Newbie Converting CD CDA files to MP3 files

Bearly1227 · Joined: Feb 21, 2003 Posts: 48 Location: Central MA, USA

(When it comes to music or video I am a total newbie. 30 years behind the keyboard and my grandkids beat me to the music!. My 6 year old GS tells me how to set up my gmail chat! . . . <smile> Shocked

)

This old retread (me) wants to take (rip) music from CD's and convert them to MP3 files (for MP3 player).

I have had success, but not much compression. Crying or Very sad

I had the impression that converting to MP3 would compress the files much more than the approximate 10% I am now seeing. Is it unreal to expect a major compression, to reduce the approximate 1500 K B to 3500 KB files to be much less than 10% smaller than my current 10% or so reduction?

I tried to use "Super" but they want money for the MP3 encoder (codec?) file. $9.95, I think. The default for Super seems to be only MS compatible format (WMA) ? Mad

I am using Win XP for Home. Media Jukebox (Ver 12.0.49 now freeware) to rip the CDA file to HDD storage as WMA files. The Media Coder (Ver 0.6.1.0) to convert the WMA files to MP3 files.

When I tried to use Media Coder to rip from the CD to MP3, it only took a fragment of each of the CDA file (maybe 30 seconds of a 2 minute to 5 minute song). Maybe I "shoulda" copied the CD to the HDD first?

Some of the files have "pops" in the sound track, but may be just my cheap sound card.

One nit, when Media Jukebox comes online, it complains I don't have enough space on my HDD C:\ drive. But, I have reset the source and output storage to be on a much bigger free space on another partition..

I have 2 G Bytes RAM, and a 200 G HDD.

Thanks,

Bob

FYI: Super, Medicoder & Media Jukebox came highly recommended by Gizmo (formerly TechSupportAlert) now of WindowsSecrets.

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 916

You can use Windows Media "thingy" to do the ripping - then use a converter. (WMA compresses pretty good.)

Two that come to mind - AUDACITY & FORMAT FACTORY
Audacity - uses encoder addons - easy enough to add & use. Once added, just tell audacity to export. PLUS you can edit your stuff to "make it better(?)" (I do editing in wave format, though)
You can also look at the waveform for such things as those "POPS" & filter them or edit them out.
ff - I just found about from a friend & haven't check out yet but HE swears by it.

Check & see what all formats the MP3 player will support & try other formats.
For mine, WMA seems to work best for compression. But will support wav & MP3 as well as a few others.

goretsky · Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 11:31 pm Post subject:

Hello,

I use CDex, which includes a version of the LAME MP3 Encoder engine to convert CDs into MP3s. I use it with the highest quality settings possible, however, it can be used to create smaller MP3 files by increasing the compression/reducing the audio quality.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Bearly1227 · Joined: Feb 21, 2003 Posts: 48 Location: Central MA, USA

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 303 Location: Kent, UK

Not sure why anyone would want to use Audacity as a CD ripper, as it's not really designed for that purpose. It's an audio editor first and foremost. I think I'm right in saying that the disc would have to recorded in real time, the tracks separated and then exported to mp3, or whatever. Very time-consuming and not the best way to do it.
I would agree with Aryeh Goretsky about CDex. I`ve been using it for years and it works well. Be a little wary, though about using the CDDB database track-naming facility. I started doing this for loads of compilation albums that I have and didn't realise initially that there appears to be a lot of public input on this database for albums which aren't on it originally and, of course, not everyone standardises on the same method of listing tracks and I ended up with piles of stuff all notated in different styles and formats! Not only that, but an awful lot of folk don't know how to spell artists' names properly and I ended up with some duplicated tracks that I had to weed out manually, not to mention thousands (literally) of corrections and standardising everything. Probably not too bad on a single-artist album, but compilations are a pain! It's probably taken me a couple of years (on and off) to get about 14,000 tracks straight and, even now, one will suddenly hit me between the eyes as being adrift from my standards!

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 916

Who said anything about using AUDACITY as a RIPPER?
I sure didn't! - Although you CAN CAPTURE with it. (like from tape or other such inputs, as you mention - & even internet)

The OP talked about using WMA (FORMAT) as a ripped file, so I confirmed that WMA can rip. Then added that the 2 programs I mentioned can CONVERT what he already has ripped. PLUS possibly clean up the POPS he has, if in the file - OR that he MAY be able to use his rips as is, IF his player will support WMA.

As for rippers, WMA/V & realplayer work quite well. As well as a number of FREE programs just for that purpose. But I use WMA/V & know it CAN do the job just fine, thus the confirmation in using it. Plus he SHOULD already HAVE IT!

BUT... if CDex does what he wants, then he should "go for it"! I only gave "suggestions" to what I THOUGHT he was after.

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 303 Location: Kent, UK

Ah - see what you mean, after reading it again but CDex does it all in one hit, is a direct conversion and quick (about 30 seconds per track on my lowly machine) and it would be unusual to have a CD with pops on it that needed to be corrected at an intermediate stage. I`ve done that many a time, using the pencil tool in Audacity, when converting vinyl (Yet another time-consuming job!).
Wonder where his pops are coming from and are they still there after using CDex to convert directly?

