How to rip anything: ripping audio from CDs

In our how to rip anything series, Jenneth Orantia and Mike Le Voi show you how to (legally) copy, rip or download virtually any form of media so you can enjoy it permanently.

Ripping CDs to your hard disk is easy but can be error-prone. The problem with the CD standard is that there’s no built-in error correction as the audio was meant to simply stream via a CD player. Thus, making copies of CDs for listening can be simple and susceptible to error, or more complicated but secure. In this tutorial, we show you how to create perfect CD copies under Windows 7.

Easy ripping

The simplest way to rip CDs is to use Windows Media Player (WMP). Simply insert a CD while WMP is running and it will be detected. If it automatically starts playing, press Stop. Right-click the album cover and take the option called ‘Find Album Info’. If WMP finds the correct CD, click ‘Edit’. You can now edit the CD title and track names or just click ‘Done’ and then ‘Finish’.

Before you rip the CD, select ‘Organize > Options > Rip Music’. This is where you select the rip location and the quality of the recording. You can choose WAV for a complete copy of the CD, WMA for use in Windows and many portable music players, or MP3. For maximum compatibility, I’ve found that MP3 is safest as it will play back in almost any music player or PC. I choose 256Kbit/s as it’s a good compromise between size and quality.

Now, just click ‘Rip CD’ and WMP will rip the CD down to the directory you specified. Then, copy the directory to your WMP library, iTunes library, iPod or whatever.

The advantage of WMP for ripping CDs is that it normally selects the correct CD and tags the files easily. If you want to make changes to the tags in the .MP3 files after ripping, you can use Mp3tag, an excellent freeware editor.

Secure ripping

WMP is easy to use, but any errors on the CD won’t normally be detected. This is especially true of CDs you’ve burnt yourself from your LP or cassette collection. Even commercial CDs have been known to suffer from ‘CD rot’. None of us have the time to waste listening to every CD after it’s ripped, so you need a program that rips securely.

There are commercial programs like dBpoweramp that do this well, but this article will cover the freeware program Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

EAC can rip CDs in ‘Burst’ mode, the same as WMP and many other programs. However, it also has a recommended mode called ‘Secure’, which normally verifies the CD by reading each sector multiple times and comparing it with previous read operations. Be warned that using this feature rather than burst mode puts greater strain on the CD/DVD drive, so you may want to stop ripping after 30 minutes or so to give your drive a ‘rest’.

The latest version of EAC supports AccurateRip, which allows EAC to compare your rip with an online database of commercial CDs. If the CD is in this database and your rip is the same, you can be pretty sure your copy is accurate. EAC will let you configure AccurateRip if you rip a CD that already exists in the database, so choose a common CD first and configure AccurateRip before you start a lot of ripping.

The first time you use EAC it will check the features available for your CD/DVD drive and make recommendations as to what ripping options to use. Next, you should set the EAC Filename Option. Settings for a directory/filename structure are as follows: Artist Name\Album Name\Tracknumber Trackname

You set the root directory for the files by using the ‘Directories’ tab, for example: C:\Media\MP3\

After inserting the CD, press [Alt]+[G]. This will tell EAC to look up the CD contents in freedb and fill in the artist, album and track names. Don’t worry if this fails — you can always fix the tags easily using Mp3tag. Just make sure ‘CD Title’ and ‘CD Artist’ are correct before ripping.

There are many available formats for the rip. The most common are WAV and MP3: .wav files are larger but perfect, while .MP3 files use lossy compression but can contain tags. To use MP3 with EAC, you can use the LAME encoder you downloaded to use with Audacity (http://lame.buanzo.com.ar). Configure EAC to use MP3 for the compression option. The command line option for MP3 is as follows: -b256 --id3v2-only --pad-id3v2 --ta ‘%a’ --tt ‘%t’ --tg ‘%m’ --tl ‘%g’ --ty ‘%y’ --tn ‘%n’ %s %d

This command line tells EAC to use 256Kbit/s (the same as WMP) and set the tags in the file.

Now you’re ready to rip, so click the ‘WAV’ button for perfect .wav files without tags. Alternatively, click the ‘CMP’ button for .MP3 files with tags. If all goes well, you’ll see messages like this when the rip has finished . You can even save the LOG as a file for later reference. There are many other options in EAC, so feel free to experiment.

If you want a perfect copy of that precious CD to use after your child scratches the original, use EAC.