CD Audio Ripping Software ...Today

[Sasqui]

So, even as Best Buy has decided to stop selling audio CDs, and it seems streaming music has made it incredibly easy to listen to just about any song on a whim... I still listen to MP3s I ripped from my collection of CDs back in 1999.

At that time, CDex was my choice for ripping and Winamp was the goto for an MP3 player.

I still have all of that Music, and still listen to it. Just recently, I was gifted a few 100 CDs and would like to rip them all to MP3 (or some other universal format)

I see CDex is still out there but I haven't used in over a decade. The CDDB part of CDex, for file name and structure, plus embedded artist/album/song metadata made it just about perfect.

So... is CDex still relevant, or are there other rippers out there that may be better? Is MP3 still the goto format? I always stuck to 128 for bit rate.

For players, I'm not a huge fan of WMP or VLC, mainly due to the interface. Winamp was the cats balls for creating song lists, shuffling, etc. It looks like Winamp is still around, but just different. Anything recommended on that front?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

FLAC is best but not all devices/players support it:
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/

I use Emby for all my media needs (including audio). Emby does support FLAC across all platforms.

 

[OneMoar]

latest CDex release
, 06/26/2018
https://cdex.mu/node/77

 

[nomdeplume]

MP3, what is this the late 90's when hard drives were small? Rip them to lossless flac or wav using dBpoweramp or any of the others listed here. If you want to save space use compressed flac.

 

[Athlonite]

Running Windows then just use the windows media player to rip your CD's to .MP3

 

[spectatorx]

I'm using foobar2000 player to rip my CDs, usually i rip them to wave, mp3 or ogg.

 

[Space Lynx]

I use foobar2000 on windows and android, its very lightweight and has 0 issues, it just works. no flash

 

[robot zombie]

Thirded foobar2000. Uses basically no resources, does everything, simple/oldschool interface, just works. Lots of great plugins to extend its functionality, too. It's not one of those players that you begrudgingly switch from because it doesn't do that one thing. I think you'll appreciate it as someone familiar with older software. It's simple, clean, and powerful. Editing tags and playlists is pretty easy. You can sort things any way you want. You can even edit batches of tags at once, which is nice for fixing artist/album names and such.

And yeah, FLAC all the way. Lossless compression is the way to go. The difference between 128 MP3 and a FLAC file is pretty noticeable. 192 and 320 a little less, but if you have a nice system you will pick up on that cymbal/vocal ring and loss of dynamics. Really most apparent on headphones/earbuds ime. I may be picky but that doesn't mean MP3 doesn't give up too much information for a size advantage that just doesn't matter anymore Not many use MP3 for their personal collections anymore. FLAC support increases every year. At this point more supports it than doesn't. Only place for MP3 now is on streams.

EDIT: Few things I forgot.

I see a lot of people mentioning dBpoweramp. I can speak to that one, too. My library is over 10 years old and runs in the range of hundreds of gigbytes. Really saved me a lot of time cleaning and re-encoding when needed. If you have a lot to get through, might be well worth the money, just for the streamlining it offers. It's easy to use and it does what you need. Might get away with using the trial to get what you need done and then maybe use foobar for the occasional rip.

If you want a free option for organizing, mp3tag is awesome. I use the foobar2000 plugin, myself. Between that and foobar you're good to go to rip your CD's and set-up your library from batch editing each and every tag to restructuring folders and filenames. All for free.

Fun story... for a while I was using a portable audio player that sounded awesome and natively drove 300ohm headphones very well - even played FLAC files, but it couldn't read tags! It actually sorted by folder/file name! With the old black and tan, blue backlit screen. Oldschool stuff. I really liked it.

Problem was... my library wasn't set up for this. Filenames and folder structures varied a lot and almost no albums were set up right. mp3tag saved my life - you can use it to restructure everything. It automatically rebuilds the whole hierarchy how you need it using info in the tags... ...it's awesome. You just type out a command string specifying what bits from the tag you want to have represent your folder tree and filenames. Such a simple little thing to be able to do but it really comes in handy. Doesn't take long to learn the commands, either. They're descriptive and easy to reference. Pretty cool. Strong recommendation.

 

[newtekie1]

Personally, I use dBPoweramp, and I do still rip to MP3. Why still MP3? Compatibility and the fact that unless you are using a very very high end sound system, you won't hear the difference between a good quality MP3 and a lossless format. Don't rip to 128kbps though. If you want to use a constant bit-rate do 320kkbps. However, I like variable bitrate 190kbps. You get good file sizes and good quality.

 

[nomdeplume]

If you are playing music on your computer, or nowadays even your phone, there is no reason to use a lossy format.

If you have a DAC and a gaming computer there is no reason not to use a modern player. Foobar is decent enough. Try something like HQPlayer and you may never go back.

 

[qubit]

My car can play music from a USB stick. However, it only understands lossy formats, so I convert my flacs to 320kbps MP3 for it. It can also play CDs, so I can get lossless quality by burning a mix CD.

 

[AsRock]

To rip them Exact Audio Copy and Foobar to play them.

Personally, I use dBPoweramp, and I do still rip to MP3. Why still MP3? Compatibility and the fact that unless you are using a very very high end sound system, you won't hear the difference between a good quality MP3 and a lossless format. Don't rip to 128kbps though. If you want to use a constant bit-rate do 320kkbps. However, I like variable bitrate 190kbps. You get good file sizes and good quality.

And on top of that the loudness wars messed so many good CD's up ( i believe they still doing that BS too ). So you have to consider the source too. On top of that a lot are just recorded 128kbs to start with.

 

[OneMoar]

AiMP4 is now my player/media converter of choice
its winamp but without the AOL suck

 

[remixedcat]

jriver Media Jukebox for player (the free version) and ripper, dBpoweramp for converter, Emby for media server, and I got a HEOS wireless speaker system (Homecinema soundbar and heos1 speaker)


edit: grrrrr media jukebox official download was removed. might host it if enough people request it. ugh. and I can't recommend foobar for those that want the same type UI, all the large library skins for it look out of place and a little too gawdy. The one I used to have on my other laptop got deleted off deviant art and I can't get it to look the same on the newer version of foobar

musicbee is a pain for larger libraries that have 100s of playlists like mine. there's no bulk playlist import, even on plugin sites. only 5 playlist plugins and they all are worthless. also this new version is a literal pane in the buttocks. like when you want to see the folder tree you gotta hover over a certain part of the left pane, and then it goes away and artists are instead displayed... like what the hell?

 

[RealNeil]

Audiograbber with the Lame Codec

 

[Sasqui]

My car can play music from a USB stick. However, it only understands lossy formats, so I convert my flacs to 320kbps MP3 for it. It can also play CDs, so I can get lossless quality by burning a mix CD.

That was one of my reasons for thinking of sticking to MP3. And I misspoke about my bitrate, I used 192 from the start and then some of them with variable bitrate up to 320 when I got a more powerful PC. At first I didn't have much luck using it, the file sizes were rather big, but that was ages ago.

 

[AsRock]

My Lenevo Thinpad R61(i) has no issue's playing high res music files, and you can pick one of those up today for about $25.

 

[Sasqui]

My Lenevo Thinpad R61(i) has no issue's playing high res music files, and you can pick one of those up today for about $25.

I have a few Dell Core2 laptops, plus an older i7 kicking around, so I'm all set on the hardware side of things.