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FairStairs CD Ripper is a donationware Windows program that is powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats. Express Rip is a refreshingly functional and well-designed piece of software for extracting audio from compact discs and converting them to MP3 files.The.
If you haven’t ripped your music CDs to audio files on your computer yet, it’s not too late. All it takes is a CD drive and a bit of time. When you’re done, your physical music collection will become your digital music collection.
You can then listen to that music on your computer or copy it over to your smartphone. There are even many free services that will let you store that music online and stream it from anywhere.
Get a CD Drive
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Many modern laptops — and even desktop PCs — no longer include CD drives. If your computer of choice includes a CD drive, you’re good to go. (DVD drives double as CD drives, of course.)
If you don’t have a CD drive in your computer, that’s also not a problem. You can buy CD drives that connect to a laptop or any other computer over USB. You can buy external CD and DVD drives for as little as $12 on Amazon. Once you have that drive, you can keep it on hand and use it whenever you need to use a CD or DVD on a computer that doesn’t have a CD drive.
Choose Your Ripping Software
You’ll now need to choose the ripping software you want to use. Many popular programs you already use have CD-ripping capabilities. iTunes on Macs and PCs has this built in — by default, when you insert a CD while iTunes is running, it will ask to “Import” the CD into iTunes, ripping the music on it into digital files. Encoding settings can be controlled by clicking the “Import Settings” button in the iTunes Preferences window.
Windows Media Player also has this built in and is even still included by default on Windows 10. Launch Windows Media Player and you’ll be able to use the “Rip” button to rip the files on it to your computer. But you’re probably better off using iTunes or one of the more advanced programs below than Windows Media Player. If you do use Windows Media Player, make sure you don’t rip to WMA files and ensure copy protection is disabled so you don’t create DRM’d files that are limited in how you can use them.
Just using iTunes — or even Windows Media Player — will probably be fine for most people. But, if you want more control and advanced options, more advanced tools are also available.
Many audiophiles swear by Exact Audio Copy on Windows, also known as EAC, which incorporates advanced error correction features for near-perfect rips. You’ll also need to download the LAME MP3 encoder separately and provide it to EAC. CDex may not work quite as well as EAC, but may be simpler to use. Mac users should probably try Max, which also incorporates error-reduction features. LAME is the best-in-class MP3 encoder, and EAC, CDex, and Max can all use it.
Pick a Format and Bitrate
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When ripping discs, you’ll need to choose a format and bitrate. Different formats have different compatibility — MP3 is the most compatible with the widest variety of devices, but AAC is more efficient and produces smaller files at the same quality level.
You’ll also need to choose a bitrate, or quality level — higher quality levels mean larger files. Some types of audio files are “lossless” and offer the maximum sound quality at the expense of larger file sizes. The open-source FLAC and Apple’s Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) are examples of this.
This part of the decision is up to you. People who don’t care about file sizes and just want to archive their music collection at the highest quality level prefer to rip music into lossless FLAC or ALAC files for archival purposes — after all, you can always use an audio conversion tool to make smaller MP3 or AAC files from those, if necessary. But there’s no going from a lossy MP3 or AAC file to a lossless file — you’d have to re-rip the original discs to get those.
If you just want to rip to a collection that sounds good and will play on almost everything, MP3 is probably the best bet. When ripping to MP3s, you’ll probably want to use the LAME encoder and pick 256 kbps VBR as your quality setting — that’s what most people seem to recommend these days.
If you primarily use Apple software and devices, AAC or Apple Lossless is certainly a fine option that will work for you. Even Android smartphones play AAC files — but not every device does.
Tag Your Songs Automatically
The ripping program you’re using should be able to detect the discs you’ve inserted, look them up online, and automatically fill in the appropriate tags for each song — artist name, album name, track title, release year, and so on — for you. iTunes has this built in, and it’s named “Automatically retrieve CD track names from the Internet.”
Depending on the program you use, you may need to tweak your metadata provider settings and confirm that program is automatically tagging your music for you. This will save you a lot of time.
You may also want to modify the folder and file naming schemes. iTunes handles this for you by adding the ripped music into your iTunes library folder, but programs like EAC and CDex give you more control.
Be sure to back up your music collection once you’ve ripped it — onto an external hard drive, for example. You won’t want to go through the entire process again if your hard drive ever dies and you lose the files.
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Stand-alone CD rippers are useful when you have a large collection of CDs that you want to rip. They're also helpful when the media player that you use doesn’t come with a built-in CD ripper. Dedicated audio CD extraction programs typically have more features than the ones that are built into popular media players such as Windows Media Player.
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Exact Audio Copy
What We Like
- Tests CD drive for accuracy and reliability.
- Add song lyrics.
- Feature-rich in CD ripping options.
What We Don't Like
- Website to download program is annoying.
- Not a native Windows 10 app.
- Enter email address to get song and album information.
EAC—Exact Audio Copy—is valued for its accuracy. The free Windows program reads every CD sector at least two times to verify the correct data is copied. Then it compares the copy to the original CD until at least eight of 16 tries produce identical results. Troublesome sections of the CD, such as scratched areas, are read repeatedly up to 80 times.
EAC's accuracy comes at the cost of speed, but if accuracy is important to you, a minute or more extra time isn't a problem. EAC isn't the most user-friendly of the CD ripping software programs and it doesn't apply its own codec. EAC also doesn't pull the album metadata from the database until you tell it to do so.
Despite these shortcomings, free EAC is probably the best and most powerful ripping tool available.
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FreeRIP 3 Basic Edition
What We Like
- Automatically fills out track and album information.
- Rips music to 5 different audio formats.
- Rips CDs quickly.
What We Don't Like
- Search feature doesn't work.
- Interface looks a bit dated.
FreeRIP 3 has a well-designed interface that is intuitive to use. This free CD ripper can extract the audio from your music CDs to MP3, WMA, WAV, Vorbis and FLAC formats. The program supports CDDB query, which is used to automatically fill in the information for your digital audio files. FreeRIP 3 can also be used as an audio format converter and a tagger. When you're converting from one audio format to another, you can either add files manually or drag and drop them using your mouse. If you’re looking for a free CD ripper, converter, and tagger, then FreeRIP is a solid choice.
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foobar2000
What We Like
- Available for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and as a portable app.
- Interface is customizable.
- Looks up album information from 2 databases.
What We Don't Like
- Default layout too simplistic.
- No tutorial to show advanced features.
Foobar2000 is a free advanced audio player for Windows. Although primarily a player, its audio component supports secure ripping of audio CDs. The software supports a wide range of audio formats including MP3, MP4, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, and WAV.
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FairStairs CD Ripper
What We Like
- Query music databases for album information.
- Help files have great explanations of the interface.
- Adjust sound sampling rates.
What We Don't Like
- Interface lacks some features.
- Software looks a bit dated.
FairStairs CD Ripper is a donationware Windows program that is powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats. The interface is user-friendly and includes ID3 tag support. It supports multiple CD/DVD drivers and includes audio playback controls. FairStairs CD Ripper supports normalization when ripping.
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