CD Reader

CD Reader in the Tool menu.

Use CD Reader to digitally copy audio directly from an audio CD to a file on your hard drive, without using your sound card. This features has several advantages over normal recording:

The CD-ROM drive must be MMC compliant (Multimedia Command Standard). Due to the wide variety of interfaces, inconsistent device standards, and a long standing bug in the Windows USB driver, incompatibilities may arise that will require a system reset. It is recommended that you close all other programs before proceeding.

If your system is configured correctly, the window allows you to select a CD device and to specify tracks to copy. If you have only one CD-ROM drive, only one device is listed in the drop down list. If you already have an audio CD in the drive, the track times are shown in the lists. Otherwise you will need to insert an audio CD and re-select the device from the list.

Read Tracks Tab
Use this tab to copy several tracks to separate files. The Get Titles button downloads information (album, titles, etc.) about the CD from an Internet database. An active connection to the Internet is required. You can select a single track from the list and use the Rename button (or Alt+R) to manually rename it. Use the Save Tracks button (the one with the diskette icon) to save all titles and disc information to the hard drive.

Use the Select All button to select all tracks or check the box for each track you want to save. You can preview tracks by selecting the Read Time Range tab, described below.

The Save button saves all selected tracks to separate files using the track title as the filename. You can select the file format and other options on the Save CD Tracks window that appears.

Use the Options tab to configure settings before saving.

Read Time Range Tab
Use this tab to copy any time range from the CD or to preview parts of the CD. A fast CD-ROM or DVD drive is required for previewing. You may have to increase the "Read speed" or the "Number of sectors per read" setting under the Options tab to get smooth playback. See the Options tab settings below.

The Save button saves the given time range to a single file. You can select the file format and provide a filename in the standard Save As window that appears.

Options Tab
Use the Options tab to changes settings for reading audio from the CD and the Internet database server.

CD Reader Options
Reading Options
Option Purpose
Number of sectors per read Sets the number of sectors to read from the CD at one time. This value should be as large as possible, provided your CD-ROM drive supports it. Reading may fail if the value is too large for a given drive. Higher values increase overall reading speed.
Number of sectors to overlap Sets the number of sectors to overlap. A value of 3 is recommended. Using a higher value more forcefully corrects jitter (positioning defects), but slows down reading because more sectors have to be re-read. Use a value of 0 if your CD-ROM drive automatically corrects jitter to speed up reading.
Read speed Many CD-ROM drives allow the spindle speed to be controlled. For fast reading, this value should be set as high as possible. A single speed CD reads data at 150kBps. To read at 10x, for example, set the speed to 1500kBps.
Swap bytes Changes the order of the bytes read from the CD. Some drives incorrectly return audio data in the reverse byte order. This gives loud, badly distorted audio. Check this option to correct it.
Database Options
Server Sets the server address of the database to use for downloading CD information. Note that the original freedb.org server is no longer operational. Please use freedb.goldwave.ca.
Proxy Sets the HTTP proxy server for your network, if required. Leave this blank if no proxy server is used. Otherwise set the server and port in the servername:port format. Contact your system administrator or ISP for more information if you are unable to connect to the database.

Example:
http-proxy.provider.net:8080

Automatically download titles Automatically downloads titles when the CD Reader tool is started or when a CD device is selected. This eliminates the need to use the Get Title buttons.
Prefix text and track number in title Prefixes titles with the given text and track number when displaying titles. Enter text in the edit box with at least two # symbols for the track numbers, such as "## ", "Disc 1 ## " or "01-##-". The text must contain characters that are safe for filenames, so "Disc:1/##/ " is invalid.
Specify CD ID manually Allows a different CD ID to be given for the database search. When the titles are about to be downloaded, a window appears where the calculated ID can be changed. A category must be specified since it is required by the database query. This option is for advanced users and should rarely be checked.
Editing Options
Open track files for editing Automatically opens each track file in GoldWave immediately after it is successfully read from the CD. This makes it easier to edit the files later. If you do not need to open or edit the files, keep this option off to save processing time.

Troubleshooting

Save CD Tracks Window

Save button on Read Tracks tab of the CD Reader window.

Use this window to set the destination folder, name, and format for all tracks read from the CD.

Destination folder specifies the location to store the tracks. Type in a folder name or use the folder button to browse for a folder.

The name of each track is the same as the name shown in the track list of the CD Reader window. If you've download track names from a database, then the Replacement character is used to replace any special characters, such as \, /, or : with safe characters so the files can be created properly.

Use the File type and the Attributes lists to specify the format to use for the tracks. You can select one of many popular compressed formats, such as MP3, M4A, or WMA, to save hard drive space. Use FLAC for lossless storage.

To overwrite any files with the same track name, check the Overwrite existing files box.