COPYING C.D.' s
What program can I download to copy music from my CD's to a USB flash drive?
Forum Discussion
This is fairly technical, but it gives as good a recording you will get.
If you don't mind the fiddly aspect, use Exact Audio Copy. You will need to find a copy of the LAME (mp3 encoder) DLL on the Net, but once done, this utility not just rips, but does very thorough error checking (assuming you have secure ripping turned on) to ensure that music is copied without any errors or other issues.
Of course, the resulting WAV files are large (~650 megs for an average album), but one can always use iTunes to convert it to a smaller format. I keep the WAV files on a separate hard disk, then convert them to good quality AAC files for the iTunes library. This comes from a few years ago, where you had so many competing formats, mp3, AAC, OGG, ATRAC3, and WMA, so with this method, if I wanted audio in a format my old Sony player could understand, I'd encode it with ATRAC3. The Zune gets AAC or WMA. The iPod gets AAC.
Of course, these days, it isn't an issue -- everything understands AAC, and the old Zune is long since retired, so I use Apple's main format for anything in my library these days.
If you don't mind the fiddly aspect, use Exact Audio Copy. You will need to find a copy of the LAME (mp3 encoder) DLL on the Net, but once done, this utility not just rips, but does very thorough error checking (assuming you have secure ripping turned on) to ensure that music is copied without any errors or other issues.
Of course, the resulting WAV files are large (~650 megs for an average album), but one can always use iTunes to convert it to a smaller format. I keep the WAV files on a separate hard disk, then convert them to good quality AAC files for the iTunes library. This comes from a few years ago, where you had so many competing formats, mp3, AAC, OGG, ATRAC3, and WMA, so with this method, if I wanted audio in a format my old Sony player could understand, I'd encode it with ATRAC3. The Zune gets AAC or WMA. The iPod gets AAC.
Of course, these days, it isn't an issue -- everything understands AAC, and the old Zune is long since retired, so I use Apple's main format for anything in my library these days.
