CD ripper
Encyclopedia
It rips
Ripping
Ripping is the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, neither the media nor the data is damaged after extraction....
raw digital audio
Digital audio
Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...
in CDDA format on a compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
to a file
Computer file
A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...
or other output.
History
In the early days of computer CD-ROM drives and audio compression mechanisms (such as MP2), CD ripping was considered undesirable by copyright holders, with some attempting to retrofit copy protection into the simple ISO9660 standard. As time progressed, most music publishers became more open to the idea that since individuals had bought the music, they should be able to create a copy for their own personal use on their own computer. This is not yet entirely true; even with some current digital music delivery mechanisms, there are considerable restrictions on what an end user can do with their paid for (and therefore personally licensed) audio. Windows Media Player's default behaviour is to add copy protection measures to ripped music, with a disclaimer that if this is not done, the end user is held entirely accountable for what is done with their music. This suits most users who simply want to store their music on a memory stick, MP3 player or portable hard disk and listen to it on any PC or compatible device.The first CD ripper was CD-GRAB, written by A.L. Digital Ltd. some time before 1992. It ran on MS-DOS.
The first CD ripper for Unix systems was cdda2wav, it was considered superseded by cdparanoia
Cdparanoia
cdparanoia is a compact disc ripper for *nix and BeOS, developed by Xiph.org. It is designed to be a minimalistic, high-quality CD ripper that would be able to compensate for and adjust to poor hardware to produce a flawless rip....
in 1998, cdparanoia is superseded by cdda2wav since 2002.
Etymology
The Jargon FileJargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
entry for rip notes that the term originated in Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
slang, where it referred to the extraction of multimedia content from program data. Another term used for the process of ripping Audio-CDs is Digital Audio Extraction (DAE).
Design
As an intermediate step, some ripping programs save the extracted audio in a lossless format such as WAVWAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
, FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
, or even raw PCM
Pulse-code modulation
Pulse-code modulation is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form for digital audio in computers and various Blu-ray, Compact Disc and DVD formats, as well as other uses such as digital telephone systems...
audio. The extracted audio can then be encoded with a lossy codec
Codec
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...
like MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, Vorbis
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
, WMA
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...
or AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
. The encoded files are more compact and are suitable for playback on digital audio players. They may also be played back in a media player program on a computer.
Most ripping programs will assist in tagging the encoded files with metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
. The MP3 file format, for example, allows tags with title, artist, album and track number information. Some will try to identify the disc being ripped by looking up network services like AMG's
All Media Guide
All Media Guide , is the company which owns and maintains Allmusic, Allgame and Allmovie. AMG was founded in 1990 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine....
LASSO
AMG LASSO
AMG LASSO is a media recognition service launched by the All Media Guide in 2004. The LASSO service automatically recognizes CDs, DVDs, and digital audio files in formats such as MP3, WMA, and others. The service uses CD table of contents , DVD ToC, and acoustic fingerprint based recognition to...
, FreeDB
Freedb
freedb is a database of compact disc track listings, where all the content is under the GNU General Public License. It was originally based on the now-proprietary CDDB . As of April 24, 2006, the database holds just under 2,000,000 CDs...
, Gracenote
Gracenote
Gracenote, Inc., formerly called CDDB , is a company that maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. It provides software and metadata to businesses that enable their customers to manage and search...
's CDDB
CDDB
CDDB, short for Compact Disc Database, is a database for software applications to look up audio CD information over the Internet. This is performed by a client which calculates a unique disc ID and then queries the database. As a result, the client is able to display the artist name, CD title,...
, GD3 http://www.getdigitaldata.com or MusicBrainz
MusicBrainz
MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open content music database. Similar to the freedb project, it was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the CDDB...
, or attempt text extraction if CD-Text
CD-Text
CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows for storage of additional information on a standards-compliant audio CD...
has been stored.
Some all-in-one ripping programs can simplify the entire process by ripping and burning the audio to disc in one step, possibly re-encoding the audio on-the-fly in the process.
