CD Settings

To Access CD Settings go to Tools > Options > CD & DVD.

General

• Use digital playback of audio CDs: Play audio CDs in either digital or analog mode. You should always enable digital playback unless you have an extremely old CD drive that isn't capable of digital playback. In analog mode, there must be a cable connected from your CD drive to your sound card. Only digital playback allows you to use the Equalizer and view Visualizations.
  Note: The Visualization, Equalizer/DSP and Playback Mode (cross fade, for example) functions all require digital playback.

CD Ripping

These options control the CD Copying ("ripping") process.

Drive X:

If you have more than one CD drive, select the tab for the device you want to configure.

• Copy mode:
  • Secure: This is the default mode and will give the most reliable rips. It does multiple read passes to ensure the extracted data is correct. It will generally be half the speed of other methods and possibly much slower than that if the media is damaged or the computer is very busy doing other tasks.
  • Normal: This is the fastest mode - use it if you need faster rip time than secure mode and are confident your discs will read accurately without secure mode.
  • Analog: If none of the digital modes work for you, you may have a very old CD-ROM drive that is not capable of digital ripping. In this case you can choose analog mode and set the recording volume as described below. This is the slowest ripping method and will take the same amount of time to rip a track as it would to play it. Note that analog ripping only works if your CD-ROM drive is connected to your sound card. If you can listen to audio CDs on your computer then analog ripping should work.
• Read Speed: This is the drive speed during ripping. Normally you should leave this at Max, but if you experience problems during ripping try lowering the speed. This setting has no effect on some CD drive models that don't support it.

Rip Complete Options

• Eject the CD after ripping: Checked by default
• Show recently ripped playlist after ripping: An automatically created playlist with all ripped songs is created upon ripping. Afterwards this playlist is displayed. Checked by default.
• Get cover art from internet after ripping: Checked by default.
• Play sound after ripping: Play a sound when ripping is finished. You can browse for a particular sound.

Auto Rip CD Database Lookup Options

It establishes the program's behavior when looking up track information in the YADB or freedb database during an auto-rip session. Sometimes if you are ripping a large stack of CD's, you don't want to be bothered by a lot of pop-up dialogs. You can streamline the process by altering these settings.

• Enable auto-rip mode: In this mode, Media Center immediately starts ripping a CD when it is inserted into any CD drive. This is handy if you are ripping a stack of CD's. Every time you see a tray pop out following a rip, you just place the next CD to be ripped in the tray and re-insert it. Checked by default.
• If multiple matches are found, choose the first one: This setting tells Media Center to take the first found match.
• If no matches are found, show CD submission dialog: Ask, if nothing is found.
• Show failure messages

File Management

• Overwrite existing files that have the same name: If this is unchecked (default), a number will be appended at the end of the file name, when it encounters duplicates.
• Auto-create log file in secure rip mode: This will log detailed results of the rip process. It shows where problem areas on the CD might be and tells you how confident Media Center is that a "perfect" rip was obtained. The log file is created in the same place with the same name as the ripped music file, with a ".log".
• Rip to a single file with cue rather than separate files: Advanced user option. Select this if you need to create a single music file from an entire CD rather than creating separate files for each track. This ensures that upon playback there won't be any gaps between tracks. This is especially useful for classical music, dance mixes, or live music. When the multiple tracks are ripped to one file, Media Center creates an associated "cue" file that simply contains the start and stop times of each track within the single music file. Now Media Center can play the individual tracks by looking them up in the cue file and starting and stopping at the correct points within the single music file.
• Cue filename template: Set how the CUE file should be named.

Expert Options

• Analyze audio during ripping: Analyze files for replay gain, BMPs and intensity after ripping a CD. See Audio Analysis for more information.
• Analog copy volume: If you choose analog mode for CD copying, tracks will play and record with your sound card. The recording volume should be adjusted to get adequate volume without distortion - too low and the background noise will mask the signal, too high and there will be unpleasant clipping distortion. If it's adjusted correctly, the sound may be just as good as on a digital copy. Put an audio CD in your drive and press the "Settings" button. Press the "Start Test" button and in about 90 seconds Media Center will automatically select the best volume. Or you can set the volume level yourself.
• Encode concurrently with ripping: This is the fastest way of ripping a CD, but it also can bog down some older computers. When this is checked and you are ripping (copying) a CD, tracks are ripped and encoded in one pass. If this is unchecked, the current track will rip while previously ripped tracks will encode. For example, if you are ripping two tracks from a CD, the first one will rip, then when that completes and the second track will rip while the first one encodes. If you are experiencing problems ripping CDs, try changing the setting of this option.
• Max rip/encode/combined processes: You can set Media Center to rip and/or encode multiple CDs or files at the same time. You can also limit the number of combined concurrent processes.

AutoPlay (requires auto-run)

Set program behavior when Media Center detects an Audio CD or a DVD in your drive.