There’s an option in the setting to load and save profiles, I imagine that would be the thing but I have not tried so I couldn’t say with any certainty.
XLD is a forgotten gem. It is so good for EAC level burning but also has a really easy to use UI and you can do RAW, FLAC and ALAC with exactly the same results as EAC…
[https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder](https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder)
or
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/)
Just be sure after you download the program, that you set it up to rip FLAC files.
[https://zexwoo.blog/en/posts/tutorials/xld-ripping/](https://zexwoo.blog/en/posts/tutorials/xld-ripping/)
or
[https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/sqpglt/flac\_settings\_in\_xld\_for\_2022/](https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/sqpglt/flac_settings_in_xld_for_2022/)
or
[https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=XLD\_Configuration](https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=XLD_Configuration)
or
[https://www.discography.fm/blog/cd-ripping-tutorial](https://www.discography.fm/blog/cd-ripping-tutorial)
when you import a CD a little window should pop up where you can change the encoder and settings, there's a few different options but idk audio enough to know what any of them do
I recently found my old nano I had as a teen, and I just did the default settings when putting my CDs on it, as a result I can tell that all of my cd music sounds more compressed than my music I bought from iTunes all those years ago
you could import the CDs with the WAV encoder or Apple Lossless Encoder, i have no idea which is better
i use the AAC Encoder on the iTunes Plus setting which i think is default (at least nowadays, idk if it was back in the day lol) and it sounds good to me, but my ears aren't good at picking up audio quality lol
you should be able to find the options under Preferences -> General -> Import Settings
I use Media monkey to rip my CDs. Awesome software. Has the secure / checksum ripping option. Also has an auto organise feature which is incredibly useful. WiFi syncing, dlna etc. Worth checking out. There is a free version and a paid £30 version which I went for.
I use EAC for ripping my CDs. I know it can be a bit overwhelming with setting it up, but once you have all set up, it's really easy to just breeze through digitizing your collection.
[This is the tutorial I followed for setting it up](https://youtu.be/LkLCzfBa2gI?si=x9S6xVqsHt5Mb3qt)
Of course!
Oh just a note, every disc drive is different so when you're on the drive tab, set it up to what your drive is capable of doing if that makes sense
Oh totally, I've done a little with it but quickly defaulted to a "this will take some more research" vibe as I saw the settings available. I think I found my drive profile, of memory serves.
I may look at other options like dbpoweramp too. If I do sogotoze my collection... It's going to need to be simple or I'll loose my mind.
I remember times when people wouldn't use the Windows Media Player for ripping because the LAME codec was supposed to sound better than the original Fraunhofer codec. I feel a little old now.
I use fre:ac. It supports all of the features of EAC and more. It even supports metadata lookup without any work. I have ripped hundreds of CD's with it.
I use this too - I wish it was slightly easier to toggle on the settings for super-accurate ripping which for me are generally only needed if there's faults on the disc, and I find that certain song intros (super 'noisy' ones, usually) can trigger it failing to ascertain if the rip is accurate, but otherwise it's grand. I then use MusicBrainz Picard to tidy up the metadata.
Car got totaled on Tuesday. Had no cd player. Go shopping for another used beater Wednesday. The upshot of the new one is the 6 disc in dash cd changer, with Bluetooth and Aux input all factory. As long as nothing dies it’s my forever system. Sounds great, has all the functionality I will probably ever need. The early 20teens were the golden age of broad audio compatibility in cars.
That said, to answer OP, still using iTunes on my mac.
I use EAC to rip to .flac or .wav. I prefer lossless audio and I find that EAC is smooth-sailing once the settings have been tweaked. The time it takes to rip a disc is dependent on the disc drive. My older USB mini disc drives are significantly slower than my new one
On my PC, Sony Music Center for FLACs. Music Bee for later batch conversion from FLAC to MP3. I can also use my 21 year old Power Mac G5 using XLD for FLACs.
It could be a bit more intuitive, I initially found it frustrating to edit titles/tags and artwork. Gracenote is very good for mainstream music CDs, not so much with the niche stuff.
Most of my Playlist titles, like 38 Special don't show up on Gracenote. What I do, is look up the album art online, download the file and drag it to the spot where album art goes. The art work updates and shows when listening and it transfers to my Walkman NWA45.
