I have a few music CD and I want to make a copy of it on my hard drive to save (not copy it down to .ogg or .mp3 files) but make a copy of it, something like an ISO file so that I can copy it back on a CD, should something happen to my CD. Is there anything I can do it?

When I pop the CD in the drive and selected "Extract and Encode Audio Tracks" this error message pop up.

"No encoder has been selected."

What encoder does it mean here, and what should I do to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

Extract & encode would be ripping to mp3/ogg. Not what you are trying to do. Try opening k3b and select the copy CD option. On the dialog that pops up select 'Only create image. That might what you want, but I've not tried it with an audio CD. Warning, this is likely to be a big file (650MB). Ripping to mp3 will save a lot of disk space.

Do not encode to lossy formats such as mp3 or ogg or you will lose something when you recreate you cd. If you encode to a loss less format such as flac you will be able to recreate perfect music cds at any time and also be able to listen to them on your computer.

samac

Use 'cdrdao' to make a copy, use the 'read-cd' option. I found this is the best way to make an exact copy of the CD and store it and burn it later if you want. You could also just use 'cdparanoia' to rip to wav or flac, that would also preserve quality.

Note that it's impossible to make a '.iso' because audio CDs have no filesystem, they are NOT iso9660 they are raw data that is dumped to a '.bin' instead.

Thanks a lot, guys. These informations helped.

I don't think so. I have always understood that pure audio CDs are not like data CDs or DVDs, but only a collection of raw audio files. Hence, the desire to rip the files to another medium for archiving and storage. As a simple test try using the dd command with an audio cd:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/cd.img

The dd command will fail to run, displaying an input/output error.

To rip audio CDs I have used both K3B and KAudioCreator.

From where are you finding this "Extract and Encode Audio Tracks" option? I see no such option in KAudioCreator or K3B. In KAudioCreator I see a button to select all tracks and two File menu options named Rip Selection. In K3B I see in the Tools menu an option named Rip Audio CD.

Again that's why you use 'cdrdao' to make images of audio CDs not 'dd'.

Oh. It is something like the "Autoplay" in Windows. When I put the CD in to the drive and close it, this thing automatically appear.

Ah. As my DVD player no longer recognizes CDs I hadn't seen that pop-up box in a long time.

I inserted an audio CD into one of my older machines and saw the option in the subsequent pop-up box. Selecting the "Extract and Encode Audio Tracks" option started KAudioCreator, at which point, was the same had I started KAudioCreator manually. That is, I still had to selct tracks before ripping. Thus I did not experience the "No encoder has been selected" message you saw.

I think that message might be caused by not having file support for 1) Ogg Vorbis, 2) MP3, 3) WAV, or 4) FLAC. In KAudioCreator, select the 'Settings' menu, then 'Configure KAudioCreator'. Select the 'Encoding' option/icon. You'll need at least one file format listed to rip an audio CD. If you do not see any of the file formats listed above, then verify you have the related packages installed.