If
you’ve got a shelf-full of CDs gathering dust at home, it’s time to
leave the past behind and start thinking about how to upgrade your
music-listening experience.
On
the fence about taking the time to rip your entire CD collection? Trust
us, it’ll all be worth it. Keep in mind that a lossless digital music
collection saves shelf space and is easy to take with you on-the-go and
back up to an external hard drive. If you have a massive music
collection, it also makes it easier and quicker to find that one
particular song or album you’ve been craving. Plus, you’ll be able to
access your digital music library from your smartphone or tablet.
Here’s how to rip your CDs and transfer them to a lossless format.
Choose Your Music File
There are several lossless formats to consider. Here are our top picks:
FLAC
FLAC
(Free Lossless Audio Codec) is compressed to keep file sizes small, but
it’s also lossless, meaning that it’s on par with CD quality. CD audio
converted to FLAC will typically be reduced to 50 percent of its
original size. For reference, a three-minute song on a CD will take up
30-40 MB of space while a ripped FLAC version of that same song takes up
15-20 MB. If sound quality is your top priority, then FLAC is the
format for you.
Apple Lossless
Apple
Lossless Audio Codec (or ALAC) was developed by Apple and works with
iTunes, your iPod and your iPhone (it’s also supported by several other
hardware and software players). Like FLAC, it’s compressed and supports
metadata, and takes up about 40 - 60 percent the size of an uncompressed
CD. If you’re big into Apple products, then this one’s for you.
AIFF and WAV
AIFF
(Audio Interchange File Format) and WAV (Waveform Audio File Format)
are lossless, but uncompressed. That means ripped files take up the same
amount of space as they would on a CD (10 MB per minute of stereo
sound). Because of their large file sizes, these formats are less
desirable than FLAC and Apple Lossless (you’d need about twice the
storage space for the same library). On the plus side, AIFF and WAV are
compatible with a wide range of devices and software.
Pick a Ripping Software
Once
you’ve determined which digital format you’re going to go with, it’s
time to start looking at ripping software. Here are a couple options to
choose from:
Max (for Mac users)
This
is a free app that is available for Apple computers running Mac OS X
10.4 and higher. Max is able to create audio files in all four lossless
formats. If your CDs are slightly scratched, it can correct any errors
that might occur during the ripping process. If you want stellar sound
quality and tons of encoding options, this is the app for you.
Exact Audio Copy (for PC users)
If
you’re using Windows and want to convert your CDs to FLAC, Exact Audio
Copy is an excellent choice and offers the best error correction money
can buy, for free! If there are any errors that can’t be corrected, it
will tell you which time position the possible distortion occurred, so
you can easily control it with the media player. This is the software of
choice for serious music lovers and audiophiles. no need for x-appli/MediaGo or WMP anymore
iTunes (for Mac and PC users)
Since
you most likely already have iTunes on your PC or Mac, this option will
spare you the trouble of having to download and install a stand-alone
ripping app. iTunes can rip CDs to three different lossless formats
(Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV) and provides error correction for damaged
discs. iTunes also automatically retrieves album and artist information
from the Internet.
Find the Right Sound System
Now
that you’ve successfully ripped your CDs to a lossless format, it’s
time to start listening to your new digital music library. To get the
most out of your new lossless music files, you’ll want to make sure you
have the right high-res sound equipment to play them. Once you get that taken care of, you’re set! Now you can set your CDs
aside for good, knowing that you’ve extracted the purest audio files you
can out of them. Get ready to listen to your music collection in a
whole new way.
Hi-Res Audio:
Audio
that uses a higher sampling rate than in CDs and MP3s for the encoding
and playback of music. Characterized by pin-sharp clarity and nuances,
Hi-Res Audio brings your favorite songs to life by retaining more data
than the conversion process of original recorded music to MP3 files.
Hi-Res Audio file formats include WAV, DSD, ALAC, FLAC and AIFF.
DSD vs. PCM:
There
are two main ways of processing/encoding audio into digitally usable
formats — PCM and DSD. In a nutshell, PCM is easier to manipulate.
However, DSD is the master archive format used in recording studios, and
some would say that DSD provides the closest digital file samples to
the original analog source. Here are the specifics for each:
DSD:
Direct-Stream
Digital uses pulse-density modulation encoding to store audio signals
on digital storage media. The sampling rate for this technology is
either 2.8224 MHz or 5.6448MHz, which translates to 64 times or 128
times that for CD Audio sampling.
PCM:
Pulse
Code Modulation is a technology that converts standard audio signals
into digital audio. It is the standard form of digital sound in
computers and CDs. The amplitude of the signal is sampled at uniform
intervals, and then each sample is restricted to the nearest value with a
range of digital steps.
Lossy:
Lossy
file compression results in lost data and quality from the original
version and is associated with MP3s and AAC files. The resulting file
takes up much less space than the original version, but much of the
quality is sacrificed.
Lossless:
Lossless
compression allows the original data to be reconstructed almost
perfectly from the compressed data achieved by a class of algorithms.
File sizes for lossless data are generally bigger than lossy files, but
the sound quality is significantly better. Some example file formats of
this kind are FLAC and Apple Lossless.
Uncompressed:
Uncompressed
audio is exactly what it sounds like — original data with no
compression. Generally speaking, the greatest audio quality comes from
uncompressed audio files such as WAV and AIFF formats. The drawbacks to
uncompressed audio include the large amount of space they take up and
the bandwidth necessary to open and play these files.
kHz/bit:
This is the standard denotation of the sampling frequency over the bit depth.
The number of kilohertz (kHz)
measures
the sampling frequency, which is the number of times per second audio
is sampled. So, the higher the kHz number, the better the sound quality.
The bit depth
measures
how many bits (or the amount of data) are in each sample. Bit depth
directly corresponds with the resolution of each sample. The higher the
bit depth, the better the sound quality.