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Exact Audio Copy?
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75 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Hello, I'm here from Audiophile land to tell you about the magic of Exact Audio Copy! This thing takes old beat up CDs and reads the error sectors over and over again until it's convinced it knows what bits go in those sectors. It works on data CDs to to some extent, check it out and see if it helps you!
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/
Put your 2007 thinking cap on while navigating to the correct Download link. You should end up with eac-1.3.exe, 4.83MB, signed by Andre Wiethoff. MD5 6CD17649E256E37BE77D30226CF9CB05
Before you do all that work, make a blind A/B X and decide whether all that ripping is actually worth the effort.
*edit:
- This page is also very helpful http://mp3ornot.com/
- and if you decide to start ripping FLAC use EAC
They do, but audio CDs were designed to be played back in real time and so were given error correction that could fail and keep playing without skipping, as long as enough data was present, by filling-in the errored data. CD drives read audio CDs using the same lossy error-correction, unlike with a data CD. These fill-ins usually occur several times in a playthrough or rip. Proper rippers read areas several times, compare checksums, and take the sample whose checksum appears multiple times. 2 or 3 by default, though this can be set arbitrarily high.
get a program called exact audio copy. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
And with it convert it all in to FLAC. (rougly 250mb - 500mb per album) You might have to look up how to do it more thoroughly online but it is quite easy once you get the hang of it.
This format can later be converted to any other format including making a new exact audio copy of the original disc.
Flac is a format that is loss less in its compression unlike mp3 that is lossy. Meaning that you do not degrade the music quality.
As for selling it depending on quality and demand of said discs check out various sites online like http://www.discogs.com/
GL
I am not converting MP3 to FLAC.
I am starting with RAW audio from Vinyl or CD using EAC. I convert the RAW audio to FLAC/ALAC using DBPowerAmp.
Awesome article, but it lacks the king of CD rippers, Exact Audio Copy. EAC -is- the standard for ripping flawless copies when set up correctly.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ http://xunside.info/eac/index.html
I'm going to jump in and recommend Exact Audio Copy or EAC for ripping audio CDs...though I'm assuming you are using Windows. I have read it will work under Wine in Linux or OSX, but I have never tried it.
I recommend EAC for a couple reasons; it can rip into multiple formats (FLAC, MP3, etc), and it generates a results report.
The results reports are great for checking if you ripped with any skipping or errors which has happened to me using iTunes. And I'm not saying iTunes is a bad choice especially for it's ease of use. But it's nice to be able to look at a text file and see the quality of a track ranked by % quality (100%=best) rather than hearing the skipping months later when you no longer have the original CD.
Anyway, EAC is a little overwhelming to use the first time, so check out some YouTube videos of how it works as well a the FAQ on their main site. It's a great tool! =)
You'll want Exact Audio Copy.
It's a wonderful tool for Windows that will help you get every single bit from your CDs. You should spend about an hour reading guides and getting familiar with all the settings available, because the default settings won't provide you with the best possible rip.
If you're on Unix/Linux there is cdparanoia but I have not used it.
I started off with a pair of ATH-M50s and a Fiio E17 (though I think the Fiio has since been superseded). It was a great starting setup and if you have a little more $ to throw at it I would certainly recommend the M50s.
Also, like the other comments say, don't reencode your existing music as you can only make it sound the same or worse. You will need to make new rips from CDs you own or look for lossless copies elsewhere.
I did this myself recently and I used Exact Audio Copy.
You should definitely rip to FLAC, they're exact (compressed) copies of the disc and you can always convert the flacs to mp3s if you need to.
Here's the guide I used to get to get me started with EAC: http://blowfish.be/eac/index.html
I haven't had to burn an audio CD in a while, but I think Exact Audio Copy will have you covered.
Otherwise, CD Burner XP should be able to handle it.
La prima cosa che mi viene in mente è di usare EAC (Exact Audio Copy) che generalmente serve per rippare i CD audio, ma ha anche delle funzioni di verifica del supporto.
