What software do you use for ripping Audio CD's and tagging ?

Defenestration · 7 Mar 2009 at 17:40

In the past I've used various software for ripping my Audio CD's to MP3 and other formats, but have not tagged and organised it properly. I now want to redo my whole CD collection and do it properly so I never have to do it again. I will probably rip twice - to a lossless format (for archive purposes) and lossy format (for portable music player). For lossless, I was considering using WavPack and for lossy, either MP3 or Ogg.

In the past I've mainly just used Exact audio Copy utilising freedb to get tag information. I'm looking for suggestions and wondering what other people use when ripping Audio CD's and for tagging and transcoding to other formats ?

It would be nice if I could find a single small, efficient app (I hate bloat) to do everything (ie. Rip (preferably with optional AccurateRip (or similar)), Tag (including editing)), transcode), but would use three separate apps for each task if they were each class leading utilities. I don't mind paying a reasonable fee for the software, if it's worth it.

Any suggestions on software and lossless/lossy format choice ?

Greenlizard0 · 7 Mar 2009 at 17:46

Freemp3cdripper, it goes straight to flac etc.

Defenestration · 7 Mar 2009 at 17:51

Greenlizard0 said:
Freemp3cdripper, it goes straight to flac etc.

Do you have a link ?

Greenlizard0 · 7 Mar 2009 at 18:00

Google skills are week m'lady...

http://www.download3k.com/Install-free-MP3-CD-Ripper.html

Defenestration · 7 Mar 2009 at 18:04

Greenlizard0 said:
Google skills are week m'lady...

http://www.download3k.com/Install-free-MP3-CD-Ripper.html

Thanks. I actually found that software, but as it's called "MP3 CD Ripper Pro" as opposed to "Freemp3cdripper", I assumed it wasn't the one you were talking about.

MarcLister · 7 Mar 2009 at 18:15

I use EAC. It is pretty good on getting the tags right but then I can edit them in EAC before I rip the CD or in Winamp if I miss one.

bledd has a good EAC installer somewhere.

Greenlizard0 · 7 Mar 2009 at 18:23

Defenestration said:
Thanks. I actually found that software, but as it's called "MP3 CD Ripper Pro" as opposed to "Freemp3cdripper", I assumed it wasn't the one you were talking about.

Oh dearie...

Edit - I have freemp3cdripper installed. I think my shortcut residing with the installation file is wrong :confused:

CaptainCrash · 7 Mar 2009 at 18:24

There's no point in ripping everything twice, that will take ages - you can just rip everything to FLAC and transcode what you need to MP3.

What is it about EAC that you find unsatisfactory? It has the AccurateRip support you want, it will encode directly to FLAC or any other format (just point it at the relevant executable), and it will tag the files on the fly...

For anything else else to do with audio playback, organisation, tagging and transcoding, foobar2000 will do everything you want and much more.

As far as formats are concerned, I use FLAC for lossless/archiving - some other formats have slightly better compression, but FLAC seems to have gained traction as the de facto standard outside the closed worlds of Apple and WMP, and it has a fair amount of hardware support (may come in handy at some stage). For portable use, MP3 (LAME -V2) - perceptually transparent most of the time, reasonable file sizes, and will play back on just about anything.

Meatball · 7 Mar 2009 at 19:19

EAC, iTunes to re-encode to iTunes and then I tag everything manually.

Defenestration · 7 Mar 2009 at 20:23

Nothing against EAC. I suppose I was mainly looking for an all-in-on app. I'll probably stick with EAC for ripping and initial tagging. For editing of tags, I wanted a better app for mass tag/filename changes. I've just come across Mp3tag which looks pretty comprehensive.

After seeing there is no x64 Directshow filter for WavPack, I think I'll go with FLAC for lossless.