free CD to MP3 software?

Cold Dark Shadow

Cold Dark Shadow

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 24, 2003
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is there any free ones that are good?
I wan to stick all my CDs on to an HDD but i want them MP3s since there smaller then just straight ripping them
 
Most geeks praise Exact Audio Copy as the most accurate ripper. When EAC is configured with the LAME MP3 encoder perfection is approached. EAC can be confusing at first encounter but there is an excellent guide which makes everthing a snap. Check out this link http://www.ubernet.org/?p=UberGuide
 
Another vote for EAC. I've been using it for years now and have found nothing better. A guy I work with loves his iTunes, but he is very misled. ;)
 
I use both EAC and CDex, and my results are about the same with either. The key is, making sure you have LAME downloaded and ready. Both apps work about the same, and if you use LAME to encode, you're output should be as well.
 
EAC and LAME. CDex is cool, a little more user friendly overall. I just tend to like EAC a little better. Try both and pick one.
 
iTunes. Auto tags them while importing (as long as the CD is in the CDDB), and has the ability to auto sort them into artist/album folders (meaning Library/*artist*/*album*)
 
4b5eN+EE said:
iTunes. Auto tags them while importing (as long as the CD is in the CDDB), and has the ability to auto sort them into artist/album folders (meaning Library/*artist*/*album*)
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Are you saying this as in EAC and CDex don't have this feature? EAC and CDex both can tag the songs, all without the bloat and craptacular Quicktime installed alongside it.
 
Another vote for EAC. I've used it for years and have never had a need to use anything else.
 
definitely EAC and LAME for mp3.

i'd recommend this page to help configure, or even refer to if you'd consider other formats (FLAC) in the future.
 
djnes said:
Are you saying this as in EAC and CDex don't have this feature? EAC and CDex both can tag the songs, all without the bloat and craptacular Quicktime installed alongside it.
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I don't use those, so I don't know if they do, nor did I say they didn't. I simply stated iTunes could. calm down....
 
4b5eN+EE said:
I don't use those, so I don't know if they do, nor did I say they didn't. I simply stated iTunes could. calm down....
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I wasn't getting all worked up....I was just shocked someone would recommend iTunes for something like this.
 
EAC w/ Lame FTW! I've got a great tutorial at home...I forget the guys' website. I'll post it later.
 
4b5eN+EE said:
oh. ok then.
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If you get some free time, check out EAC and LAME. It takes longer per song, but the quality is awesome, especially with some custom VBR settings.
 
Why not just use Windows Media Player? I use my WMP within Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and it rips audio CDs to MP3 just fine! Customizable options and it even has a nice user interface and is easy to understand. I also use AnyDVD to break protection schemes in the background as well.

  • Insert Audio CD
  • Automaticaly RIP with WMP 10+
  • MP3s created in My Music Folder
  • Listen to MP3s on puter and/or transfer them to either my MSI 512MB MP3/USB2.0 Flash Drive or my IPOD and enjoy!
 
dang i must be old school
ive been using winamp ever since it was able to do diskoutput i think it was back in version 1.2? :)
 
Lighthammer said:
Why not just use Windows Media Player?
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Because those of us who don't use WMP, care about the quality of the output, which means using something with the LAME encoder.
 
djnes said:
Because those of us who don't use WMP, care about the quality of the output, which means using something with the LAME encoder.
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quality? can you explain teh differences please? I don't even know this lame encoder thing. what's teh difference?

I've always use used Easy CD-DA CD Extractor, is it bad? While ripping you can choose the lame mp3 encoder or something else, i just choose regular mp3 coz i dont know what teh others are
 
I would suggest ripping to FLAC if you want to create a long term backup/digital library. It _will_ save you time in the long run. Just transcode the FLACs to mp3 as you push them out to DVDR for storage.

This way you won't have to re-rip when you realize you'd like to make some vorbises, or need to encode an album with a slightly lower bitrate to fit on that portable player.
 
As DigitalMP suggested the Myden and Ubernet EAC guides are essentially the same. In fact the EAC configuration file (profile) downloaded from Ubernet is called "MP3 by Myden". I found a lot of value in both of these sites. Chris Myden also recommended a fantastic utility called Tag&Rename which handles all popular music formats and greatly simplifies library management.

I also frequently rave about Mediamonkey.
 
eloj said:
I would suggest ripping to FLAC if you want to create a long term backup/digital library. It _will_ save you time in the long run. Just transcode the FLACs to mp3 as you push them out to DVDR for storage.

This way you won't have to re-rip when you realize you'd like to make some vorbises, or need to encode an album with a slightly lower bitrate to fit on that portable player.
Click to expand...

This is what I'd recommend as well. EAC + FLAC, create lossless audio for the hard drive, and then I transcode the FLAC to whatever else I need (extreme LAME, standard LAME, OggVorbis, WMA, etc.). Also useful for reburning a copy of the CD at some other point in time.

Alternatively, you can use Monkey's audio, but FLAC has better software support since it's more widespread in use (I think; I've only seen one APE file in the wild).
 
Whiznot said:
Chris Myden also recommended a fantastic utility called Tag&Rename which handles all popular music formats and greatly simplifies library management.
Click to expand...

I used ID3TagIt for a couple years, and it hangs painfully when you save the data, but Tag&Rename saves when you perform the action. Much lighter and less memory-intensive, though I don't like it for renaming. I used a standalone EXE called Powerful Batch Renaming Application for Windows (or something like that)

Oh man, I could teach a class on file organization of just MP3s alone! I'm so anal with my ID3 tags, and I have been for so long, primarily because I hated seeing the encoded garbage in Winamp. Then I got an iPod, and I knew I had done it for a reason!
 
Here, you can DL CDex from my site, nice and quick...
Enjoy, it's free, fast, and not bloated, great for ripping EAC, LAME, even a few of the more rare lossless formats too!


Edit: Please Cold Dark Shadow, don't even consider using Windows Media Player, please, for the love of all that is [H]ard... Use CDex and rip high quality audio... say no to WMA which is really only good if your low on space, at which time OGG is better... The ultimate in my opinion is FLAC/OGG combo, but EAC + LAME has higher compatibility.
 
Is WMP bad?

I just ripped my dads Led Zeppelin collection... 192kbps bitrate mp3's. Sounds good to me...
 
Not really sure about WMP, but EAC is generally recommended because of the fact that you can specify options for it to attempt bitwise exact ripping of the CD, so that you get a bit for bit copy of the songs on the CD.

It is also useful for ripping horribly scratched CDs, as you can specify it to rip in a mode (I think Secure mode is the one that does this?) such that if it encouters a bit error in the data it just ripped, it will try to rip that part of the CD repeatedly until it can extract a perfect copy of the data, or it will give up on that part altogether.

That's pretty much the benefits of EAC.
 
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