Can you try a different CD drive? Also try using Exact Audio Copy, it requires some setup (a good guide here) but creates great results.
These are read errors which will be due to dirty or damaged discs or an inaccurate optical drive.
Try to clean your CDs before use and use Exact Audio Copy to rip them.
Be sure to rip them into FLAC first... mp3 isn't a perfect bit for bit copy of your CD's. I know many people in the audio online world that ripped their CD's thinking it was a good rip and then realizing once they were sold they didn't do a perfect rip.
Exact Audio Copy is the best program for ripping. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
It's a bit complicated to set up, if you're serious fire me a pm and I can send a couple links to the set up FAQ (not on EAC website, on hydrogen audio IIRC).
As far as I know, none of the albums can be bought digitally so your only option is to buy physical CDs directly from hydeout/tribe or a third-party reseller (e.g. Amazon JP) and rip them yourself (this is trivial with EAC). I find the physical CD prices to be over the top, especially once you factor in shipping from Japan.
You need to be using a CD ripping program that supports secure mode ripping.
Try EAC: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
And set it up with this guide: http://blowfish.be/eac/Setup/setup1.html
It's a tutorial for FLAC, but you could convert the FLAC to ALAC after that with something like dBPoweramp if you want.
I'm not sure about CDA files, afaik they are just basically location bookmarks on the CD so the reader knows where each track is, not actual audio (PCM) data . Maybe what ever program you are using to rip just outputs the raw PCM data and uses .cda as a container, and perhaps Play Music doesn't like that since it isn't a "real" audio container.
Once again, its probably whatever ripping program you used messing up here, since you shouldn't get CDA files. I think you might be just copying the CDAs off the disk in which case there is basically nothing in those files! try checking the file size to see. I'd recommend using Exact Audio Copy to rip your CDs. EAC can rip the disk and transcode at the same time which is super easy. Personally, I'd transcode my files to FLAC as it losslessly reduces file-size and has the best compatibility short of MP3.
A CD player with optical/coaxial out to a DAC. Otherwise just rip your CDs to a hard drive as lossless. I think the best option is to have network media storage with all your music on it and have that accessible to your all your devices.
Ha, I should have know better than to just put an acronym out there like that. Exact Audio Copy, a very accurate CD ripper. It's paranoid and redundant in its rips, and consequently quite slow. Truthfully I quit using it about halfway through and switched to dBpoweramp.
i've done a lot of this. are looking for lossy (mp3, hopefully V0) or lossless (flac) files?
get this app - http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/. it will do both.
the app is quite robust, so here are guides describing how to set it up - http://blowfish.be/eac/index.html
Use EAC and use the LAME encoder with everything set up right:
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/support/faq/extraction-questions/
That one will explain how to set up everything correctly, most importantly directories.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_Lame
This is a bit on how to configure LAME.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lame
And here is some more on LAME.
Some of these happen because the cues on CDs can be programmed with an INDEX 00 or an INDEX 01 position. By default, most CD players will just look at the INDEX 01 positions, even if there are INDEX 00 positions. These are particularly annoying...for instance, on Hybrid's album Morning Sci-Fi. To play the track on most conventional CD players, you have to put the disc in, wait until it starts playing, then rewind the first track into the hidden "track 0".
If you're a bit crazy (like me) and you feel the need to rip all of your CDs with something like EAC, you obviously demand perfection...but even EAC won't catch these using the standard "rip as .wav and .cue sheet" options. To create a .cue sheet, EAC will only look at the INDEX 01 positions and not the INDEX 00 positions. The best bet is to know which ones have these things, then rip the entire CD without a CUE sheet, manually setting your ripping positions...you'll get everything.
+1 for E.A.C.
I use ExactAudioCopy to backup my CDs .
It has 'secure' settings .
Uses an online database to account for CD drive "offset" .
And it produces a log file .
Uses online databases to tag the flac files .
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
<edit> cannot find the setup guide I linked to - it is gone now ; (
A couple things:
If you're going to be ripping CDs, EAC is the absolute best software for that. It's what basically everyone who rips physical media for torrent sites uses, and there's a reason for that.
