Copying and burning CDs with Windows Media Player 9?

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

I'm not familiar with that program but I can tell you for sure that you're stuck between two options: bad and worse. This will have an impact on your final goal which I presume is to make accurate copies of the original Redbook CDs.

I would say that you can try it out but only on one blank CD-R. Then, listen carefully. Of course, that takes time.

Otherwise, I would recommend others' expertise advice: go to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de, download the sucker & configure it, and rip 'n burn away knowing your copies will be faithful to the originals. The program is less then 3 megabytes I think.

Did you ask for whomever's permission to install one teeny weeny program and promise to delete it afterwards? If not, then do so. These copies are going to affect you so why not make them right?

 

[davei]

Record Now is nothing special - it's one of those super simple swiss army knife applications that attempts to do everything/anything on burning to CD and DVD (child of Easy CD Creator.)

Ask politely to run EAC - it's under 1.5megs and doesn't leave a bunch of crap in your registry. You can use it for both ripping AND burning - obviously it's not as simple to use as Record Now, but the results are worth it. Delete the EAC directory when you're done - there's nothing else to install or uninstall.

IMHO using anything else is a waste of time, especially if you have to listen to an entire disc to make sure it doesn't contain errors.

 

[markl]

GRRRRRRRR.....

Preliminary results are in. It's all too easy for me to hear the differences between my burned copies and the originals as produced via Windows Media Player. The results are consistent whether I use plain jane CD-Rs and my spiffy black ones. The sound is much "lighter", fainter, less detailed, and somewhat veiled. Oddly, when I put the black discs in my 555ES SACDP, the SACD light comes on, it has a little trouble reading the disc, then the SACD LED switches off before play begins. This happened with some other black CD-Rs I got from a generous fellow Head-Fier recently, so that wasn't much of a surprise, but it's still bizarre.

Anyway, I'm going to install EAC and try that. If that doesn't work, I'll have to conclude it's the CD burner that just isn't up to it, not the software. wish me luck!

 

[markl]

Help! EAC is a piece of doo doo (the interface). It takes 20 years to copy a single song. How do I tell the program which tracks on a CD I want to copy to my hard drive? It only seems to want to allow me to save all of them at the same time, or only one at a time. Why can't I just check off the tracks I want and then leave it to do its business?. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

 

[davei]

Quote:

Originally posted by markl Help! EAC is a piece of doo doo (the interface). It takes 20 years to copy a single song. How do I tell the program which tracks on a CD I want to copy to my hard drive? It only seems to want to allow me to save all of them at the same time, or only one at a time. Why can't I just check off the tracks I want and then leave it to do its business?. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modul...eac&file=index

Click on the track to highlight it, then hit F5.

Make sure you've set it up properly, or else using it is useless.

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

Consider following this step by step guide to setting up EAC properly.

Key questions:

A. How many optical drives does this computer have?
B. What's the drive letter(s) of the CD or DVD burner drives?
C. Which directory are you going to put the EAC program in?
D. Which directory are you going to use as a temporary one?
E. HOW MANY CDs WILL YOU COPY?
F. HOW MUCH FREE HDD SPACE IS AVAILABLE?

My suggestions to these questions:

Determine the drive letter to the CD or DVD (or both) optical burning drive. Put the entire EAC program into something like c:\EAC. I'll teach you how to set the temporary directory later.


__________________________________________________ __
Step by Step directions:

1. Extract the EAC zip file into something like C:\EAC

2. Go to http://www.chrismyden.com/nuke/modul...&file=painless and download the "NERO ASPI Layer DLL" link / data into C:\EAC

3. RUN C:\EAC.EXE

4. PRESS F9 button

5. IN EXTRACTION - Make sure that "Extraction and compression priority" is NORMAL

6. IN EXTRACTION - Make sure that "Error recovery quality" is HIGH

7. IN GENERAL - Put a check in the box "On unknown CDs," and put a black dot on "open CD information dialog"

8. IN GENERAL - put a check in the box "Eject CD after extraction finished"

9. IN FILENAME - use this string '%N. %T' for both "Naming Scheme" and "use various artist naming scheme"

10. IN DIRECTORIES - put a black dot on "use this directory" and specify "C:\EAC"

11. CLICK OK!

12. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CD / DVD BURNER DRIVE YOU WANT TO USE IN THE WINDOW UNDER THE MENU BARS BEFORE GOING TO STEP 13!