SecureRip goes essentially bit by bit to ensure a perfect rip. This is especially helpful on scratched discs. The great thing about DBPoweramp is that it does a fast rip first, compares to a database of the same disc, and if the rip is perfect it moves on. It will only do a secure rip (which is MUCH slower. Like an hour to rip a whole CD slow) if its rip isn’t accurate compared to the database.
I would rip with EAC in burst mode first and see what AccurateRip says. Ripping everything in secure mode is a waste of time. Also try different drives (if you have them) when a CD that looks fine is acting weird.
EAC > FLAC then Mp3tag.
Ripping with multiple drives is the answer.
What version of EAC?
Sadly, some CDs look good but have issues. I use burst mode with CDs where secure rip fails. I use secure mode, if that fails, polish CDs then secure mode again in a different drive. If that fails then burst mode.
My ripping setup is at least 10 years old so it never sees the Internet...
i use abcde on Void Linux. very easy to use (literally just write abcde -o flac or abcde -o mp3 depending on what output format you want, could not be easier). for DVDs i use Handbrake
i use arch on my main laptop, but Void is pretty much the only 32-bit OS that i found (and liked) for the ripping machine (tm). it's a HP Compaq 6710b if you're curious, works wonderfully, is heavy as shit and still gets updates
EAC can do multiple formats at once, it's super handy. I use it for FLAC and MP3 (v0 VBR) so I get a lossless archive and a smaller file for my phone or whatever if I don't need the absolute best quality.
EAC is also really good at transcoding - I had all my CDs ripped into apple lossless at one point, and was able to run them through EAC to get my standard FLACs and MP3s. Saved me countless hours of re-ripping.
Edit: I'm pretty sure this is still legit, but I was thinking of XLD
I also don’t see the appeal of ripping CDs and playing them through a computer. I feel like it’s super time consuming and just clutters up my stereo setup. A nice quality cd player is all one needs to enjoy a collection.
I thought that, and still do to a certain extent, but then had kids and rapidly got to a stage where I couldn’t justify my collection hogging so much space. Plus, kids like smashing CD cases, who knew?! So I packed them all into the loft and looked into digitising everything. I settled on a raspberry pi running Kodi, which I run headless into my DAC. Everything is hidden and it sounds fantastic, and the remote app is presented in such a way that links to artist and album bios are only a click away. If I ran the Pi into a screen I could also configure it to display fan art but I can’t be bothered and it’s nice to turn the tv off sometimes.
I also have several Apple AirPort Express units scattered around the house, with all my CDs ripped to a Mac mini which acts as a file server. Super convenient and lossless.
Good to know. Everyone has a reason for migrating their collection to hard drives. I guess I would be daunted by the learning curve and the amount of time it would take to digitize it all. Also I’m old fashioned and still dig opening cd cases and loading it on the tray.
Yes totally - I can’t wait for the days when my kids are old enough to get my collection out again and I can finally think about investing in one of those ridiculously overpriced premium players (preferably something huge with a top loading mechanism), as there’s something very therapeutic about loading up a CD.
Personally, while it took me quite a while to rip everything in my collection, I found it quite straightforward to fling a CD into my laptop and find something else to do while it did its thing. iTunes does a very good job of simplifying the entire process and organises the ripped files into artist and album folders for you too.
Enjoy your collection, I’m envious!
Would have agreed with this until recently, then something (probably getting old!) caused me to think what if? As in what if something happened to my CDs that meant I couldn't play them? Accidental damage, misplacing them, house fire (heaven forbid).
All that time and energy spent collecting them in the first place - for me like \~ 30 years, including irreplaceable CDs. I needed to backup my prized collection. I love CDs but equally, probably more so, I love the music on them.
So I went down the ripping journey and it definitely was time consuming, but it was so, so worth it. Ripped to PC, backed up to external drive, synced to OneDrive/DropBox etc. AND your CDs in turn also serve as backup to your ripped files. Ripping in lossless (for me, FLAC 44.1kHz 16 bit) means no difference in quality over the original source CD. Add in genre tagging, playlist building, metadata editing etc. - just adds another dimension to your music library.
Then you have best of both worlds: Still pick and play a CD on your CD player. Or sync your CD collection to a device (phone, tablet, walkman) and have your beloved collection to hand wherever you go.
If you have a quality CD player you likely have a quality amp, definitely worth ripping a couple of your CDs and playing the files through your amp to see what you think of the sound quality. You could even get someone else to play either the CD or the ripped file a few times to see if you can tell the difference.
