Exact Audio Copy

Extracting data from an audio CD should be easy. It’s all digital data, right? What you copy onto your hard drive is an exact bit for bit copy of what was on the original CD. Wrong. This explains why copies sometimes sound muffled or distorted, jump about or worse. Audio CDs, while digital, are a very different standard from data CDs and getting an exact copy of the data isn’t nearly as easy as you might think.

Exact Audio Copy was written by somebody who got fed up with the glitches in files produced by other grabbers, and he has made a jolly good job of it too. Exact Audio Copy matches itself to the abilities to your hardware and has secure modes which double check extracted files. It is particularly good at extracting files from damaged discs, these might well play perfectly well on your CD player where missing data is simply passed over, but produce pops and jumps when extracted. The list of features is extensive and would test the limits of even the most capable expert. Thankfully you needn’t know it all, it will configure itself and run happily with the minimum of fuss. For casual use there are any number of tools to extract tracks from audio CDs, but this is the tool for those who want the best.

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