Duckydude

I noticed that there wasn't a guide around here that showed people the best way to get high quality rips from their Audio CD's. Since I am quite obsessive compulsive when it comes to encoding audio, I decided to write a guide that would teach people how. This guide will show you how to make perfect quality audio cd rips, how to properly tag them, and where to find high quality pictures, etc.

What program should I use to get the absolute perfect rip?

Most people think that any old audio grabber program will rip your CD's just fine, but this is just not true. Exact Audio Copy is the only program that will make a perfect as possible copy of your CD. You can download the latest version here: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/inde...rces/download/. I will now explain how you can properly configure EAC to get the best results.

After installing EAC, you will come to this welcome screen:


(Not too exciting)

Next you will come to the screen in which it will ask you which drive you want to auto-configure. Select whatever drive you will be ripping your audio CD's with (pretty straight-forward). I wouldn't select any virtual drives however.

I just selected my Philips DVD-RW drive, (the other drive is just a virtual drive)

On this screen please select the "I prefer to have accurate results", If you select the "Only speed is important" results then you should not be even allowed to view this guide.



Next EAC will perform a test on your CD drive to determine the best settings for your drive. (You'll need an audio CD handy in order for this test to commense). This will probably take about three minutes to complete.


After a few minutes it will display your results, it is good to have Accurate Stream and C2 error info, but it is not good to have audio cache.


After a few other self-explanatory screens, you'll come to this screen. You should just chose the "nothing right now, I will configure it later manually" option.


The next screen should ask you for your email address, type in a email address (you'll need to do this in order to use the freedb). Then continue on to the next screen. On this screen You can select whatever naming scheme fits your taste, but I find it easier to let Easy CD-DA Extractor do the naming (I will be covering this later).


On the last screen chose the "I'm a expert" option to enable all of the advanced features. Then click the finish button (duh).

The next screen will ask for three "key discs", this will allow EAC to figure out how accurate your CD drive and estimate the best sample offset for your drive. Be sure to use popular albums for the "key discs" as these will provide the best results and usually less popular albums aren't even in the database.

Now we will fine tune some advanced EAC options. Go to "EAC" tab, then click on "Drive Options", then navigate to the "Gap Detection" tab. (All other settings in the "Drive Options" menu are perfect just the way they are, so don't mess with them). Select "Detection Method B" (I don't think it matters which one you chose). Then in the pull down menu below, select the "Secure" option.

(We won't need to change anything else in the "Drive Options" Menu, so go ahead and exit out of this.)

Now we will configure the EAC options. Please click on EAC, then "EAC Option". You will then find yourself on the extraction tab. Change the "Extraction and compression" and "Error recovery quality" pull-down menus to "high".


Next we will chose which directory we want to save all of the wave files we rip, you can do this by selecting the "Directory" tab. So select any folder of your choosing, I just created a "EAC Wave Files" folder in "My Music".


We are finally ready to start ripping CD's! To get the track names off the freedb, navigate to the database tab, select "Get CD Information From", then select "Remote freedb".


Next press the "F6" key to "Copy & Test Selected Tracks Uncompressed", If your not paranoid, just select the "Copy Selected Tracks Uncompressed" option which you can also access by pressing the "F5" key. EAC will now start to copy your CD, this may take anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes.


Once your finished copying your Audio CD a screen should come up telling your how accurate each track was ripped, if you got 100%, then great!

Now I will tell you how to make high quality (Lossless) Monkey's Audio files with Easy CD-DA Extractor. If you don't know what "lossless" means, it means that it compresses an uncompressed audio file without compromising any audio data. In layman's terms it means that when you decode the lossless file it will be the exact same quality as the original!

Once you open up Easy CD-DA extractor navigate to the "Audio File Format Converter" tab. Then click and drag the wave files you just ripped into the Easy CD-DA Extractor window.


Next you'll need to enter the track numbers manually for each file you ripped, as EAC does not enter in any tag info. If you forget to do this your audio files will be sorted by name by default in whatever media player you use.


Then enter all of the track, artist album information, from gracenote.com, even this site isn't perfect so make sure that all of the information is correct.


Easy CD-DA Extractor can rename your files automatically to the format of your choosing by checking the rename files checkbox. Then click the button with all of the little black columns on it (real descriptive eh?). Here you can chose how Easy CD-DA Extractor names your files. It is pretty self-explanatory, to enter in a variable, put <> signs around it (such as the "<album>" variable).


Next, select whatever output folder you want your converted audio files to end up, (I usually just save them to the desktop). After I'm done with the files I just put them where I put all of my other music (J River Media Center Music) and rename the folder with the Album first followed by the artist. You can do this however you want to. Then select "Monkey's Audio" from the pull-down menu under where it says "Output Format". Leave the second drop down menu where it is.


Then click the "Convert Files" button. Easy CD-DA Extractor should start to encode your files and when it's finished you should have a perfect quality lossless backup of your audio CD!

Finally I am going to show you how to get high quality cover art pictures from Buy.com. It isn't as easy as it looks because when you enlarge the image you can't save it because when you click on it, it shrinks back into it's original size. Almost all of the pictures on Buy.com are 500x500 pixels, which is high-enough quality for most people. Alright, so go ahead and navigate to buy.com and search for whatever album you are looking for. In this case I am looking for "Close To The Edge" By "Yes".


Then click the "enlarge" link. Then navigate (in firefox) to "tools", then "page info", then select the "Media Tab"


If you scroll down about a third of the way down you should be able to find the picture you were looking for. The file name should be something like "http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/104/204045104.jpg". After you found the image, click "save as" and save the image to your desired location.


Then add in the image in to the APE tag using your favorite media player and your all set! You now have the best possible copy of the audio CD you just ripped! Thanks for listening to this long boring guide and I hope I helped you.

Here are my final results with this particular CD:

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DJ.BigBear

NICE
tho you should try foobar media player.

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aaronman

Nice guide. Also awesome that you used Close to the Edge. Yes is like the greatest group ever.

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Duckydude

They are the greatest group ever!, Btw have you listened to the DVD-Audio release of Fragile, the audio quality is amazing!

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KloroFormd

I just use Exact Audio Copy for ripping AND encoding... No need for 2 apps really.

Either way, Rep+ for EAC, Lossless codecs, and a nice tutorial!

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aaronman

I'm intrigued. Is the DVD stereo or 5.1?

I so wanna hear South Side of the Sky in like ultra mega uber 1337 sound quality.

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ecoyd1

OT but you need to upgrade your soundcard to get the most out of this. extreme gamer was the best 80 bucks i spent.

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Duckydude

Both: The whole album is in 2 channel 96Khz, 24 bit and 5.1 channel 96Khz, 24 bit (Both in lossless MLP format). Yeah South Side Of The Sky is sick in multi-channel uberness... PowerDVD is the only program for the PC that can play DVD-A's btw.

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aaronman

It already blows my mind in 2 channel, I'm not sure I'm quite ready yet for the DVD version.

I'm looking for a good place to buy it like right now.

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