Good points. I am kind of a redundancy scenario type.
Do you keep an another hd copy off-site in the event of a house fire or flood? I can see doing that as you would with a safe deposit box of your personal documents.
Yes an hdd in the glove box of my car. I want to upgrade to get one with encryption in case it gets stolen or broken into. Also the cloud backup, onedrive in my case, is also an off site solution. If you have an office subscription you get 2tb which is enough at the moment. Mostly. It syncs with my pc so any changes to the files get automatically synced. I don't know if that means if the file corrupts it will still sync which isn't great but it is called backup on onedrive.
I use an app that you can get from SONY call Music Center. It's the app that you use to rip CDs for transfer to the line of HiRes audio players made by SONY such as the NWA45 Walkman.
The software will rip files in the following formats
ALAC, FLAC, MP3 up to 320, and AAC up to 320.
Sony Music Center also uses GraceNote to add album art to your files.
The files are stored under the music folder on your PC and the software can be used to listen to your rips as well.
The software is free and can be downloaded here:
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/digital-music-players-nw-nwz-a-series/nw-a45/articles/MC4PC020001
There are CDs with copy-protection designed to defeat being ripped. And much worse Sony put Rootkits on many CDs designed to block your ability to rip CDs. Rootkits are a virus you can not delete off the hard drive.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony\_BMG\_copy\_protection\_rootkit\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)
Also you should check out CUETools. I have several rippers, but CUETools is the favorite.
Curious as to what makes EAC any better for ripping to flac than any other audio ripper?
I'm a Linux user and mainly use asunder as EAC isn't available for Linux.
I've been using EZ Audio Converter by Poikosoft for better part of a decade now - just held on to the install file and the software key (for purchased version) across multiple different computers, worth every penny (Though there is a free version, not sure what restrictions it has.)
[https://www.poikosoft.com/](https://www.poikosoft.com/)
MediaMonkey - I tried EAC but it seemed needlessly complicated to set up (not that its hard to find out how) but also took an age to rip. I found MM much quicker even with secure-read and on-the-fly encoding off, experimented and don't find any real difference with standard-read and on-the-fly encoding on, so that's what I use. Compression level 4, an hour of music usually takes under 5 mins to rip.
I started using MM as my player too on pc, quite like the album cover interface, ripping works right out of the box and I can convert the FLACs to mp3 for remote streaming in 3 clicks. Volume leveling playback works really well too (you can have it level the files themselves but don't see the need to).
I use a cheap external LG DVD writer, seems to work perfectly fine I haven't noticed any issues in over 200 discs ripped so far - not so flat discs do make a lot of noise of course.
I used to use EAC but I'm not that picky anymore, especially when I realized I couldn't truthfully tell any difference between my EAC rips and a foobar2000 rip. Not that you'd *hear* a difference but the foobar rips had no errors either
Technically, EAC *is* better for error detection on bad discs
I thought maybe they did based on the news from the other day. I put a CD in my drive, fired up iTunes and it did nothing. So I assumed they pulled the plug and I started messing around with different rippers. When the one CD took 3 hours to rip, I installed an old version of iTunes and it ripped the CD in like 5 minutes.
Just reading the news. OK. Sometimes when I get around to ripping an old or obscure one, there's no info, but I'm a stickler for details, so I put them in. If they're taking longer than 5min, I'd stop, clean and maybe try a second time. I use version 10.7.0.21 which was apparently the last one they had for that "cover flow" artwork thing they had. I'm not an iPhone user, so no issue.
Windows Media Player. My only complaint about it is the tagging, which I usually adjust before doing it anyway. But for some reason, it always suggests the year before or after the real year an album was released. Never the actual one!
I’ve used DB Poweramp to power through a bunch in the past though. iTunes on the rare occasion too.
I really like dBpoweramp, but the developer/publisher has decided to move the goal posts. The paid program, a couple of years ago, was for a perpetual license, with free lifetime updates. But now, users who bought a license previously, need to re-buy one, and updates are only good for 2 years. This is so crooked, and seems like it should be illegal.
iTunes on Mac has been somewhat temperamental with my CDs lately. Some that are a bit more dinged up than others often has to go through a second USB CD drive I have that’s a bit slower but seems to read scratched CDs better. I also have had issues where it will get part way through a CD after I’ve been doing a batch of them and it will quit reading and just fill in blank small files for the remainder of the tracks. Usually have to reboot my CD drive enclosure and Mac to get it going again.
iTunes isn't supported anymore. Now it's simply the Apple Music app. I use that to rip music into my Mac.