Some CD ripping software is specifically intended to provide an especially accurate or "secure" rip, including Exact Audio Copy
Exact Audio Copy
Exact Audio Copy is a proprietary CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. It has also been tested to work under newer versions of Wine on Linux...
, cdda2wav, CDex
CDex
CDex is a CD ripper for Microsoft Windows. It convert tracks on a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. Released under the GNU General Public License, CDex is free software. , it is the 14th most popular download on SourceForge.net, with over 41 million downloads. It...
and cdparanoia
Cdparanoia
cdparanoia is a compact disc ripper for *nix and BeOS, developed by Xiph.org. It is designed to be a minimalistic, high-quality CD ripper that would be able to compensate for and adjust to poor hardware to produce a flawless rip....
.
Optical drive properties
Properties of an optical drive helping in achieving a perfect rip are a small sample-offset (at best zero), no JitterJitter
Jitter is the undesired deviation from true periodicity of an assumed periodic signal in electronics and telecommunications, often in relation to a reference clock source. Jitter may be observed in characteristics such as the frequency of successive pulses, the signal amplitude, or phase of...
, no or deactivateable Caching, and a correct implementation and feed-back of the C1 and C2
C2 error
A C2 error is a read error of a compact disc. C2 errors can be to a degree recovered by the hardware error detection and correction scheme. A CD drive can have extraction errors when the data on the disc is not readable due to scratches or smudges. The drive can compensate by supplying a "best...
error-states. There are databases listing these features for multiple brands and versions of optical drives. Also, EAC
Exact Audio Copy
Exact Audio Copy is a proprietary CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. It has also been tested to work under newer versions of Wine on Linux...
has the ability to autodetect some of these features by a test-rip of a known reference CD.
Examples
BSD and LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
:
- AsunderAsunderAsunder is a GTK+-based CD-ripping program that works on Linux. It doesn't have dependencies for GNOME libraries....
- GripGrip audio ripperGrip is a free Compact Disc player and CD ripper within the GNOME project.Development began in 1998, and it was registered as a project at the SourceForge.net free and open-source software website on March 17, 2000. Pre-compiled binaries are available for RPM Linux distributions...
- K3BK3bK3b is a CD and DVD authoring application by KDE for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX...
- Sound JuicerSound JuicerSound Juicer is an application Front-End to the Cdparanoia CD ripping library. It allows the user to extract audio from compact discs and convert it into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can understand and play...
- Cdda2wav
- cdparanoiaCdparanoiacdparanoia is a compact disc ripper for *nix and BeOS, developed by Xiph.org. It is designed to be a minimalistic, high-quality CD ripper that would be able to compensate for and adjust to poor hardware to produce a flawless rip....
- VLC media playerVLC media playerVLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
:
- iTunesITunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
- Max (ripping software)
- XLD
Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
:
- AudiograbberAudiograbberAudiograbber is a proprietary freeware CD audio extractor/converter program for Microsoft Windows. It was one of the first programs in the genre to become popular. The data extraction algorithm was designed by Jackie Franck and was included in the Xing Technology software package Xing Audio...
- fre:ac (formerly BonkEnc)
- CDexCDexCDex is a CD ripper for Microsoft Windows. It convert tracks on a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. Released under the GNU General Public License, CDex is free software. , it is the 14th most popular download on SourceForge.net, with over 41 million downloads. It...
- dBpoweramp
- Exact Audio CopyExact Audio CopyExact Audio Copy is a proprietary CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. It has also been tested to work under newer versions of Wine on Linux...
- foobar2000Foobar2000foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
- iTunesITunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
- MediaMonkeyMediaMonkeyMediaMonkey is a proprietary digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows operating systems. By using plugins, it can be extended to handle video and other media formats as well.MediaMonkey is available in a...
- Musicmatch JukeboxMusicmatch JukeboxY!Music Musicmatch Jukebox, a remake of the original Musicmatch Jukebox made by Musicmatch, Inc., is an audio player that manages a digital audio library...
- WinampWinampWinamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
- Windows Media PlayerWindows Media PlayerWindows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
- VLC media playerVLC media playerVLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
External links
- www.daefeatures.co.uk/, database about the DAE properties of optical drives