New Windows Media Player App Travels Back in Time, Gains the Ability To Rip CDs (arstechnica.com) 65
In March, Microsoft enabled audio CD playback in the new version of Media Player, something that the old version had supported for pretty much as long as it had existed. And now, Microsoft is rolling out support for CD ripping in the new version of Media Player, presumably so that we can all convert our old Weezer and Matchbox 20 CDs into files we can copy over to our iPods and Zunes. From a report: By default, CDs can be ripped to AAC files at constant bitrates ranging between 96 and 320kbps. The WMA, FLAC, and ALAC formats are also supported. MP3 support and variable bitrate support, two features that are still included in the "Media Player Legacy" app, are notably absent.
Microsoft... (Score:3)
Re:Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck am I going to do with a FLAC or ALAC file?
Play it and enjoy the high quality audio.
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Play it and enjoy the high quality audio.
Yeah, with storage no longer being a real issue I've already re-ripped my entire CD library in FLAC format. Much different situation now than it was back in the 2000s.
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Yeah and now it is a common accepted format. I think Apple is about the only outfit that doesn't support the format. Then again they don't like mkv video either.
Go figure.
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Fuck am I going to do with a FLAC or ALAC file?
Use it to pay [aflac.com] expenses health insurance doesn't cover? :-)
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I don't get it. I ripped a CD from Windows Media player a couple months ago in Windows 10. So unclear when they removed it unless it was for Windows 11 only.
And of course it's necessary. People have music CDs, and they want to play them in their autos, music players, etc. Were we supposed to throw them away and buy the music all over again from Apple?
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Ripping just means copying the file off of the CD into a digital format, so it's the same thing. ITunes did do this, so it was still "ripping" the CD for you just with a different program. I'm not using Itunes much anymore so I used the media player.
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But that's a download. Not worth the hassle. I have the CDs precisely as an archive, and that's what I want them to be rather than relying on someone else's cloud.
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Funny enough, nowadays, I think downloading would be faster then ripping it.
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Re:Microsoft... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should you rip it when digital copies already exist?
Because those digital copies are stored on someone else's hardware, and can be removed at their whim. If I pay for music (not including what's included with a music streaming service), I make sure I have a physical copy on my hardware, and at least one backup.
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Because those digital copies are stored on someone else's hardware, and can be removed at their whim.
Haven't used iTunes for a while but that isn't the way it works or worked. Itunes downloads a copy to your machine and you can store and copy it at will. No DRM.
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That is not music. It has been compressed to shit.
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No.
You can download in ALAC, compressed but lossless, and the quality is as good or better than what you get off a CD. So just as shitty as what is accessible to most of the listening world.
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Well you could use free CD rippers like Exact Audio Copy that are able to rip an exact copy of the CD. Paid options of same include dbPowerAmp, and Linux has c
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optimize for speed vs accuracy?
It is digital for fuck sakes -- are you a total frikking moron?
Meh (Score:5, Funny)
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To be fair, neither does WinAmp any longer.
My preference for open source WinAmp clones is Audacious. Well written piece of software, runs like a champ, small footprint, iirc runs natively in Linux as well.
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I have seen things like WinAMP, but nothing the fully replaces the style.
Ripping isn't obsolete (Score:5, Interesting)
These "new" features or back-in-time features or whatever are things I want and use.
Of course, I'm running Linux Mint and I have already had these features since forever, so I'm not that excited by this news. I don't have a Windows 11 computer and thanks to Valve I don't even need Windows for gaming anymore.
But are these features really that funny? I have a lot of CDs, and I just rip them to FLAC and then put away the CDs. I have some CDs made before the loudness wars got stupid, and I never want to lose access to those mixes (because the new CDs and the digital versions are mixed way too "hot"). I have some CDs from music labels that no longer exist and the songs are simply unavailable on the Internet. Ripping isn't obsolete.
Re: Ripping isn't obsolete (Score:1, Flamebait)
Well aint you just precious
Re:Ripping isn't obsolete (Score:4, Informative)
Ripping may not be obsolete but that doesn't mean it makes any sense to add it to media player. Very few computers these days are sold with a DVD drive. It makes more sense for the few people who still want/need it to download a proper tool for the job, like EAC.
The joke here isn't that ripping exists, it's that MS implemented it after the optical drive effectively become a niche piece of hardware.
WMP is still there in Win11 (Score:2)
Yawn....M$ reinvents the wheel once again. (Score:4, Informative)
EAC has been out for YEARS, and does a wonderful job ripping audio CD's.
