2. digital
  3. 1142538069

S/PDIF Input Software to trap WAV files

I have been going through the forum and I'm thinking about going further into PC audio. I have half a terabyte of MP3/FLAC/OGG files and want to take it up a notch. I'm looking at the M-Audio Audiophile USB external sound card - upgrade from an SB Extigy I and run S/PDIF out to my Levinson 360S. I'm ok with that part of the system - My question is:

How can I go the other way?

Who out there is familiar with a software package that will trap an S/PDIF digital input signal from the Levinson 360S digital out OR the S/PDIF out on the transport. I want to feed CD audio from my transport into my computer to trap it in a WAV file format. So many CD's now put "black magic" on my PC that I would like to go a different route. Please tell me there is a way to do this. I bought the CD's ... I'd like to put em on my Ipod. I DONT want something that will mess with the signal ... just convert it to WAV from S/PDIF. I'm not all that up on exactly how the S/PDIF spec works with the signal. I have read the basics but it might take an EE out there to get it to make sense. Is it as simple as serialized transfer to a open file? I would think there is a conversion of some sort. This will also help with my decision to get a squeezebox or not. WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENS to the digital information as it comes in on the wire and gets trapped in a file?

Maybe a bit to complex to answer ... any help with the software? I know D.A.R.T. will trap an analog signal and convert it to wav. I just want to go digital and trap it to WAV. It has an S/PDIF input, so maybe I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be. If there is conversion involved then the software method might make a huge difference in sound quality. If not maybe I dont need more the the software that comes with the card.

Anyone do this yet? In a way it beats the copy protection Sony is infecting us with.

The Horse
128x128horseface
edesilva
768 posts
 
I'm not a huge Sony fan, but you only get a rootkit installed if you fire up their player. I've got over a half terabyte of ALAC files on my computer, all ripped from my own CDs, and no viruses to date.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say you do not want to use your transport to "record" .wav files. CD ROMs are, and always will be, better at creating bit-for-bit copies of CDs, because they don't have to function in real time. Use EAC. In secure mode, there is nothing that will give you a better copy, high end transports included--high end transports don't--and can't given real time constraints--read sectors over and over to get a perfect copy.

If you are concerned with viruses, make sure your computer is set up so that CDs do not autoplay. Then, when you drop in a CD, all the drive is going to do is read data from it, and not *execute* any code on the disk unless you tell it too. EAC won't execute anything off a disk. EAC will only read.
jasonsobel
29 posts
 
EAC is definitely the way to go to extract audio information off a CD and create WAV files. That said, if you really want to go S/PDIF into your computer, there are many programs that will record the signal exactly.

Audacity is a good freeware program:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

and a GREAT shareware program is CD Wave:
http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/

both programs will do what you want, record an S/PDIF signal to a WAV file. If you go with this method, you'll probably want to to break it up into tracks. CD Wave is designed exactly for that purpose, and will always cut on multiples of a CD sector size (1/75th of a second), so that you will avoid sector boundary errors.

all that said, EAC is probably a better method anyway, and quicker than the real-time transfer from an S/PDIF signal.
horseface's avatar
horseface OP
222 posts
 
Thank you very much for the info

For the most part I will use CDex to rip (another great open source program) BUT there are a few CD's with copy protection enabled to the point I could NOT get them to rip ... I tried 3 different machines and 4-5 different ripping programs. I will try EAC

CD's that wont rip to date:

Trey Anistasio - Shine
Trey Anistasio - One Man's Trash
Mike Gibson's new CD

So my little S/PDIF input trick will be a one or two CD's per thousand deal. I have done some extensive research on the root kit feasco as I work in an IT department at a college. We even figured out how to rip it loose and stop it from running campus wide. Actually the Sony bug is just a drop in the bucket ... but I will spare you my spyware rant. I guess I'm not as worried about the "bug" as I am about the possibility that more and more CD's will be unripable.

I setup EAC but I havent used it. I'm a creature of habbit and seem to always use what I'm comforable with. I will give EAC a try. I am leaning towards a NAS box and a media player in the long run. I have the house wired for gigibit and a RJ-45 plate right behind the sound system.

Any thoughts on the network media devices? Since I dont really need the DAC in my soundcard do you guys think the M-Audio Audiophile external soundcard will fit the bill? Any other preferences? I'm actually contemplating re-ripping everything to wav (3000+ CD's) and running two Buffalo Technologies TeraStation 1.6 TB with RAID 5. I'm not running redundancy now and i'm a little worried. I keep the drives off when I'm not using them.
horseface's avatar
horseface OP
222 posts
 
EAC didnt work with the aforementioned CD's ... bummer.

PS - We got Mac OS-X to run on a Dell GX-620 yesterday. This should be interesting for Microsoft. I wouldnt try this at home yet. It's already possible to run XP on one of the Intel Macs and dual boot. I also got a look at Vista and will be heading up to Seattle in the near future to actually play a little. It's a gun-ship but has lots of AV stuff built in. They are even talking about putting your hi-def cable box on a PCI card in the Win box and let the Windows machine control your cable system.

NO THANK YOU ... I thought Sony was bad.
ketchup
692 posts
 
It's Anastasio :)

Have you downloaded any of Ernest's live shows? Much better than that studio stuff, and free to boot!
More to discover