Android plays FLAC natively, so unless you're worried about storage capacity, you don't actually need to convert anything.
For desktop playback on your new Windows machines, foobar2000 is the media player of choice. It also has built-in conversion tools, if you do decide you wanna convert stuff to mp3.
agree, try more than one drive for sure!
I'm still bummed that Plextor no longer makes their own drives. Their drives use to be one of the "gold standards" for ripping audio CDs. I wish that I had a pile of new-unused "old" drives still in a box.
I've been using Exact Audio Copy since 1998 to rip audio CDs. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Compress was probably not the best word to use. It can be re-encoded into any other format. When you re-encode into another format, it compresses the audio.
When you compress audio, quality is lost.
Lets say you have a lossless copy of Michael Jackson's Bad album.
You can use a program that will look at those lossless songs, and give you the option to click and change how you want to encode it.
Lets say your portable device only supports mp3.
You would open up a program similar to FLAC Frontend. It will take the songs and convert those .flac files into independent .mp3 files.
(NOTE: The program also allows you to encode files into .flac files, but you have to understand that ALL OTHER encodes, other than .flac/lossless, are a lower quality; so this part of the program has always been ignored by me.)
You now have the Michael Jackson Bad album in .flac and .mp3 format. It won't delete your original .flac files, so it will always remain the highest quality version. Then you do as you wish with the .mp3 version.
I don't recommend illegally downloading music, so there is a program called Exact Audio Copy that allows you to get .flac files from your own personal CD collection.
Ultimately, the best source for .flac data is here
EAC is really great software. You can easily set it up to convert either to FLAC, or to mp3, but it's definitely not easy to switch between the two: you have to reconfigure it from scratch, so it'sdefinitly not as easy as clicking on a checkbox or radio button., which would be ideal.
So what I do now is configure it to compress to FLAC, and I have created a tag export filter for mp3tag to generate a BAT file to convert the FLAC to mp3 using LAME.
So all I have to do is rip the audio to flac, open the directory in mp3tag, apply my export filter and run the generated bat file. Bingo: I've got both FLAC and mp3.
You can use VLC to convert the CD to .MP3 or .FLAC:
Another good util is EAC:
Also...Windows Media Player will rip the CD to .MP3.
While I can't give you an answer as to where the error originated I can point you toward EAC which is a popular cd ripper designed to make as good as possible copies even of slightly damaged cd's.
I would advice that you try to rip the same song with EAC and see if there is still a problem with the audio.
APE and FLAC are two kinds of compression (techniques used to make things smaller). They don't have many differences, but most people opt for FLAC as it's more widely supported.
Both of these apply what's called a "lossless" compression, unlike MP3 or AAC, which are "lossy". This means that (in theory), the music you have on a CD will be exactly the same as that which you have in a FLAC file, just instead of being stored on the CD, it's on your hard drive. On a CD the audio is uncompressed, so takes up more room, but is easier for a CD player to decode. This trade off is worth it, and most albums don't need to be longer than 80 minutes, which is the limit for uncompressed audio on a CD. Lossy compression does "throw away" some of the data, but general the difference isn't huge when you've got the right settings for conversion.
If you've downloaded an album, and it's in APE, it's fairly simple to convert it in Foobar. Simply select it, right click and select the "Convert" option. Although foobar can play APE files, it's generally best practise to have a uniform format across your library, so once in this dialogue, select "Quick convert". In the left-hand "Name" column, select "FLAC" and then convert. The default settings should be fine and you're give a set of flac files in the same directory as the APE ones. If you wish you can then delete the APE files, but check first that the flac ones are okay! Simply playing a few should suffice. There is not lost data between APE-FLAC conversion, so if at any time you want to change it back then there is no loss.
As for sources of music, I mostly pirate, but will buy records a fair bit. Bandcamp can have some good free music but it's rather hit and miss. I have lots of old CDs from family, of which I have ripped the best ones (using EAC)
Wrong sub, but if you aren't using this or similar then who knows what's going on http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ (XLD as a Mac alternative http://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html) These are "secure rippers" in that they save the audio off the disc exactly as presented and will alert you of any disc read errors.
