"), then I don't believe anything "controls the volume". You are simply taking the digital PCM data from the audio CD and transferring it to digital PCM data in a WAV file on your PC (well, you may also be doing MP3 encoding, but that's actually a second step). The "volume" is simply a direct transfer of the sample amplitude from the CD.

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by snapcase$ edited by KeysCapt
last modified: 2002-12-03 15:35:33