13. PRESS F10 button!

14. PUT AN ORIGINAL REDBOOK CD WITH MUSIC IN THE DRIVE YOU JUST SELECTED!

15. IN EXTRACTION METHOD - CLICK ON "DETECT READ FEATURES" & THEN CLICK "APPLY!"

16. EXTRACTION METHOD - POP THE REDBOOK CD MUSIC DISC OUT OF THE DRIVE!

17. EXTRACTION METHOD - PUT IN A BLANK CD-R INTO THE SAME DRIVE!

18. EXTRACTION METHOD - CLICK "EXAMINE C2 FEATURE!" & CLICK "APPLY!"

19. DRIVE - CLICK "AUTODETECT READ COMMAND NOW"

20. GAP DETECTION - SELECT "DETECTION METHOD B" IN "GAP RETRIEVAL METHOD" AND SELECT SECURE UNDER "DETECTION ACCURACY"

21. WRITER - CLICK "DETECT WRITE FEATURES" & "APPLY!"

22. POP OUT THE BLANK CD-R FROM THE SAME DRIVE - ENSURE NO DISC IS IN THE SAME DRIVE! CLICK OK!

23. PRESS F11 BUTTON!

24. WAVEFORM - SELECT "MICROSOFT PCM CONVERTER" UNDER "WAVE FORMAT"

25. WAVEFORM - SELECT "44.100kHZ, 16 BIT, STEREO" UNDER "SAMPLE FORMAT"

26. PUT A BLACK DOT IN "HIGH QUALITY (SLOW)"

27. CLICK OK!

28. CLICK F12 BUTTON!

29. FREEDB - PUT IN YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS & SELECT "http://freedb.freedb.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi" UNDER THE FREEDB SERVER!

30. CLICK OK!

SETUP IS COMPLETE!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


HOW TO MAKE AN EXACT AUDIO COPY:

1. Put in the ORIGINAL Redbook CD (music) into the drive!

2. PRESS ALT + G button combination!

3. In the CD INFORMATION dialog box, ensure the FREEDB information accurately reflects the material on the ORIGINAL Redbook CD!

4. Click OK!

5. CLICK ON THE ICON WITH THE WORDS "IMG"

6. WAIT PATIENTLY! The EAC program is copying the original Redbook CD bit by bit into the C:\EAC directory. Depending on the quality & speed of the optical drive + the size in MB of the disc, it can take between 10 - 30 minutes per disc!

7. When the extraction is complete, click OK & OK buttons twice per disc!

8. Pop out the original Redbook CD & put in a blank CD-R into the SAME DRIVE!

9. CLICK ON THE ICON ON THE LEFT WITH THE WORDS "WRI"

10. You will get the CD Layout Editor dialog box

11. Click FILE -> LOAD CUE SHEET

12. GO TO YOUR C:\EAC DIRECTORY & LOOK FOR A FILE ENDING IN .CUE. THAT'S YOUR CUE SHEET WITH THE DATA CONTAINING YOUR ORIGINAL REDBOOK CD!!!

13. Once it's loaded, CLICK CD-R -> WRITE CD!

14. Wait patiently! Depending on the speed of the CD / DVD burner, this can take between 02:45 - 20:00 (or more) PER DISC!

15. Click OK & OK buttons once you're done!

16. CLICK FILE -> EXIT!

17. RUN WINDOWS EXPLORER!

18. GO TO C:\EAC DIRECTORY & DELETE THE .WAV + .CUE FILE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MAKE MORE THAN ONE COPY OF THAT REDBOOK CD YOU JUST EXTRACTED & WROTE TO A BLANK CD-R!!!

19. Repeat steps 1 - 18!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Have a nice day!

 

[davei]

Quote:

Originally posted by Welly Wu 15. IN EXTRACTION METHOD - CLICK ON "DETECT READ FEATURES" & THEN CLICK "APPLY!" 16. EXTRACTION METHOD - POP THE REDBOOK CD MUSIC DISC OUT OF THE DRIVE! 17. EXTRACTION METHOD - PUT IN A BLANK CD-R INTO THE SAME DRIVE! 18. EXTRACTION METHOD - CLICK "EXAMINE C2 FEATURE!" & CLICK "APPLY!" 19. DRIVE - CLICK "AUTODETECT READ COMMAND NOW"

No no no no no! This defaults to the standard read features of the drive, bypassing the wanted functions of EAC completely! Ideally, you want:

- Secure mode with NO C2 (without C2)
- Accurate stream (if you drive supports it)
- disable cache

Which means, go under Extraction Method, select Secure Mode with following drive features (recommended), and make sure the first two are checked.

