Cannot record from CD in laptop CD/DVD device

[bawldiggle]

I am having trouble getting started.
The last time I used Audacity was prior to 2007. Those brain cells have become redundant due to birthday cake
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Have music CD in laptop's built-in CD/DVD player and playing via external speakers.
With Audacity open and red button clicked, wave form is a flat blue line, (mono and stereo input)

I want to record the CD for editing as an MP3 file to load onto my NAS
Using Audacity help HTML file...
C:~tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_windows.html
... appropriate settings as recommended are not available on my version of "Audacity 2.0.3"

• Audio Host:- MME ... I have
  Output Device:- SoundMAX Digital Audio <<< I don't have
  - only "Microsoft Sound Mapper" and "Speakers (Context SmartAudio H..."
  Input Device:- SoundMAX Digital Audio: Wave Out... <<< I don't have
  - only "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input" and "Internal Microphone (Contexant S..."
  Input Channels:= 2 (Stereo) input Chan..."
  - I have "1(Mono) Input Chann..." and "2(Stereo) Input Chann..."

If the built-in play device is not suitable would I need a suitable external device ?

Would appreciate any help
---------------------------------
SPECS:
Audacity 2.0.3
Installer:- audacity-win-2.0.3.exe
Win7 32 bit (Toshiba preloaded)
Toshiba Satellite C665 laptop
* Sound Card:= "Speakers (Conexant SmartAudio H"
* CD/DVD Drive:= "TSSTcorpCDDVDW TS-L633J"

[kozikowski]

Most of us who want to copy music from a disk we own do it with an Audio CD Ripping Program. You can get iTunes for Windows to do that, or you can use a stand-alone ripping program like CDEX.

While the quality of the music on a CD is perfect WAV, 44100, 16-bit, Stereo, the structure of the files is odd to allow the maximum amount of music, so you can't just copy the files over. You don't get music if you do that.

The desperation method is to play the disk normally and try to capture the audio stream inside the computer, but that's pretty painful because there can be many different methods to do that and some work far better than others.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Oh, and thanks for the complete information on your system.

You may get burned with the idea that in order to jam as much music as possible onto the disk, an Audio CD does not contain song information. So you may get a rip that reads song 1, song 2, song 3, etc. That's an example, I forget how it actually reads.

When you get song information as you play the disk, chances are the computer is going on-line to look for the titles. The disk itself has no idea.

Koz

[bawldiggle]

Thanks " kozikowski" for your response,

I am not into quick and dirty .. I prefer to do it right.
As a latent audiophile bad reproduction makes me cringe to the point that I have to turn it off.

• Wife has a cloth-ear. She does not hear the difference until I demonstrate it to her.
  (If I wake up dead tomorrow with the bread knife sticking out of my chest I know she-who-must-be-obeyed does not agree with me)

Thank you for getting me started --

[steve]

I've not used it since Windows XP but I believe it should work with later versions of Windows: If your CDs are in good condition I would recommend using EAC http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/). If you try it, work carefully through the set-up for best results. On damaged CDs the extraction can be extremely slow and not very good, so not recommended in such cases, but for good CDs the copy is usually perfect.

Foobar2000 has pretty good and reasonably fast CD extraction built in, so my second choice would be Foobar2000 or CDex. (These are my first choice if the CDs are a bit scratched or worn, but note that no program will cope well with very badly damaged CDs).

Assuming that you have plenty of space on your NAS, consider using WAV, AIFF or FLAC files - the sound quality is better than MP3 or other compressed formats.

[kozikowski]

FLAC being the gracefully and losslessly compressed format that fewer applications can read. This is good if you start running out of space and know your applications can read FLAC.

MP3 and other aggressive compressors produce lovely, tiny files, but leave sound damage behind and restrict your ability to do post production.

Koz

[steve]

FLAC being the gracefully and losslessly compressed format that fewer applications can read.

Most good audio players support playing FLAC. Fortunately there are usually plug-ins available for applications (such as iTunes and Windows Media Player) that do not support FLAC natively. Support on portable media players is rather more patchy but because FLAC is a lossless format you can always batch convert from FLAC to another format with no additional quality loss (only the quality lost by the other format).

[bawldiggle]

Thanks to all for the MP3 enlightenment.

• MP3 will be OK for non music files but I am anal about my music. I like quality sound (and its not doof-doof.)

