One thing worse than having nothing to say is having something to say but not wanting to write. *forces self*
So I’m still tweaking my desktop computer, trying to make it an evil stationary clone of my laptop. Tonight I wanted to rip some songs from a couple albums I’m getting rid of, and decided since I’m just ripping these songs for storage, not exactly something I want to add to any playlists, just to rip directly to my desktop (the storage comp., since it has 4x the space). But that plan grinded to a halt with
Windows Media Player cannot rip the track because a compatible MP3 encoder is not installed on your computer. Install a compatible MP3 encoder or choose a different format to rip to (such as Windows Media Audio).
showing up every time I tried ripping songs.
Backtrack a little. I don’t remember when I did this, just a few days ago I suppose. I downloaded LAME, RazorLAME, and Audacity, just because my laptop has them. Well not just, I do want to get some use out of them, even though I don’t really need them on my desktop.
The problem now is, I don’t remember how I got WMP (version 10) to rip CDs while LAME is on the comp. Did I turn LAME off somehow? Uninstall it and save it somewhere else? I copied all the settings from my laptop to my desktop. Still doesn’t work.
I downloaded CDEX along with (/after) Audacity, and that worked fine for that CD that I wanted. But tonight’s CD, ugh. It just wouldn’t work. I kept getting a … something about not being able to read from drive F. No shift, Sherlock, there’s nothing in the F drive, it’s in the E drive!
Meh, I’m thinking it was because there’s some “extra” on this CD that’s accessed on the computer. Of course, I could confirm or bust that theory by sticking in the other CD I wanted to rip. But at this point I am feeling WAY too lazy/aggravated/tired, take your pick. It’s also because of that reason that I haven’t tried out Exact Audio Copy yet.
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Solutions I have found on the internet for my problem:
- upgrade to WMP 10 (that’s what I have, and despite what they say, it doesn’t encode mp3s)
- encode in any bitrate other than 128kpbs (too bad that’s the first thing I did, before even realizing I had a problem; I like 192kpbs; besides, I can’t choose any 128kpbs option, it goes from 56 to 192, newer version?)
- get an mp3 encoder (Microsoft’s solution; I don’t feel like paying!)
- edit the registry to fix things (this is mostly for WMP 8 and 9, but I found a version for 10, and heck no, I’m not touching the registry!)
- download a free ripping program (but I already have WMP, I don’t want more programs on my comp, why do I have to do all this work? *whine*)
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