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I have lots of good audio cd which I like to compile my favorite songs together.
What format is Audio CD stored as?
Is there a program where I can select a track from several different CDs and it records them to a CD? Does it convert it to wav and back to CD?
Basically, I want to make sure that the quality remain the same. I should convert to wav right, not mp3?
Audio CD is PCM format, effectively .WAV files. Tracks can be extracted directly as digital data from CDs (ripping), and yes, to preserve the sound quality it is best to use .WAV files initially, unless you want to save time by just making direct MP3 equivalents of the CDs for convenient listening. Simultaneously extracting and converting to another format like MP3 or WMA may sometimes give less consistent results. .WAV files are burned directly back to CD as tracks when you choose to create a Music Disk in your burning application.
CD writing utilities (eg Nero) can usually rip capably enough to .WAV files. The MP3 format is proprietary, so Nero, for example provides a limited demo of a commercial conversion program. Assorted freeware and commercial ripping and conversion programs can be Googled.
To be safe, always work within the fair usage provisions of the copyright laws that apply where you live.