How to perform a CD ripping session

Before starting a CD ripping session, the component needs to be initialised: for this purpose it's mandatory a call to the InitRecorder method; the best place to call this initialisation method is usually the container form initialisation function: for example, when using Visual Basic 6, it will be the Form_Load subroutine. The purpose of calling the InitRecorder method is to synchronise the component with its container form.

Now the control needs to know where and how ripped sound data will be stored; the first thing to decide is the output format of the ripped sound: for this purpose you need to set the EncodeFormats.ForCdRipping property to one of the available encoding formats.

Each encoding format set into the EncodeFormats.ForCdRipping property have its own settings which can be controlled through sub-properties of the EncodeFormats property: for example, if the chosen encoding format should be ENCODING_FORMAT_WAV you would have to modify settings of the EncodeFormats.WAV property, if chosen encoding format should be ENCODING_FORMAT_MP3 you would have to modify settings of the EncodeFormats.MP3 property and so on for the remaining accepted encoding formats.

Before starting a recording session, you could have the need to resample incoming sound data, for example for reducing the final recording size: for this purpose you should check the EncodeFormats.ResampleMode property and choose which of the available resample modes would best fit your needs.

the input CD drive: installed CD drives can be enumerated using the GetCdDrivesCount method and their friendly description can be retrieved through the GetCdDriveDesc method.

the CD audio track: the total number of available audio tracks on the given CD can be obtained using the GetCdNumTracks method: remember that CD tracks are 1-based so the first track will be identified by the index 1 instead of 0.

the output file location: if an absolute pathname is specified, it can be a file on the system hard disk or, if the pathname is left empty, a memory file that can be used at a later time, for example in order to perform a custom encrypting before saving it to a file on disk.

During the ripping session, the container application will be notified about the current advancement percentage through the CdRippingPercentage event and about the disk or memory occupation through the CdRippingSize event.

You can limit the ripped track's range through a call to the CdRippingSetRange method and reduce the overall output size through resampling: for this purpose you can define resampling parameters through the CdRippingSetResampleParams method.

After completing the ripping of a single CD audio track, output formats like WMA, MP3, OGG Vorbis and MP4 can add song information to the output file through the use of tags: tag's information can be obtained through public Internet databases that support the CDDB protocol: if the CddbAddTagOnCdRipping property is set to TRUE and if an Internet connection is available and open, this control can automatically retrieve and add this information to the output file tags: see the How to get Audio CD info using CDDB servers and Amazon catalogue section for details. Note that CDDB information about the CD album can be retrieved from the server before starting the CD ripping session so, information like the song title and the author name, can be easily used to compose the output file name that will be sent to the CdRippingStart method.

Another feature that can be used before starting a CD ripping session is the ability of the control to retrieve, from the Amazon web site, the cover art of the CD inserted inside the CD drive: see the How to get a CD cover picture section for details.