CDA to WAV to CDA?

[iamme]

If I rip an audio track from a CD to a WAV file, onto my computer. Am I losing any quality at all? If I use that WAV to burn a CD later, is it exactly the same quality as the original CD?

 

[swai]

should be no loss of quality, assuming same bit rate and frequency

 

[ViRGE]

CD audio tracks are nothing more than PCM audio files(AKA WAV); so as long as you do a direct rip, it'll be for all intents and purposes, a 1:1 copy.

 

[GigaCluster]

A note: if you just want to make an exact 1:1 copy of a CD (audio or data), use CloneCD.
This will eliminate the intermediate steps like ripping a CD track to audio, then burning it back to a CD.

 

[iamme]

<< A note: if you just want to make an exact 1:1 copy of a CD (audio or data), use CloneCD.
This will eliminate the intermediate steps like ripping a CD track to audio, then burning it back to a CD. >>



it's not that i want to make a copy of a CD. i just wanted to rip a CD onto my HD and since space isn't really an issue, i wanted to keep the quality as high as possible.

 

[RSI]

<<

<< A note: if you just want to make an exact 1:1 copy of a CD (audio or data), use CloneCD.
This will eliminate the intermediate steps like ripping a CD track to audio, then burning it back to a CD. >>



it's not that i want to make a copy of a CD. i just wanted to rip a CD onto my HD and since space isn't really an issue, i wanted to keep the quality as high as possible. >>

I do that too. I have 4.6GB of music right now, and it's all WAVs. Mainly some CDs I ripped. I much prefer to keep 100% quality, then if I hear something wrong with the song I can safely attribute it to a bad rip.

-RSI

 

[GigaCluster]

God, y'all are full of yourselves. (This isn't meant to sound mean.)
I hope you realize that a CD contains much more data than any human ear can process... you'd rather have each song take up 10 times more space than needed, instead of compressing it and still having it sound the same?

The Ogg Vorbis compression can do wonders. Try it and see if you can tell the difference between a WAV and a high-bitrate Ogg. Unless you're an audiophile, you won't be able to.

 

[PliotronX]

<< it's not that i want to make a copy of a CD. i just wanted to rip a CD onto my HD and since space isn't really an issue, i wanted to keep the quality as high as possible. >>


In that case, I would recommend looking into lossless compression. My favorite is Monkey's Audio Compression. Lossless compression means that you can restore the original WAV from it in its entirety. I know space isn't an issue, but MAC will also let you use ID tagging and has error correction that WAVs do not have. Lossless compression yields about 2:1 compression, which is a far cry from lossy compression, but there are no worries of quality issues with lossless compression. This ultimately lets you organize and store twice as many files as merely leaving them uncompressed in WAVs.

 

[ViRGE]

If you want to do an audio CD copy, I would reccomend actually not using CloneCD unless it's a protected CD. Clone CD literally does a 1:1 copy, including copying all the errors(scratches, ect) on the CD. This means that you have a 1:1 copy of the CD, but in essence, not the song. Use a normal ripping/copying program; those will use CRC data to fix any errors, so that you end up with what's a 1:1 copy anyways.

 

[voodooguy]

I recommend FLAC instead of Monkey's Audio.

I tested both, and they have comparable performance. They can cut a wave file's size in half without any quality loss whatsoever.

FLAC is better because:

1) It supports streaming while Monkey's Audio doesn't.
2) FLAC has been ported to Windows and Linux. Monkey's Audio is Windows only.
3) FLAC is GNU GPL Open Source. Monkey's Audio is closed source.

 

[thomsbrain]

CD audio ARE wavs.