On PC I just use Windows Media Player. It makes a nice library with album art.
I'd like to recommend AnyBurn, in case you plan on burning CDs that you rip.
Surprised no one has mentioned AnyBurn. May not be the best for ripping. But I also burn CDs. So it's works for me to burn CDs. It's freeware, so even better.
I started with EAC and it's great. I bit the bullet and bought dbpoweramp and have no regrets.
If your ripping a fair amount of cds. The automation and speed make it easily worth the cost.
- automatically giving you the best tag info and artwork.
- save your log file as text in the directory along woth files
- create multiple rip templates and interchange with a drop down menu
- rips probably twice as fast as EAC
I use an external disk drive for my Lenovo laptop and legacy media player. Works like a charm most of the time. Just make sure the settings aren't all screwy and it works great
I personally recommend Foobar2000, you get all of the Codecs and the highest qualities you want. Quick so rip, play and even tag things! And super light interface so you're not taking up a lot of space on your ram.
EAC all day bb. Once I figured out all the right settings it’s a breeze.
This is the way. Secure mode is preferred.
I use burst mode by default since it's the fastest. Only if CueTools / AccurateRip tells me the rip is inaccurate, I try again in secure mode.
Can you download settings? I wish it was easier to set up.
There’s an option in the setting to load and save profiles, I imagine that would be the thing but I have not tried so I couldn’t say with any certainty.
EAC for windows. XLD for mac.
XLD is a forgotten gem. It is so good for EAC level burning but also has a really easy to use UI and you can do RAW, FLAC and ALAC with exactly the same results as EAC…
Hello. How do I get or where find XLD on my Macbook Pro?
[https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder](https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder) or [https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/) Just be sure after you download the program, that you set it up to rip FLAC files. [https://zexwoo.blog/en/posts/tutorials/xld-ripping/](https://zexwoo.blog/en/posts/tutorials/xld-ripping/) or [https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/sqpglt/flac\_settings\_in\_xld\_for\_2022/](https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/sqpglt/flac_settings_in_xld_for_2022/) or [https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=XLD\_Configuration](https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=XLD_Configuration) or [https://www.discography.fm/blog/cd-ripping-tutorial](https://www.discography.fm/blog/cd-ripping-tutorial)
Thank you so much.
Sorry I didn’t reply but everything in that post above is 100% 👍🏻
THIS is the correct answer
Dbpoweramp fan here as well. It's just nice and easy but also allows me to add some tags I want to make sure get included.
dbpoweramp represent!
I used to use EAC but started running into drive recognition issues and switched to dbpoweramp. Still need to configure, but works well.
i use iTunes on Windows and it works perfectly, then i put them on my old iPod
Is there a way to adjust Audio quality when doing it through iTunes? If so what do you do?
when you import a CD a little window should pop up where you can change the encoder and settings, there's a few different options but idk audio enough to know what any of them do
I recently found my old nano I had as a teen, and I just did the default settings when putting my CDs on it, as a result I can tell that all of my cd music sounds more compressed than my music I bought from iTunes all those years ago
you could import the CDs with the WAV encoder or Apple Lossless Encoder, i have no idea which is better i use the AAC Encoder on the iTunes Plus setting which i think is default (at least nowadays, idk if it was back in the day lol) and it sounds good to me, but my ears aren't good at picking up audio quality lol you should be able to find the options under Preferences -> General -> Import Settings
I use iTunes/the music app on the Mac
Same. With an external SuperDrive.
I use Media monkey to rip my CDs. Awesome software. Has the secure / checksum ripping option. Also has an auto organise feature which is incredibly useful. WiFi syncing, dlna etc. Worth checking out. There is a free version and a paid £30 version which I went for.
The monkey! It does almost everything I need
I love the monkey!
I too bought the premium after using it for free for so many years and it was/is totally worth it. Syncing to my phone makes me happy
I use EAC for ripping my CDs. I know it can be a bit overwhelming with setting it up, but once you have all set up, it's really easy to just breeze through digitizing your collection. [This is the tutorial I followed for setting it up](https://youtu.be/LkLCzfBa2gI?si=x9S6xVqsHt5Mb3qt)
Ty!