Both accounts are true. For Audio CDs, cleaning the surface will ensure that the entire track is played properly; dirty tracks are still played, but will have audible glitching. For video games, if the surface is completely clean then the console won't need to use Reed-Solomon error correction and it should load faster.
For Audio CD's take a look at the EAC FAQ: >I am getting Sync and Read errors occasionally, but EAC will still finish ripping, though with some “suspicious” positions. What to do now?
>Clean the CD carefully and try again. If the errors don’t go away, listen to the suspicious positions and decide whether they are audible or not. You could also try to rip these tracks in burst mode, sometimes the reader could get better results on these bad sectors.
FLAC for home use assuming you have a decent set of speakers. For media players 256kbps+ or VBR MP3. I'd recommend getting foobar2000 you can then get the albums in or rip them to FLAC using EAC then convert to whichever MP3 quality you want.
www.exactaudiocopy.de Found a link from a guy who got the queens of the stoneage on youtube
Never knew these existed before the album started. i know of lots of shitty silences then a bonus track.
It sounds like there is no need for it, but if you want to convert your regular cds to a pure digital format (i.e. a file on a hard drive). You should look into Exact Audio Copy (EAC) .
It is a popular software and free so you should be able to find several great guides on how to optimally set-up the software. It'll rip you some great FLAC and let you know if anything went wrong in the process.
Vinyl is cool too, I've got a Technics SL-1200mk2 modded with MG5 tonearm.
Here's what I use to take CD to FLAC http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/
Use Foobar2000 to play audio with ASIO4ALL
If a game doesn't need the .bin header, it is enough to just convert your audio to at3. An example would be GTA:CTW or the God Of War series.
There is another Tool to convert mp3s to .at3 called EAC which only works on Win XP.
Windows Media Player is just an easy to use consumer software. Exact Audio Copy (free) is often considered the best software to accurately rip audio CDs on Windows. It can extract to one large file with a cue file or separate files, and it doesn't add gaps.
Anyway, if you convert tracks into separate mp3, m4a, mka, opus... lossy format audio files, you may still have gaps due to opening and decompressing a new file.
>freedb shut down last month
Damn, I hadn't heard that. I've been using Exact Audio Copy forever, and it lets you manually enter the URL of your desired CDDB server. I believe that, like FreeDB, GnuDB is a CDDB service, so it should work. Haven't tried it though.
If you are using Windows, you can use Exact Audio Copy for lossless ripping ;)
Here's the tip: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/audio/how-rip-cds-flac-3690344/ (just skip the iTunes part)
For an exact copy of the CDs I tend to use ExactAudioCopy. But be prepared to tag all your stuff if the CD doesn't come with tags.
If you have the space, rip the CDs in lossless formats so you don't have to rip it again. FLAC tends to be the popular choice but WAV works too. This way you have a "master copy" that you can convert to lossy formats like mp3s later on.
If you're archiving try using EAC. It verifies rips for accuracy, will correct errors on hard to read discs if it can, and creates logs and checksums. It does a lot of other stuff but would be a lot better than VLC or Windows Media Player if you're going for accurate rips.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/ - you can integrate a FLAC encoder right into the ripper and get the tags etc done for you. That way you should mostly be just swapping in discs.
But FLAC is future proof, and lossless which is the key for archiving.
If CDBurnerXP doesn't work, you can try Exact Audio Copy. Setup is a bit complicated, so here's a guide.
I posted Nobody to Vote For to youtube a few years ago. I didn't have a copy of it and thought it should be out there, so I got in touch with the folks at Weird Canada and they sent me an mp3 of the song.
If you track them down, please use Exact Audio Copy, rip them to flac files, and let me know
I love CDs, but I grew up with them. there is really little point to playing a compact disc these days, versus just ripping it to wav or flac, and playing it back via a quality DAC. so I would say don't buy a CD player, buy a device capable of bit-perfect rips, like a cheap laptop with an optical drive, install EAC, and start building a library of ripped CDs. By all means, keep the CDs after you have ripped them, and build the CD collection of your dreams, but there is no point in a stand-alone player, unless you just want the nostalgia of a spinning disc.
