When I rip a CD (original) onto the computer is it an exact copy as far as quality goes? When I ripped it it gave me an option of I think 128kbs or 192? When I burn the cd, does the volume on the computer affect it at all? In other words, can the CD that is being burned have its volume too low?

When I rip a CD (original) onto the computer is it an exact copy as far as quality goes? When I ripped it it gave me an option of I think 128kbs or 192?

Sounds like you were ripping AND encoding (to MP3 I assume). So no, the resulting file is nowhere near identical to the CD.

What program are you using?

When I burn the cd, does the volume on the computer affect it at all? In other words, can the CD that is being burned have its volume too low?

No, the volume on your PC just affects playback, it doesn't have anything to do with ripping CD's.

Do what I do: use FLAC to have identical quality and compress it to less than half the original uncompressed (WAV) size.

OK, basically what I want to do is take all of my favorite crystal method, chemical brother and fatboy slim songs from the original cds and burn them on one cd.

The program I am using to rip and burn is Windows Media Player.

How do I use FLAC?

How many tracks are you talking about? A normal CD can only fit 80 minutes if you are going to preserve the original quality.

There is a program called Exact Audio Copy that can rip tracks from CD to WAV file with very high quality. Once you have all the WAV files ripped onto your hard drive, you can launch your CD burning program and add the WAV files to a new Audio CD project.

Alternatively, you can tell Windows Media Player to rip in Lossless Audio mode (under Options) and then burn the tracks to a new Audio CD.

OK, basically what I want to do is take all of my favorite crystal method, chemical brother and fatboy slim songs from the original cds and burn them on one cd.

The program I am using to rip and burn is Windows Media Player.

How do I use FLAC?

Sorta depends on what you want to be able to play the burned CDs on too...

If on a computer, then FLAC and many others are fine. But if you want to play them on car CD players, or home CD players, or portable CD players, your choice of what format to use is a bit more limited.

I did notice that windows media player has a lossless option on it, it was something like 980kbps compared to the 128 option.

I will be playing this cd on my home 2.1 audio system...a cheap magnavox dvd player connected to a onkyo 7.1 90w/channel receiver hooked up to a pair of X-ls and x-sub. Yum.

So what are my options?

Sounds like you were ripping AND encoding (to MP3 I assume). So no, the resulting file is nowhere near identical to the CD.

What program are you using?



No, the volume on your PC just affects playback, it doesn't have anything to do with ripping CD's.

You are correct my friend. The burned cds I made sounded like total crap, I burned them again....in the fireplace.

Try the microwave next time... nice fireworks!

You can definitely rip your songs in WMA Lossless and then burn them to an audio CD (you don't want a data-type burn, you want an audio-type burn). Like I said above you can only fit 80 minutes on there.

Some DVD/CD units support the playback of data-type burns which means you could fit a bigger number of tracks on a disc if you used a lossy-type encoding (WMA or MP3 at 256/320kbps is very close to the original quality). I don't think you can burn this type of disc with Windows Media Player though, you would want to burn it using the regular Windows Explorer "drag files to the CD drive and then burn project". Or if you have Nero / Roxio / etc you could use their programs. Some DVD players even support the playback of music tracks from DVD disc, which means you have the whole 4.7GB to play with. A typical 320kbps WMA/MP3 song is around 10MB which means you could fit approximately 470 songs on one DVD.

If one is going to go with the most universal format, other than WAV, I still think it's MP3.

Use EAC and LAME encoder to make MP3s that are about as good as it can get - for MP3, that is. IMO, one needs to be REALLY good to reliably pick out MP3 at 192 and better when they are done with EAC and LAME.