 

[Welly Wu]

Davei:

Thank you sir! I just made the appropriate changes in all of my optical drives thanks to your key input!

 

[markl]

Thanks for the instructions. I got very very p*ssed off last night, I spent about 5 friggin' hours wrestling with EAC trying to make it work, hunting for non-existent instruction/documentation only to discover he hasn't even written it yet! His web-site had some help, but not much. I was finally able to figure out why it was copying so slowly, now it goes much faster.

When I finally got it all copied to hard disc, I was ready to use EAC to burn my CD. After struggling again creating a template or whatever they call it of my songs, I selected "copy" and I kept getting error messages to the effect that there were "incorrect parameters" or some such. No instructions for fixing it.

Furthermore, I was unable to make Windows Media Player locate and recognize the .wav versions of the songs and use WMP to burn the disc.

For me, this program is not ready for prime time, it is absolutely user unfriendly. Sorry to be such a whiner but you know how you feel when you want to throw your computer out the window? That's where I was last night.

I'll see if any of these new instructions will make it work for me.

Mark

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

I feel for you man! However, where exactly are you right now? In other words, did you follow the setup guide and did it work? Are you trying to copy whole Redbook CDs or disparate songs on different CDs? My directions, while not perfect, were a guide to copying whole Redbook CDs. Also, it is my opinion that once you start copying Redbook CDs onto blank CD-Rs, speed is really not much of an issue. Remember, a computer optical drive only can read bytes of data bit for bit. Copying music is in pure digital 010101 binary form. It should not matter too much if you burn as slow as 2x or 52x speed; however, this is just my opinion.

Copying whole Redbook CDs should be as easy as finding the .CUE file in C:\EAC and burning that template onto a blank CD-R. DO EXPERIMENT WITH burn speeds from as slow as that CD / DVD burner can go to as fast as it can go too. Once you burn at the slowest speed, make a mental note of that speed, put it in your 555ES hotrod and listen. Then, put in the other copy burned at a much higher speed and listen again. I know it takes time but the results will be worthwhile for experimentation.

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

DO NOT USE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 9 TO LOAD A .CUE SHEET AND BURN ONTO A BLANK CD-R!!! The program was never designed to perform that specific function! USE EAC only!!!

Again, here are the directions for burning music onto a blank CD-R:

1. RUN C:\EAC.EXE

2. CLICK ON THE .CUE / WRI ICON ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE

3. FILE -> LOAD CUE SHEET & LOOK IN C:\EAC FOR A FILE ENDING IN .CUE. THAT'S THE .CUE SHEET / TEMPLATE YOU NEED TO BURN ONTO A BLANK CD-R!!!

4. CD-R -> WRITE CD

5. WAIT! CLICK OK & OK

6. RUN WINDOWS EXPLORER

7. DELETE THE .CUE & .WAV FILE IN C:\EAC

Feel free to send me a PM or e-mail message to Welly@Comcast.Net. I'll guide you in real time!

 

[markl]

Welly,
I keep getting "invalid field in parameter list" every time I try to write to my CD-R. Any idea what that might mean?

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

Give me an hour to try the entire process myself using my laptop's CD burner. Let me try to figure out what that error message means.

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

CD Layout Editor:

1. FILE -> LOAD CUE SHEET

2. Do you see the CD LAYOUT information displayed?

3. CD-R -> WRITE CD

4. CD WRITE OPTIONS:

- WRITE SPEED: SLOWEST SPEED POSSIBLE 2 - 4X

- WRITE MODE: NO TEST WRITE!!!

- CLOSE MODE: CLOSE CD!!!

- CLICK ON MAKE IT SO!!!

It should work now. It works for me. Keep in touch if you have errors.

 

[Welly Wu]

MarkL:

I just burned my copy at 4X speed onto a blank CD-R. I put it in my Denon and it sounds fine. I hope my instructions are now working for you too. Please let me know how you fare.