Guide to ripping CDs to MP3.

 

I don’t know if you completely understand the MP3 thing, but basically it is a music file that is the same quality only 10% of the original size (due to compression).  The reason why it is a file and you can’t just write is back to CD and play it is because the software uses the CPU (the processor itself) to decompress the file and output it at CD quality.  An average CD of about 60 minutes has about 600MB on it, a ripped CD takes up about 60MB of hard drive space.

 

Firstly you need to get yourself a ripper, do so here.  When installing select Custom installation and install the ripper, but don’t install the Xing MP3 player, it’s crap.

 

Once downloaded and installed you’ll need to install a player.  Windows does do it natively but Winamp does it better, play lists, equalizers, the whole lot.  You can get it at http://www.winamp.com or try here first.

 

When you first load AudioCatalyst it will require some settings to be adjusted.

 

Sometimes you’ll need to install an ASPI layer, you can check this in the Setting, General section under CD-Rom Access Method, if ASPI isn’t an option then you’ll need install an ASPI layer, which can be found here

.

 

In the Settings, General section you may want to change the path of where you’re MP3s are going to be stored and how you’re file names are going to look after they’ve been ripped.

 

 

Next you need to change the Bitrate that the MP3 is encoded in.  For slightly older CDs (pre 1999) you’ll be safe to use 160Kbps, but with all new CDs it is probably better to encode at 192Kbps.  You don’t really need to know exactly what it does, but the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file size and the lower the quality.  Vise versa, the higher the bitrate, the higher the quality, but the slightly bigger file size (but take my word for it, it’s worth it).

 

Now would be a good time to insert your music CD.  It should pick it up automatically; sometimes the audio player will open by itself, but if it does, just close it.

 

The next thing to do is connect to the internet.  Once that has gone through, switch back to AudioCatalyst and hit the CDDB button along the top.  This button searches a particular website for information regarding the CD.  Note:  It will only pick up information of commercially released CDs, not ones you’ve created yourself.  Copies of originals will also be picked up.  Also sometimes there may be more than one CD listed, that is because there are heaps of idiots out on the net and they have programmed up the track lists wrong and someone else has come along and fixed it.  Make sure that the artist name is on the Artist column (that’s the only secret to that).

 

 

 

Then the display should look something like this:

 

 

The only thing left to do is to hit Grab, this will encode every song in two steps, rip it to a wave file on the hard drive then compress it to MP3.  After all is done you’re ready to go.  There is one trick that comes in handy:

Sometimes on the last track of a CD you may get an ASPI error.  This normally means that the cd is an Enhanced one and has some bonus shit like screen savers on the CD etc.  The secret is to see how long the track is (check the back of the case for the track time, or listen to the track to see when it ends), then double click on the last track in AudioCatalyst and adjust the total time so that it brings the track time back the time you just found out.  If you get an error on the last track you don’t have to encode the whole CD again, you just have to un-check all the boxes you have done (all the completed tracks have a Checksum: XXXXXXXX in the information section after ripping).  If you get an ASPI error on any other tracks bar the last one, then you might need to clean the CD and try again, and again un-checking the tracks that have ripped successfully.