If you do insist on a stand-alone player, get something optimized for audio playback. Many DVD and Blu-ray players boast impressive specs, and can play audio CDs, but are primarily designed for video playback, not audio. there is nothing worse than putting in a CD and having to wait for the player to load a menu where you select CD playback. A player that won't let you program track playback, may lack repeat and shuffle functions, and is difficult to navigate from the front panel. if it doesn't have play/pause, stop, skip ahead, skip back, fast-forward and rewind on the front panel, forget it. and never underestimate the importance of a time display you can toggle! elapsed and remaining track time as well as disc. If you end up with an indexed disc, you will also want the ability to display the indices, but that's pretty unlikely unless you are a fan of classical music.
Or you could make a bit-perfect copy .flac format. People stopped using your motherboard precisely because of the existence of CD's, the whole process could be done digitally and the only analogue conversion happened at the DAC.
Best source, period, is buying the CD and ripping them yourself using dBPoweramp or EAC.
​
You can't consistently get FLAC from any source. You can get lossless from Amazon. Apple has their proprietary thing that you can convert, but there is no reason to convert as it's lossless and it's playable on everything. High bitrate MP3 is good enough, but that's not what you asked for.
All physical CDs are in WAV files. Just rip the CD to your PC with a program like Exact Audio Copy or dozens of other converters, and specify WAV format. If you have the FLACs already, just convert them to WAV. FLACs are just compressed WAV files (like a zip file), so you aren't losing anything by converting from FLAC to WAV.
Do you have software to isolate instruments? I didn't know you could do that from having just a WAV file. I've grabbed albums where they were able to separate 6-channel audio (from DVDs, not CDs) or even just isolate the vocals (acapella), but I don't think there's enough info in the WAVs to separate by instrument.
One of the best tools to rip CD's to your favorite formats, FLAC, MP3, MP4 via Nero AAC. For those old enough to still have a huge collection of those magical coasters which contained music.
the better your headphones, amp, etc. the more you will hear the difference between FLAC & 320 mp3
also, make sure that you source music was originally lossless, in other words, just because a piece of music is in the format of a .flac file, doesn't mean it is good quality - someone could have taken a crappy 128k mp3 file and re-encoded as a .flac, if this has happened, it will still sound like crap.
The best program for ripping your CD's, SACD's and other lossless music into fantastic flawless FLAC recordings is a free program called Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
Use Exact Audio Copy: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ to rip your CD collection into FLAC (a lossless audio codec).
Keep those flac files for posterity (on a hard disk drive or something) and encode them into AAC (instead of MP3) with an AAC encoder (like nero aac enc) with variable bitrate (around 200k vbr aac sounds better than 192k constant bitrate mp3) and use those files for your phone.
I thought id link my fav cd ripping software in case you go that route. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
To put files on your fiio just browse through your i tunes folder until you see the artist folders and just copy all the folders onto a micro sd card it plays all formats pretty much so it should work with apple files.
IMHO MP3Tag's powerful tag-automation more than makes up for its relatively simple handling of album art.
For example, a lot of metadata lists track numbers as "1, 2, 3, ... 10, 11, 12" or "1/12, 2/12, 3/12 ..." or "01/12, 02/12 ..." etc, when what I want is "01, 02, 03, ... 10, 11, 12". MP3tag lets me write, test and apply a formula that it uses to examine the existing metadata and replace the track number with the correct format.
Album art is one area that I would be very cautious about automating, as AFAIK there are no comprehensive databases that are properly indexed. Art changes from region to region, release to release, so I'd want to go through and get it all done manually.
EDIT: having said that, IIRC the ripping program Exact Audio Copy includes tools to automatically download metadata and find album art for your CD rips.
"Track01.cda, Track02.cda, etc. are special files found on an audio cd. You have to "rip" the audio to .WAV or .MP3 files to listen from a computer.