Of course! Oh just a note, every disc drive is different so when you're on the drive tab, set it up to what your drive is capable of doing if that makes sense
Oh totally, I've done a little with it but quickly defaulted to a "this will take some more research" vibe as I saw the settings available. I think I found my drive profile, of memory serves. I may look at other options like dbpoweramp too. If I do sogotoze my collection... It's going to need to be simple or I'll loose my mind.
On windows, I just use windows media player. Less than 5 minutes to rip a CD, and in any format I want. I assume you’re using Mac?
I remember times when people wouldn't use the Windows Media Player for ripping because the LAME codec was supposed to sound better than the original Fraunhofer codec. I feel a little old now.
Yeah um iTunes works fine. Might want to see if something else is wrong. That said, most programs work fine.
Don't know. I uninstalled it and downloaded a 3 year old version and I'm back in business.
Huh. Weird.
I prefer DB Poweramp over EAC personally. I found it far easier to use reliably.
I use fre:ac. It supports all of the features of EAC and more. It even supports metadata lookup without any work. I have ripped hundreds of CD's with it.
I use this too - I wish it was slightly easier to toggle on the settings for super-accurate ripping which for me are generally only needed if there's faults on the disc, and I find that certain song intros (super 'noisy' ones, usually) can trigger it failing to ascertain if the rip is accurate, but otherwise it's grand. I then use MusicBrainz Picard to tidy up the metadata.
DB Power Amp here 👌
Asunder.
Windows Media Player
MusicBee
I just use Windows Media Player (Legacy). If it matters it exports to MP3, and it's usually pretty fast (\~10 minutes max I think).
This is what I use.
iTunes
Car got totaled on Tuesday. Had no cd player. Go shopping for another used beater Wednesday. The upshot of the new one is the 6 disc in dash cd changer, with Bluetooth and Aux input all factory. As long as nothing dies it’s my forever system. Sounds great, has all the functionality I will probably ever need. The early 20teens were the golden age of broad audio compatibility in cars. That said, to answer OP, still using iTunes on my mac.
Windows Media Player
I use EAC to rip to .flac or .wav. I prefer lossless audio and I find that EAC is smooth-sailing once the settings have been tweaked. The time it takes to rip a disc is dependent on the disc drive. My older USB mini disc drives are significantly slower than my new one
I've always used CDex.
On my PC, Sony Music Center for FLACs. Music Bee for later batch conversion from FLAC to MP3. I can also use my 21 year old Power Mac G5 using XLD for FLACs.
I use Sony Music Center. Love the interface.
It could be a bit more intuitive, I initially found it frustrating to edit titles/tags and artwork. Gracenote is very good for mainstream music CDs, not so much with the niche stuff.
Most of my Playlist titles, like 38 Special don't show up on Gracenote. What I do, is look up the album art online, download the file and drag it to the spot where album art goes. The art work updates and shows when listening and it transfers to my Walkman NWA45.
I didn't realise I could drag and drop new artwork. Thanks.
Win 11 windows media player kbps set at 320.
What do these other programs like EAC or dbPoweramp offer? What is a secure rip? Secure from what?
SecureRip goes essentially bit by bit to ensure a perfect rip. This is especially helpful on scratched discs. The great thing about DBPoweramp is that it does a fast rip first, compares to a database of the same disc, and if the rip is perfect it moves on. It will only do a secure rip (which is MUCH slower. Like an hour to rip a whole CD slow) if its rip isn’t accurate compared to the database.
Ahhhh, thanks for the info. I might look into that for some of my super scratched discs.
Audiograbber look at this https://www.audiograbber.org/download.html
I'm on Gentoo Linux and I use whipper, since it has AccuRip support. https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper
Foobar2000 mainly as i find it easiest to use. Occasionally use EAC if Foobar is struggling to get cd metadata
I'm still using iTunes to copy my CDs on my Mac. My CD-rs sound fine. I usually play them in my car.
EAC
I would rip with EAC in burst mode first and see what AccurateRip says. Ripping everything in secure mode is a waste of time. Also try different drives (if you have them) when a CD that looks fine is acting weird.
EAC > FLAC then Mp3tag. Ripping with multiple drives is the answer. What version of EAC? Sadly, some CDs look good but have issues. I use burst mode with CDs where secure rip fails. I use secure mode, if that fails, polish CDs then secure mode again in a different drive. If that fails then burst mode. My ripping setup is at least 10 years old so it never sees the Internet...
