Ripping app

[Urban_Squrill]

I just broke down and baught a cople cds and I want to add them to my winamp play list. What is a good app that can rip high quality mp3s(no wma). And I dont like musicmatch.

[VHockey86]

I've always used J. River Media Jukebox. Nero also has ripping abilities if you goto Extras --> save tracks (I've got Nero 6, so im not positive of 5.x has this or not)

Another route would be to use winamps wave-out feature (under prefences --> plugins) and then convert the wav files to mp3 with another program

[Telexen]

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de - the best, period (when used with LAME MP3 Encoder)

http://cdex.n3.net/ - easier to use and setup...still best with LAME MP3 Encoder.

[Nighthawk]

I use Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/). It can rip via MSCDEX, ASPI, or even just analog by playing the CD in the drive at 1x and getting the stream.

I also use Lame and its VBR 0 mode.

[crazyray]

...but Telexen is on the money. I use Exact Audio Copy to rip to wav, then EasyLAME to convert to extremely high quality VBR MP3's. But understand that I listen to my Nomad Jukebox through a separate high-end headphone amp and a pair of Sennheisers. (Normal people don't need this aggravation!)

So I vote for CDEX. It is simpler, works well, it's free, and has been successful with every drive I've tried it with. It includes LAME which is the free encoder of choice.

Note that I find I must install an ASPI layer to get CDEX and EAC to work properly under Windows 2000; I haven't tried these with XP.

Audiograbber was the first ripper I used, I even PAID for it. I rarely use it these days although the AG folks say it is the best to use with copy-protected CD's. (I can't say if that is true.)

[Telexen]

You do have to install ASPI in XP or else you're stuck with native support (which sucks)

I used Audiograbber once too...but got tired of those pops in songs every now and then...haven't had a problem with either CDex or EAC, but EAC gives more options to perfect the sound

[dr_roberts49]

I'm with Nighthawk, Audiograbber is easy and works great.

Robert

[greenlion]

Here's a guide on how you can keep CDex going in no time at all, with all the necessary links to the needed programs and stuff.

[OuTpaTienT]

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de and LAME is the only way to go. That is assuming you want the best audio quality possible (in an mp3).

[greenlion]

Yeah, EAC is the acclaimed best ripper right now but paranoia setting at CDex is no slouch either. To 99% or more of clean or slightly scratched cds, there is virtually no difference in the results of the two rippers. As a matter of fact, there was a test done by those guys at hydrogeneaudio (I think), that said they got better results with cdex sometimes.

My personal experience? - I use both. CDex is my primary tool but when when there is a cd that CDex can't rip, I use EAC. Sometimes I got good no-error results (of which I'm thankful), but sometimes I also get error-filled results. Bottom line the two rippers gives me two chances of trying to rip that cd.

The only advantage I can see in EAC besides it being slightly better is that it shows a complete report on the errors during the rip. In CDex, it only shows you how many errors it had in that particular rip. In any case if the rips had errors in them, I have no use for them so I trash them anyway.

An anecdote, there is this cd of mine with no scratches whatsoever that I tried to rip with CDex. It ripped it fine and fast but each wav file would have 10 to 50 errors in them. So I tried to rip it with EAC. It was taking so long to rip the first file that I just left it running and went to work. When I came back 10 hours later, it had only finished ripping one file and this file also had about the same number of errors as that of CDex's. Till now I still couldn't get a good rip of that scratchless cd, and this is an old cd with no protection to boot.