Can't copy music onto a blank CD

[garym]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

I think an even better idea for the OP is to take this time to switch over to a digital music playback environment for all your locations and ditch the physical CDs altogether. My 10,000+ CDs are are stored away, never to be used (I hope) again.**

So OP needs:

1. home: something like a squeezebox, or sonos, or netbook, etc. (all with or without some additional DAC) that plays FLAC files to his home system. I use squeezebox players through out the house, fed by my digital music server located in a back closet containing all my music. All controllable via laptop, iphone or ipad. So my complete collection is searchable, playable, etc. at my fingertips without finding or changing out the CD. And I can create some very interesting custom random mixes as well.

2. car: any number of players that can connect to his car system via cable or bluetooth. I used to use an ipod with AUX in cable in car. Now I mostly just use stuff off my iphone connected to car stereo by bluetooth. I have a mirror mp3 library I created from my FLAC files to use in my portables.

3. portable: see 2 above.

**I keep my CDs even though I never use them. In the United States (where I am) and many other countries, it is only legal to retain digital copies of your music ripped from a CD if you also keep the CD. In these countries, legally speaking, if you sell your CD, you must delete the digital files and any duplicate CDs you have. I realize of course that the police are not likely to track you down for this legal violation.

[alk630]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

+1 for CDBurnerXP.... lightweight and very easy to use. Use the default installer (without OpenCandy) or the portable version in the <More Download Options> section to avoid any bloatware.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

I think an even better idea for the OP is to take this time to switch over to a digital music playback environment for all your locations and ditch the physical CDs altogether. My 10,000+ CDs are are stored away, never to be used (I hope) again.**

I suspect that most of us here are digital music aficionados and would agree that that's the way to go. But for someone not yet set up for it (hardware- and other-wise), it can be a big initial leap. I could certainly be wrong, but my impression is that the OP may not be so enamored with the technicalities of all this stuff to want to take that leap just yet.

But in any event, digital library or not, the OP does seem to want physical copies of his CDs so that he can then sell the originals on eBay. Personally, I don't think I'd start with dBp if I were doing that, but he's here with the question, so just trying to help him* with that.

In the United States (where I am) and many other countries, it is only legal to retain digital copies of your music ripped from a CD if you also keep the CD. In these countries, legally speaking, if you sell your CD, you must delete the digital files and any duplicate CDs you have. I realize of course that the police are not likely to track you down for this legal violation.

Interesting...I didn't know that. Now I have a good excuse to never do anything with all those CDs in the closet!


* Not being presumptuous and sexist, just grammatically expedient. He, she, him, her, whatever....

[prognosis]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

OK, thanks. Just a few more things. When I say "secure" what I mean is free of malware, spyware, etc. that is attached to the program when you download it onto your computer. I learned my lesson with LimeWire and I don't want to repeat that mistake here. Second, I appreciate the lesson on terms especially when you say there is no best lossless codec. I did not know that. I seem to remember extracting a CD a year or two ago and using .wav based on info a friend gave me. When I played the burned disc on my stereo system, I definitely noticed it did not sound as good as the original store bought CD. I can't remember now if I did it in iTunes or WMP or even if I did it right. Anyway, I am ready to try again. From what little I know, I think offsets are when the computer thinks it recognizes the same track even though its different so you need some way to differentiate it for the computer to know its not the same. (Used to be a big thing with p2p sharing but that stuff makes my head hurt). And no, that won't be an issue with what I'm doing. Thank you both for taking the time. I will post again after trying your advice brodyboy (because its the simplest way to get started) and let you know if the copy lives up to the original.

[prognosis]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

Just converted all the tracks into wave files and tried to drag them to windows media player and still got the red circle with the slash through it. Did not see an option for .wav Don't know what to do now, thoughts?

[wondermouse]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

Just converted all the tracks into wave files and tried to drag them to windows media player and still got the red circle with the slash through it. Did not see an option for .wav Don't know what to do now, thoughts?

Are you sure you made .wav files? How did you do it?

I recommend opening Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) and going Organize > Folder & Search Options > View tab > UNtick "Hide Extensions for known file types" > OK.

This will make sure that you see the file extension on every file so files will be look something like 01 - track 1.wav

Then you can see if you have ripped wav files.

Also as a side note, I too was somewhat alarmed that you would openly post your intention to deliberately commit copyright infringement by ripping and then selling CDs. Suggest that you might want to reconsider.

Also I agree with the excellent post about considering ripping to a hard disc based system as FLAC and using that, rather than making and playing CDs themselves.

[mville]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

OK, the reason I made them FLAC files is because I was told this was the best thing to use to make an exact audio copy of the CD. This is what I want to do. I want to copy the CD flawlessly onto a blank CD and play it back on my home audio stereo system.

Why not use Imgburn (or similar freeware) to create an image file (iso file) from your audio CDs, then use Imgburn to write the image file to a blank disc?

[drjenkins]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

Why not use Imgburn (freeware) to create an image file (iso file) from your audio CDs, then use Imgburn to write the image file to a blank disc?

ImgBurn unfortunately comes with an AdWare installer now. While you can opt out of the AdWare, here's a way to make a clean portable ImgBurn install:

Get a copy of Universal Extractor:

http://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract

I recomend the "UniExtract Binary Archive" version since it does not install anything.