DBpoweramp, best $20 I have ever spent.
i use abcde on Void Linux. very easy to use (literally just write abcde -o flac or abcde -o mp3 depending on what output format you want, could not be easier). for DVDs i use Handbrake
Bruh Void Linux is awesome. I use Arch btw.
arch…….. what a simpleton. i run my own original bell labs unix fork compiled on my smart microwave targeted for MIPS.
i use arch on my main laptop, but Void is pretty much the only 32-bit OS that i found (and liked) for the ripping machine (tm). it's a HP Compaq 6710b if you're curious, works wonderfully, is heavy as shit and still gets updates
EAC for FLAC, iTunes for MP3.
EAC can do multiple formats at once, it's super handy. I use it for FLAC and MP3 (v0 VBR) so I get a lossless archive and a smaller file for my phone or whatever if I don't need the absolute best quality. EAC is also really good at transcoding - I had all my CDs ripped into apple lossless at one point, and was able to run them through EAC to get my standard FLACs and MP3s. Saved me countless hours of re-ripping. Edit: I'm pretty sure this is still legit, but I was thinking of XLD
I don't. I play them in a CD player as intended!
I also don’t see the appeal of ripping CDs and playing them through a computer. I feel like it’s super time consuming and just clutters up my stereo setup. A nice quality cd player is all one needs to enjoy a collection.
I thought that, and still do to a certain extent, but then had kids and rapidly got to a stage where I couldn’t justify my collection hogging so much space. Plus, kids like smashing CD cases, who knew?! So I packed them all into the loft and looked into digitising everything. I settled on a raspberry pi running Kodi, which I run headless into my DAC. Everything is hidden and it sounds fantastic, and the remote app is presented in such a way that links to artist and album bios are only a click away. If I ran the Pi into a screen I could also configure it to display fan art but I can’t be bothered and it’s nice to turn the tv off sometimes. I also have several Apple AirPort Express units scattered around the house, with all my CDs ripped to a Mac mini which acts as a file server. Super convenient and lossless.
Good to know. Everyone has a reason for migrating their collection to hard drives. I guess I would be daunted by the learning curve and the amount of time it would take to digitize it all. Also I’m old fashioned and still dig opening cd cases and loading it on the tray.
Yes totally - I can’t wait for the days when my kids are old enough to get my collection out again and I can finally think about investing in one of those ridiculously overpriced premium players (preferably something huge with a top loading mechanism), as there’s something very therapeutic about loading up a CD. Personally, while it took me quite a while to rip everything in my collection, I found it quite straightforward to fling a CD into my laptop and find something else to do while it did its thing. iTunes does a very good job of simplifying the entire process and organises the ripped files into artist and album folders for you too. Enjoy your collection, I’m envious!
Would have agreed with this until recently, then something (probably getting old!) caused me to think what if? As in what if something happened to my CDs that meant I couldn't play them? Accidental damage, misplacing them, house fire (heaven forbid). All that time and energy spent collecting them in the first place - for me like \~ 30 years, including irreplaceable CDs. I needed to backup my prized collection. I love CDs but equally, probably more so, I love the music on them. So I went down the ripping journey and it definitely was time consuming, but it was so, so worth it. Ripped to PC, backed up to external drive, synced to OneDrive/DropBox etc. AND your CDs in turn also serve as backup to your ripped files. Ripping in lossless (for me, FLAC 44.1kHz 16 bit) means no difference in quality over the original source CD. Add in genre tagging, playlist building, metadata editing etc. - just adds another dimension to your music library. Then you have best of both worlds: Still pick and play a CD on your CD player. Or sync your CD collection to a device (phone, tablet, walkman) and have your beloved collection to hand wherever you go. If you have a quality CD player you likely have a quality amp, definitely worth ripping a couple of your CDs and playing the files through your amp to see what you think of the sound quality. You could even get someone else to play either the CD or the ripped file a few times to see if you can tell the difference.
Good points. I am kind of a redundancy scenario type. Do you keep an another hd copy off-site in the event of a house fire or flood? I can see doing that as you would with a safe deposit box of your personal documents.
Yes an hdd in the glove box of my car. I want to upgrade to get one with encryption in case it gets stolen or broken into. Also the cloud backup, onedrive in my case, is also an off site solution. If you have an office subscription you get 2tb which is enough at the moment. Mostly. It syncs with my pc so any changes to the files get automatically synced. I don't know if that means if the file corrupts it will still sync which isn't great but it is called backup on onedrive.
