Thread: Keeping CD quality

I would like to copy my CDs to a large external hard ilisk. However, the only way this will happen is if they are copied as an unknown disc with no track titles, which is no good. If I compress them to a hard disk, I also get all the album information. Is there any way to copy them over with album details and not compress the files.

The solution is to copy the CDs using a format that does not remove any sound quality from the file during conversion. Windows Media Player 11 has this capability and will add the album and track information to the files.

Start Windows Media Player and press.All to show the menus.Click on the Tools menu, then on Options. Left-click on the Rip Music tab. Click in the dropdown menu in the Rip settings section and select Windows Media Audio (Lossless). Make sure the Copy protect music option is not ticked.

If you'd rather use a format other than one created by Microsoft, there's another called FLAC. The easiest way to convert CDs to this format is to use a program called CDex.

Once CD ex is installed, start it, left-click on the Options menu and then on Settings. Left-click. on the Encoder tab if it is not already on display. Click on the down arrow in the second dropdown menu called Encoder and select the 'FLAC Encoder DLL' option. To ensure you can access the album and track information, click on the Remote CDDB tab and enter your email address in the Your Email Address section. The online databases require this information to ensure that you are a real person, not an automated system. If you're worried about unsolicited email; we recommend using a free web¬based email address, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, rather than your main email address. Click on the Filenames tab if the audio tracks should go somewhere other than the My Music folder. Click on OK.

Insert the audio CD and make sure the correct drive is shown in the top menu. If it's not, click the down arrow and select the right one. Click on the CDDB menu and then' Read remote freedb'. CDex will search for the album information. If there's more than one possibility, they will all be shown. Select the correct one and click OK. Left¬click on Convert and then Extract CD track(s) to Compressed Audio File.