Use it to extract the files from SetupImgBurn_2.5.8.0.exe. http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

The folder $INSTDIR will contain all the files you need to run ImgBurn without installing anything.

[prognosis]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

The files were converted into wave files. That's what it said wave not .wav I don't know if that makes a difference. Had no idea about the copyright infringement thing. Now I just don't know. It may just be too hard for me. I looked for db poweramp for dummies and couldn't find anything. My salesman at the stereo shop told me to do the DAC thing with Bluetooth and a laptop so I would have all my music at my fingertips but it would cost more than I can afford for all that equipment and I still don't know how to get the music off my cds into the system since I can't even do this. I may ask around and see if someone where I am can help me with this, otherwise I may just throw in the towel. I don't want to download programs I don't know about because I was burned before.

[RonM]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

I have just a couple of observations.

First, I think that CD Writer (available on this site) is a perfectly ok CD writing software that works with flacs or pretty much anything else. There are some issues with its use in some Windows environments. Specifically, it won't work with 64 bit dBp, which is the default for 64 bit windows, so you have to force install of the 32 bit version of dBp if you are going to use Writer.

Windows Media Player also works perfectly well for CD burning, and for someone not too worried about what WMP does to your tags there is no reason not to do that. If I were using WMP (as I have done extensively in the past) and didn't want to get the third-party codecs for use of it with flacs, I'd actually convert using dbp to Windows Media Audio lossless. Windows Media Player uses this without any problems, and you get to retain the full file tags in the digital files. About half of my ripped archive is in wma format, and I have had no difficulties with it at all.

I forget whether the WMA codec is automatically installed with dBp, or whether you have to install an additional codec from this site, I think the latter, but it's simple to do.

So, simple:

Use dbp to rip CDs to lossless wma format.

Use Windows Media Player to burn these to CD.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

If I were using WMP (as I have done extensively in the past) and didn't want to get the third-party codecs for use of it with flacs, I'd actually convert using dbp to Windows Media Audio lossless. Windows Media Player uses this without any problems, and you get to retain the full file tags in the digital files.

+1 Personally, my first choice for archiving a hard copy CD would be creating/burning a disk image, but beyond that....

For someone like the OP who wants to simplify this process and avoid downloading any more software than absolutely necessary, I'd use WMP for the entire process (both ripping and burning) and use its native lossless .wma format. That keeps everything within Windows. The only reason I originally suggested he try .wav for his existing .flac files was that the codec is already in dBp and he wouldn't need to install any additional codecs for either WMP or dBp. (Avoiding complications seems a premium here.)

Finally, to the OP: I agree with others' comments regarding copying/selling your CDs. If your purpose is to circumvent paying for your music, that's just illegal. We all copy music here, but I believe that most of us do it to build a digital library (from purchased music) for our own personal use.

[prognosis]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

Yeah, yeah, the music IS for my own personal use. I am talking about audiophile grade cds here, not the five or seven dollar domestic discs you buy at Wal-Mart. It's not just the music that is significantly better, the artwork is painstakingly reproduced to the way it was when the album came out years ago. These items are collectible. Once I buy it, if I want to copy it for my own personal use and then sell that disc on the open market, that's my business. But maybe I'm wrong on that, I will have to look into copyright law to see. And the other thing is, it's not every disc I own, only 2 or 3 out of say, 60 of these audiophile grade discs. I wouldn't part with the others any which way. But, of course, that wouldn't matter from a legal perspective. I see now, that the point of this is to convert your CDs into digital files so that you can play music you've already purchased on all your devices. At this point, I don't have any interest in doing all that. As brodyboy observed, I am not techno savvy with this stuff and since I was burned once on LimeWire, I am unlikely to download a free program off the internet because I don't trust it. So I'm out. But I did follow the instructions I was given and it failed to work. It did not allow wave files to go into WMP for burning. And I know it works because I have burned many cd tracks to make up my own playlist on WMP and it works fine. But it would not allow the tracks extracted onto dbpa in. And now, I'm just sick of it. It is not user friendly and it is time consuming. So, I am done with it.

[RonM]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

For someone like the OP who wants to simplify this process and avoid downloading any more software than absolutely necessary, I'd use WMP for the entire process (both ripping and burning) and use its native lossless .wma format. That keeps everything within Windows. The only reason I originally suggested he try .wav for his existing .flac files was that the codec is already in dBp and he wouldn't need to install any additional codecs for either WMP or dBp. (Avoiding complications seems a premium here.)
.

Yes, I thought of that after my post, given that you have to download and install the wma codec in dBp. But dBp does have some advantages from the point of view of tag control, although that is perhaps not an issue if the objective is to burn CDs.

For years I used WMP in just this way, in my pre-Squeezebox days, and never thought it was as problematic as received wisdom would have it. Other than it's wayward ways with tags.

[garym]

Re: Can't copy music onto a blank CD

....And now, I'm just sick of it. It is not user friendly and it is time consuming. So, I am done with it.

Hmmm, I'm afraid you probably just need to stick with playing your CDs in CD players. If this easy to use program is not user friendly, particularly given all the useful advice you've been given in doing what you want to do, there's not much that can be done to help you. Maybe a more technology aware friend can assist. But it seems that what you're trying to do is entirely illegal in most countries anyhow, so perhaps best that you've come to a dead end.