Copying an audio CD to a .ISO or similar file?

Ok, I've got a few CDs that are getting pretty darn old, and are long since out of production. I'd like to save them to .ISO files (or similar) so that I can archive them on a DVD and then later burn a (for all intents and purposes) exact copy of them... IE, if I put it in iTunes or Winamp, the automatic track-labeling thingy will identify them right and get the tracks off the internet, no loss of quality (as would be the case with even high quality MP3s), etc, in the unfortunate-but-inevitable event that something happens to them that I'm not able to fix (A bad scratch, a crack, the silver backing starts to flake off, something)

Unfortunatly, I'm not finding any software to let me do this.

Nero seems to be worthless, and its my primary tool. A search of freeware sites has turned up nothing, and I dont want to shell out money for comercial software again unless I'm sure it will do what I need.

Can anyone suggest any products?

CD2ISO looks promising...
MagicISO does, too.

Toast and Discribe will copy audio CDs to disk images

You might even be able to do it with iTunes if you set the prefs to convert to AIFF instead of mp3, i'm not sure about that though.

Also using OS X you can do it in the Finder.
Just insert the CD and copy the tracks to your HD they'll appear as AIFC files on your HD.
But you'll have to rename them yourself

Cheap and cheerful, Put the tracks inside a folder with Album/Artist name.

It does depend on the material, but most of the time you're just as well ripping a high quality mp3 or aac CD.

I know nothing about FLAC other than that it exists and may have the capabilities you are looking for. Good luck.

I've used MagicISO (linked above) to do this before. Works like a champ.

Just an amusing aside ...

In our studio we have shelves ( a wall in fact ) of ...

2" 24 track reels
2" 16 track reels
1" 16 track reels
1" 8 track reels
1/4" 8 track reels
1/4" stereo reels

Cassettes

DAT tapes

2 different SVHS formats

Various Optical Discs in different formats

CDs masses of them

and now DVDs

Given this history I'm not sure how long I'm going to rely on having hardware cabable of reading DVDs! We really only keep some of the older tapes because of their emotional value, they're actually completley useless now !


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Also I just checked iTunes, it seems you can now set the import option to WAV or AIF and import to the library as if it's an mp3. You can burn audio CDs directly from iTunes playlists.

Not sure why you should be having trouble with Nero? Saving to .iso is a standard function.

1. Click Recorder | Save Track...
   
2. Select your CD reading device from the list click OK
   
3. Pick ISO Image file(*.iso) from Output file format
   
4. Click Browse for Path and select the location and file name to save the ISO as.
   
5. Click the GO button.
   

I'm not given .ISO as a valud option to save :/ I've been googling for how to do it and this seems to be a common issue with certain versions of Nero.