Optical Drives (Score:2)
Very few new computers come with optical drives. It's still nice that they've included this feature, and you can always get a USB optical drive to easily copy CDs to your computer, but I still think it's very interesting that they would have brought back functionality that such a large number of people couldn't use.
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Which brands are good these days though? They're all Chinese and look cheap. :(
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Re: The last time I used a music CD was 1999 (Score:2)
How about music videos? (Score:2)
If you still haven't ripped your CDs... (Score:2)
Windows Media Player isn't the tool to do it anymore.
If you're doing a whole shelf or binder of CDs, dbPowerAmp [dbpoweramp.com] is the jam. $40 for a single user license, and it automates the entire ripping process, even from multiple drives. You can specify encoding parameters and file names, and it queries the different CDDB databases and tags the files automatically. I ripped nearly 300 CDs in about 2 hours with this application and half a dozen optical drives.
If you've got a smaller collection, fre:ac [freac.org] is your ticket. T
re: dbPowerAmp (Score:2)
Wow! I never heard of this app before and that really does look nice. I already went through a process of ripping my entire CD collection, years back. (Did the whole thing using iTunes.) I would have much preferred this method, even if it did cost me the $40 up front.
The part I like is its ability to compare other existing rips of the same tracks to confirm yours isn't corrupt, and ability to grab and embed the correct album art and tags.
I found iTunes frustrating because they kept alternating back and fo
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wimp is crap at tagging but is otherwise still pretty nice if what you want is either an mp3 or something you can plug into windows, which is after all most things. I find it does a great job of recognizing albums from a pile of TrackNN.mp3s, too, or at least it still did last I tried it. For all I know the servers have moved out from underneath it. And since it will optionally rip on insert, you can do the same multi-drive trick.
I'd still rather use something based on paranoia or similar, though, because C
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I still buy CDs and rip them (Score:5, Insightful)
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And everyone like you has had 20 years to find a suitable program to do this task. It's quite absurd to add it to media player now in 2022.
Raises hand (Score:2)
>"And now, Microsoft is rolling out support for CD ripping in the new version of Media Player, presumably so that we can all convert our old Weezer and Matchbox 20 CDs into files we can copy over to our iPods and Zunes."
Sorry, I still buy CD's on occasion. I get the music on a permanent media at full quality, then rip it for use on my devices at a level I want with the codec and settings and metadata I want. I use Linux and Grip for that, however. Then store it for possible future use or re-encoding.
T
Who rips CDs? (Score:2)
When Amazon offers physical CDs for less than the price of a digital download, often with "autorip" included, I feel compelled to waste some plastic to not have to depend on the future business priorities of "the cloud" to preserve my music collection.
Perfect for... (Score:2)
My kids ask what a CD is and why you pay for it (Score:3)
when all music is on Youtube?
Owning a CD collection is so millenial.
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I have an urge to punch everyone who thinks "Youtube" is music. I can take someone saying Spotify, but seriously, a video streaming site well known for rubbish audio encoding being "music" deserves mocking at every opportunity.
Unless that is your kids subscribe to Youtube Music, but I doubt that's what you're talking about.
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No it does. You're streaming an entire video only to get the most basic audio. It's stupid in the face of actual services that only stream audio. Unless you have a TV and are watching music videos then using Youtube for music is just purely wasteful and stupid.
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It's music because it has every song, ever. Literally everything. More than Spotify, more than iTunes, and you're one google result away from being able to rip the song to mp3 and choose your output quality.
It's pretty hard to pass up on a collection of "all the music". I am sure you can find some examples that aren't on youtube but... you'd be hard pressed.
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YT will never be as cool as that CD case.
What is a CD? (Score:1)
What no opus??!? (Score:2)
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Opus is not patent free. It's royalty free. The difference is the patent holders aren't coming after anyone for money.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc, they have all paid AAC royalties. It makes perfect sense that they would support the codec.
Consumers care about one thing: Does it play. In that regard AAC is a solid choice. My car radio doesn't support Opus, so I rip everything in AAC too.
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Secondly, while they do pay license fees, the normal model is to pay them per install/user or on an ongoing basis. I don't think its a no-brainer for them to continue to support AAC. See DVD support in Windows for example - it now costs money to add it.
I agree on the consumer part. However your argument seems to be similar to "Only support PCM/.WAV, as not everything has MP3" support