Because there seems to be quite a bit of interest in this topic lately, I've tested it out myself. Probably the info I'm giving here is more than you wanted to know but hopefully it'll be useful for future reference as well.
Important notes upfront:
1) I'm assuming here you have an original version of CtP2 (or CtP1, as the same applies to that game). If you bought CtP2 relatively recently (after mid 2001 or so; after mid 2000 for CtP1), chances are that you have a 'special edition', 'budget version', 'multi-game package' or some other kind of non-standard CD. The music may be stored in the same way here but it may also be stored very differently. If the latter is the case, some or all of the following may not apply in your case.
2) Legal disclaimer to keep my own and Apolyton's butt safe: it should go without saying that ripping CDs is only legal if it's for your own private use. Distributing MP3 or other files files with music from CtP2 or other games on the Internet or through other means is illegal and not in any way supported or condoned by either yours truly or Apolyton.
On to the more useful stuff:
The music tracks of CtP2 (as well as CtP1) are stored on the CD as regular music tracks that can be played in (almost) any CD player, audio or otherwise. So if you wanted some background music while driving in your car, you could just put the CtP CD in the audio CD player of your car (assuming you have one) and experience the atmosphere of compelling strategy gaming while sitting out the daily traffic jam
Note that the first track of the CD (~50 minutes) contains the data of the game and will, when played, in the best case give you static and in the worst case wreck your speakers (or even your entire audio installation). So it's not advisable to do this
This also means that the numbering of the tracks can be somewhat confusing: in the game the audio tracks are referred to as tracks 1-10, while all external CD players and the like will number them 2-11.
Although in Windows Explorer and other file managers the audio tracks won't show up, with a program such as Windows Media Player (or one of its countless competitors) you can see and play the tracks on your PC as well. And since most DVD/CD-ROM drives have 'play' and 'stop' buttons on the front, you can even play the tracks on your PC without any software. A set of speakers and a soundcard (even an onboard one will do) are all that you need.
Side note: if you burn a copy of your CtP CD (for backup reasons, of course
), you'll want to make sure you copy the
entire CD and not just the data track. Most modern burn programs won't let you make this mistake too easily thanks to clever wizards and stuff, but this is something to keep in mind when your doing it manually and/or using older software...
To convert the tracks from the CD to *.wav, *.mp3 or other formats that you can actually use, copy and manipulate, you have to convert them from audio track to the desired format. This process is usually called 'ripping' and requires special software. The most famous software package that does this is probably Audiograbber but there are many others, such as Easy CD-DA Extractor, CD Stripper or CDex. Most of these are shareware or commercial software, but if you don't want to waste any money over it, you could use the open-source freeware tool called CDex (thanks for the tip, Rasbelin
). As an example of how ripping works, I'll give step-by-step instructions for ripping the audio tracks with CDex:
1) Download the software. Go to
www.cdex.com, click 'Download', then '.zip (bundle)' (or '.exe (installer)' if you like) and in the new windows click on the file icon at the location nearest to you.
2) Install the software. Just unzip the files to a folder of your choice with your favourite unzip software or by starting the installer.
3) Start the software and open the CD. The workbar in CDex (with the play/stop/eject/fast forward/etc buttons) contains a dropdown box with your CD players. Insert the CtP CD (if it's not there by default already
) and select the correct drive in the dropdown box. The list with tracks (including the data track) should appear.
By selecting tracks and pressing the play/stop/etc buttons, you can use CDex as a simple CD player to play the tracks if you'd like (note that in my case CDex only used my front 2 boxes, not the 2 rear ones).
4) Rip the tracks. If you'd like, you can first rename the tracks and fill in the Author/Album/Genre/etc info, but this is not necessary. To rip tracks, select the one(s) you'd like converted and select 'Extract to WAV file' (for *.wavs) or 'Extract to Compressed Audio File' (for *.mp3s) from the 'Convert' menu and wait as the tracks are being converted. (Make sure that you're not playing the tracks in CDex when you start the rip proces, or the aforementioned options simply won't show up in the menu.) If you have a fast PC and CD drive, this shouldn't take more than a few seconds per track...
5) You can now use the tracks as you like. By default CDex stores the tracks in [CDex install folder]\my music\[artist]\[album]. Of course, steps 3 and 4 can be repeated ad infinitum if you have more CDs to rip
I hope this just about covers everything there is to know about the music tracks in CtP2 (and ripping them)...