Plus a lot of space to have them easily accessible.
iPods and other DAPs exist, grandpa.
I also stream through my Wiim. Does that make me one of the cool kids?
This is where I become the grandpa @_@
I use an app that you can get from SONY call Music Center. It's the app that you use to rip CDs for transfer to the line of HiRes audio players made by SONY such as the NWA45 Walkman. The software will rip files in the following formats ALAC, FLAC, MP3 up to 320, and AAC up to 320. Sony Music Center also uses GraceNote to add album art to your files. The files are stored under the music folder on your PC and the software can be used to listen to your rips as well. The software is free and can be downloaded here: https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/digital-music-players-nw-nwz-a-series/nw-a45/articles/MC4PC020001
lol, I still use Sony's Media Go software. I just like the interface better than Music Center.
JRiver
I use EAC to make "perfect" FLAC rips as per the old what.cd guides. All that means is that the log and cue sheet adhered to their standards
Apple music works good
I always use iTunes because my mac has a cd drive built into it.
I’m a Mac user and I use XLD.
Eac, power iso
EAC, the best free software.
I use EAC for FLAC but to save time I use Burst Mode instead of Secure Mode. Otherwise it'd take days to rip one CD.
I use an old version of Windows Media Player. You can rip to flac or mp3 and also choose what kbps you want.
EAC all the way. Used to use Foobar2000, but got some wack results. Disks that used to not rip right in Foobar work perfectly fine in EAC.
Roxio Music Suite
Windows Media Player
EAC. I used iTunes for a while but found that even their error correction makes mistakes. No problems with EAC so far.
Does itunes not do cds anymore? I haven't updated it for a few years, so I don't know if that's a new thing or not.
Yes, you can still use it to rip CDs
dBpoweramp is what I've been using for years. It's easy to use and does what I need it to, so I've never felt the need to use anything else.
Windows
Cyberlink Power2Go (shrug) works good
I still use Itunes.
SONY MUSIC CENTER https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/digital-music-players-nw-nwz-a-series/nw-a45/articles/MC4PC020001
There are CDs with copy-protection designed to defeat being ripped. And much worse Sony put Rootkits on many CDs designed to block your ability to rip CDs. Rootkits are a virus you can not delete off the hard drive. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony\_BMG\_copy\_protection\_rootkit\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal) Also you should check out CUETools. I have several rippers, but CUETools is the favorite.
Windows Media player
Fre:ac - available for multiple platforms. https://www.freac.org/ Also awesome for converting between file formats.
Curious as to what makes EAC any better for ripping to flac than any other audio ripper? I'm a Linux user and mainly use asunder as EAC isn't available for Linux.
I've been using EZ Audio Converter by Poikosoft for better part of a decade now - just held on to the install file and the software key (for purchased version) across multiple different computers, worth every penny (Though there is a free version, not sure what restrictions it has.) [https://www.poikosoft.com/](https://www.poikosoft.com/)
MediaMonkey - I tried EAC but it seemed needlessly complicated to set up (not that its hard to find out how) but also took an age to rip. I found MM much quicker even with secure-read and on-the-fly encoding off, experimented and don't find any real difference with standard-read and on-the-fly encoding on, so that's what I use. Compression level 4, an hour of music usually takes under 5 mins to rip. I started using MM as my player too on pc, quite like the album cover interface, ripping works right out of the box and I can convert the FLACs to mp3 for remote streaming in 3 clicks. Volume leveling playback works really well too (you can have it level the files themselves but don't see the need to). I use a cheap external LG DVD writer, seems to work perfectly fine I haven't noticed any issues in over 200 discs ripped so far - not so flat discs do make a lot of noise of course.
iTunes to ALAC or EAC to FLAC. Then on the mac, ffmpeg to convert to AAC 256 using apple aac_at codec.
Adobe audition. Gives me flexibility with editing tracks
I use foobar2000. iTunes still works but often rips things incorrectly.
And unfortunately itunes can't rip directly to flac. Otherwise I'd use it, as it's much better with tagging.
I used to use EAC but I'm not that picky anymore, especially when I realized I couldn't truthfully tell any difference between my EAC rips and a foobar2000 rip. Not that you'd *hear* a difference but the foobar rips had no errors either Technically, EAC *is* better for error detection on bad discs
ITunes pulled the plug!?