----------
I have ripped one track of a CD as a WAV file. (to experiment with)
If I open the WAV file in Audacity I can play and edit in Audacity

BUT if I play the WAV file through "Windows Media Player" or my preferred "VLC Media Player" Audacity is still a flat line. No wave form even if I zoom in to max.

• (Yes I have clicked the "Record" btn on Audacity)

I want to record internet audio. (and hopefully Skype in the future)

Based on the Audacity help HTML file...
C:~tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_windows.html
... appropriate settings as recommended are not available on my version of "Audacity 2.0.3"

Audio Host:- MME ... I have
Output Device:- SoundMAX Digital Audio <<< I don't have
- only "Microsoft Sound Mapper" and "Speakers (Context SmartAudio H..."
Input Device:- SoundMAX Digital Audio: Wave Out... <<< I don't have
- only "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input" and "Internal Microphone (Contexant S..."
Input Channels:- 2 (Stereo) input Chan..."
- I have "1(Mono) Input Chann..." and "2(Stereo) Input Chann..."

I am not a PC geek., but I attempt to grasp the nuts and bolts.
In the last two days, somewhere, I read that newer PC soundcards are restricted to what can be "recorded".
Even driver updates do not get around the "record live audio" problem.
I guess I have to install a program that will "read" the sound card and divert the audio to ... to ... hopefully Audacity !!?
Relying on speaker output appears to compromise sound quality. But Audacity is not "sensing" the speaker output.

Doing my newbie homework "Total Recorder" (commercial version) appears at the top of heap.
Other programs I found were ...

• "AudioGrabber",
  "Total Recorder Editor 12.1.1"
  "M$ Sound Recorder" -- restricted to 60 second grabs
  "Stream Ripper" -- last development 2005
  "WM Converter 4.1" -- ???

.... but I am not sure exactly what I need -- what will do the job? Help!
I am not adverse to pay for a program, if I know for sure it will do what I want, .. but conversely why pay for overkill.

Would appreciate some more guidance -- thank you

---------------------------------
SPECS:
Audacity 2.0.3
Installer:- audacity-win-2.0.3.exe
Win7 32 bit (Toshiba preloaded)
Toshiba Satellite C665 laptop -- (purchased July-2012)
* Sound Card:= "Speakers (Conexant SmartAudio H"
* CD/DVD Drive:= "TSSTcorpCDDVDW TS-L633J"

[DVDdoug]

I have ripped one track of a CD as a WAV file. (to experiment with)

If I open the WAV file in Audacity I can play and edit in Audacity

BUT if I play the WAV file through "Windows Media Player" or my preferred "VLC Media Player" Audacity is still a flat line. No wave form even if I zoom in to max.
(Yes I have clicked the "Record" btn on Audacity)

Something is clearly wrong with your WAV file... A "regular" WAV file is very-standard, and it's not compressed. It should play on any computer with no fuss. The downside to WAV is that it's big since it's not compressed, and "tagging" (with artist, album, title information) is not well standardized or supported.

Just something quick to check... A 44.1kHz, 16-bit, stereo file (CD format) is about 10MB per minute. If your file is much smaller (or larger) than that, it's probably not a regular (uncompressed PCM) WAV file.

What ripping software did you use?

Ripping software can be a bit tricky to set-up... Well, all of this stuff can be tricky to set-up and learn...

I use EAC. dbPoweramp is also very popular, although the free version can't rip to MP3. AudioGrabber should work too.

VLC will pretty much play anything.

If you have a "flat line" in Audacity, I don't understand how you can play & edit it.

When you open and edit a WAV file, that has nothing to do with "recording". Digitally "ripping" is NOT "recording" either.

A porgram like Total Recorder should be good for recording "analog" signals, but it's not for ripping digital files.

[kozikowski]

I have ripped one track of a CD as a WAV file. (to experiment with)
If I open the WAV file in Audacity I can play and edit in Audacity

How did you do the rip?


Windows XP should be able to record "Stereo Mix" with no extra craziness. It's only the later versions of Windows where they started to restrict what you can do.

I don't remember if we pointed you to this yet.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... puter.html

Skype is another whole deal. Skype takes over both record and playback at the same time and doesn't like giving them up.

I think Total Recorder can do that and you can certainly pop for Pamela.

http://www.pamela.biz/en/products/

The bottom two Pamela licenses are generally not acceptable for production. I think one of them announces itself over your show and the other restricts the number of minutes you can use.

There are other options, but Skype is rough.

Koz