If there is no DRM (DCMA protection), you can use a utility like Windows Media player or EAC to rip the CD.
I fear that the developer is no longer active. He has ignored pull requests and issues on Github for moths. In his personal blog he told about getting married.
I do not know if Morituri is objectively the superior CD ripper, but it uses AccurateRip verification and I've always got 100% result, if that's accurate. The program was also far, far easier to use than EAC.
CD-ripping is an art form. Do you know any other worthwhile CD rippers? I only want to use software that claims to produce "flawless FLAC rips", not interested in quick "mp3 rippers".
If you know what you're doing, I suggest forking Morituri as the dev likely won't return anytime soon.
The most comfortable solution for you is probably ripping CDs to ALAC and using iTunes and airplay.
Personally I love FLAC for being open source and tested in various ways. In case you are paranoid, like me, then FLAC and EAC for ripping is the way to go. In case you want to use toslink, usb to toslink converters are rather cheap.
I'd just add Exact Audio Copy if you're old school and want to copy your CD to your Windows PC. I'd also recommend in FLAC or [at least] 320 WAV files as the default format.
I get that dBpoweramp is popular, but for perfects rips, you should consider using Exact Audio Copy : http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/
Here is an excellent and thorough guide to set it up : http://filesharingtalk.com/threads/435208-Installing-configuring-and-ripping-with-Exact-Audio-Copy-(EAC)
HQ uploads of CD's are pretty easy; just get a copy of EAC (Exact Audio Copy: here ) and follow this tutorial: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/EACRipping
You can adjust the quality in iTunes. It downsamples it from the CD's quality but you can set it to a lossless format to get 100% quality.
But the best software for ripping CD's is EAC: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
where do you usually obtain your music? If you are pirating it, you should be able to find the FLAC rip alongside the mp3 rip as well. If you buy CDS, use EAC to rip the songs to FLAC. Warning, if you have an iPod it does NOT play FLAC files.
There's also EAC for Windows and XLD for Mac. There are loads of tutorials for proper setup of each. I'm less familiar with XLD but here's a great one for EAC.
If you plan on doing this a lot go buy dbpoweramp cd ripper it's worth it with the batch ripper and accuraterip support. It will rip your CDs faster (when there are no scratches on the disk) or more accurate (when there are scratches) and it'll detect which method to use and switch if necessary. It also has the best metadata library to work with.
If you do this a fair amount and care about quality / settings / tags but are too cheap to pay use exactaudiocopy
If you don't really care too much about quality, settings, compatibility with other devices, and the ease of doing it is the most important use Windows Media Player.
Well it sounds like you've got everything under the hood. I'll certainly keep an eye out for you guys.
As for the CD ripping discussion you're having, I would strongly recommend Exact Audio Copy. If you show up with drag-and-drop/logless CD ripping, that feature is going to be a joke, and you may as well not include a CD drive and save on costs. Audiophiles don't do "well I guess the CD data transferred okay"—we like perfect.
What tool are you using to rip? May I suggest using one that offers a slower ripping speed with higher error correcting? Exact Audio Copy uses heavy error correction to get the best possible rip of the CD.
I just reinstalled Windows on my computer, so this is all really useful!
A program I use often, that as far as I can see isn't mentioned, is Exact Audio Copy
It's great if you, like me, don't want to use iTunes to archive your music. One downside is that you have to get LAME yourself, if you want to have it compressed to mp3.
On the one hand, I'd say not really, because the difference in encoders won't be audible. On the other hand, standalone programs give you a ton of options and output things like log files (so you can see if the CD itself has any errors) or if it's an accurate rip of what's in the online database.
If you're on windows, use EAC.
If you're on osx, use XLD.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It rips to any format you like, can grab metadata from various sources, and save in the naming format that you choose. It is also free of charge. Check out their website here.
Oh, and in before rotational velocidensity.
To think of it, there's another Windows app I can't do without: Exact Audio Copy.
Anyone know a CD ripper for Mac that double checks the data and focuses on a 1:1 rip?