I thought maybe they did based on the news from the other day. I put a CD in my drive, fired up iTunes and it did nothing. So I assumed they pulled the plug and I started messing around with different rippers. When the one CD took 3 hours to rip, I installed an old version of iTunes and it ripped the CD in like 5 minutes.
Just reading the news. OK. Sometimes when I get around to ripping an old or obscure one, there's no info, but I'm a stickler for details, so I put them in. If they're taking longer than 5min, I'd stop, clean and maybe try a second time. I use version 10.7.0.21 which was apparently the last one they had for that "cover flow" artwork thing they had. I'm not an iPhone user, so no issue.
I tried ripping my CD on my MacBook and sync in iTunes. Does that work anymore?
Did it fail? I installed a 3 year old version of iTunes and it began ripping again.
I can still rip but I can’t sync albums on my iPhone anymore. I tried a week ago. But the computer is almost full
I use iTunes on my old Mac which still works as it always has. Or the music app on my MacBook Pro both work great
I put my CD in my Macs disc drive, then I open the CD then I copy and paste the files into a folder in Finder
Windows Media Player. My only complaint about it is the tagging, which I usually adjust before doing it anyway. But for some reason, it always suggests the year before or after the real year an album was released. Never the actual one! I’ve used DB Poweramp to power through a bunch in the past though. iTunes on the rare occasion too.
I really like dBpoweramp, but the developer/publisher has decided to move the goal posts. The paid program, a couple of years ago, was for a perpetual license, with free lifetime updates. But now, users who bought a license previously, need to re-buy one, and updates are only good for 2 years. This is so crooked, and seems like it should be illegal.
Dbpoweramp. I like the converter it came with as well. Mp3s store easier on the phone.
Windows Media Player.
I use k3b since it does all I need. And if I suspect there was an issue with ripping I open up the file with Audacity and check the waveform.
iTunes on Mac has been somewhat temperamental with my CDs lately. Some that are a bit more dinged up than others often has to go through a second USB CD drive I have that’s a bit slower but seems to read scratched CDs better. I also have had issues where it will get part way through a CD after I’ve been doing a batch of them and it will quit reading and just fill in blank small files for the remainder of the tracks. Usually have to reboot my CD drive enclosure and Mac to get it going again.
iTunes for Windows because I have 2 iPods and an iPhone.
iTunes isn't supported anymore. Now it's simply the Apple Music app. I use that to rip music into my Mac. On PC I just use Windows Media Player. It makes a nice library with album art. I'd like to recommend AnyBurn, in case you plan on burning CDs that you rip. Surprised no one has mentioned AnyBurn. May not be the best for ripping. But I also burn CDs. So it's works for me to burn CDs. It's freeware, so even better.
dbPoweramp is the one.
I used iTunes yesterday to rip a CD no problem.
I use iTunes (now Apple Music) on my Mac. I don't usually rip my CDs but it was only maybe a year ago the last time I did.
idk if i’m just basic but i just use Windows Media Player and rip to ALAC.
I started with EAC and it's great. I bit the bullet and bought dbpoweramp and have no regrets. If your ripping a fair amount of cds. The automation and speed make it easily worth the cost. - automatically giving you the best tag info and artwork. - save your log file as text in the directory along woth files - create multiple rip templates and interchange with a drop down menu - rips probably twice as fast as EAC
foobar2000 to 320 kbps mp3. I know, I know, I'm not audiophile enough.
I use an external disk drive for my Lenovo laptop and legacy media player. Works like a charm most of the time. Just make sure the settings aren't all screwy and it works great
Windows Media player is the best, most simple way. Be sure to go into settings, first, though. You can choose format, quality, file location & more!
Nero 7-9 was always the best if you can even/use that program anymore
I use iTunes, then sync it to my phone.
dbpoweramp paid member checking in
ExactAudioCopy using this guide https://youtu.be/LkLCzfBa2gI?si=RRhzdXBAeVBKMRih
Dbpoweramp
I use Foobar2000
Foobar2000
I’m gonna sound like a grandpa here but I use Windows Media Player 🤷🏻♂️
I personally recommend Foobar2000, you get all of the Codecs and the highest qualities you want. Quick so rip, play and even tag things! And super light interface so you're not taking up a lot of space on your ram.