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 916

Not sure where they are being generated either. Could even be in the hardware. That is another reason I suggested the "editor", you can check & see if it IS in the file. (if you know how to read the wave forms)

He can always come back with that if he needs help cleaning that up.
BTW: there are filters in it that will (in most cases, anyway) remove clicks & pops for you. (plus a lot more) One thing I do (most of the time) is kick up the volume (amplitude) as I run my player at full as it is, on most stuff. I also make the "silent' parts (leaders?) more "respectable"in length.

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 303 Location: Kent, UK

Yup, loads of goodies in Audacity, although, I have to say, I have found the built-in de-clicker to be a bit variable in effectiveness, even after tweaking the settings, so I usually do the worst ones with the pencil tool. For anyone who doesn't know, find the click, expand the waveform, until you can see the individual sample points and then use the "pencil" tool to literally re-draw the waveform. Bingo! No click. If it's a really serious glitch that can't be done that way, a copy and paste of the adjacent waveform sometimes does the trick, if the duration isn't too long to notice. As I keep on saying, to do it all properly takes an awful lot of time and effort. I have used Audacity extensively to edit old adverts that I play on the sound system at a charity classic car show I'm involved with, even to the extent of lifting individual syllables from speech, if need be, to make them flow better as most are originally TV ads and they need a little doctoring to remove silences, etc; to smooth them out to run as audio only.

Bearly1227 · Joined: Feb 21, 2003 Posts: 48 Location: Central MA, USA

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 303 Location: Kent, UK

Hi Bearly1227.
Sounds like the elderly Goldstar CD drive may be on the way out! I have found that PC CD drives don't seem to have a very long life, compared to stand-alone hi-fi units, having had to replace several over the years, despite not having had heavy use. One Acer branded drive I had only lasted just over a year. Laser down I would imagine.
Incidentally, as a self-confessed newbie to audio, do you know about setting the bit rates for conversion and all that?
Depends how critical you are, sound-wise and, dare I say, how old your ears are! Smile

It's probably fairly obvious that low bit rates = lower quality and high bit rates = better quality, the higher rates making bigger mp3 files, but nowhere as big as .wav files! The CDex settings are under Options - Settings - Encoder.
I personally use 192 kbps as a good compromise, although I have used lower rates if the original recording is old and the sound is not too hot in the first place. Having experimented, I can just about hear the difference between a 128 kbps recording and a 320 with the PC audio fed through my hi-fi kit but it's marginal, just a slight sense of the recording being more "open", if that makes sense! My ears are 59, so that might have something to do with it.

Bearly1227 · Joined: Feb 21, 2003 Posts: 48 Location: Central MA, USA

goretsky

Hello,

The biggest determination would be the amount of compression applied to the audio. The general rule of thumb is, the larger the resulting file, the better the quality, audio-wise.

CDA is short for CD Audio, which are shortcut files created by Microsoft Windows to serve as "placeholders" for jumping to a specific song (track) on a disc.

WMA is short for Window Media Audio, which is Microsoft's entry into the world formats for digital audio files. It is supposed to provide better quality than MP3 at the same bit rate, however, test results are not consistent and MP3 is still the most widely-supported format.

MP3 is the de facto standard for audio, in large part due to its ubiquity.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

granni · Joined: Jan 11, 2004 Posts: 20

good evening music buffs.......

ages ago, i wanted to add music to web pages. that was back in the day when midi was the standard on web pages.....those things we really came to dislike, cuz they started playin the moment the page loaded.
anyway, i had to learn the how of it. so, i did.
then, as time passed, there was a buncha noise about mp3's. so i had to find out about that too.
finally, came the belated......."whoa! i oughta be able to copy/convert/shrink straight from my cd's.
ahhh ha! that's when the fun began.

now, years of aerospace noise does a thing to your ears. so do colds. and just plain ol life.

i found i was able to convert the cda's to .wav, .wma, .mp3 to whatever size file i needed/wanted, based on my ears. cuz i sure wasn't ever going to be a threat to the better learned/eared.

i found that a simple program called Jet Audio (a free d/l or the paid version) did just fine. the higher hrz produces much better quality on all 3 file types. the lower hrz, produces Much Smaller files. i take them down til i notice a loss of quality...for my ears. that's where i stop, then move it up one notch.

.wma will play on your dvd players...strickly as all .wma with NO folders on the disk.. but, i'm not sure if it will as a dvd, cuz i haven't tried that yet. but, they Will play on your pc's dvd/cd drive.

you can find more complex converter/plaers. i prefer the simpler the better.
but, that's just.....me.

ohhh, i just made my first 'video'. shucks, it ain't nuthin.....jes transitioning pictures of my roses, accompanied with some really nice music.

good luck. but most of all....... have fun with it. that is what creating's all about, right?

PhotoCarp · Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 107

Sorry for chiming in so late but I just saw this thread and, oh boy, have some people made this more complicated than it really is.

The original poster is using Windows and buried (not too deeply I might add) in Windows is a CD ripper. No need to download (and possibly pay for) and install any programs. It's called Windows Media Player.

The following instructions apply to WMP11 and IIRC will apply to 9 & 10 as well. Open Windows Media Player, Click on Tools, Options, Rip Music and you will be in the settings for ripping CDs. Select where you want the files ripped to, the format of choice (mp3 is in there) and the audio quality. The higher the quality chosen the bigger the file will be and vice versa. Click OK. Put the CD that you want to rip in your drive and Windows should detect it. Click on the Rip tab and if the CD was detected there will be a list of tracks and a button in the corner that says "Start Rip." That is the button you want to click and VOILA! Let the free installed program do its thing.