XnView Software

I just stumbled over FreeRIP 3.0 a free audio ripper. It supports ripping to MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, or FLAC.

It's my first ripping software (don't laugh ), so I cannot tell much about it. But it's user interface looks very clean and ripping with FreeRIP is very easy. Perhaps other forum users know FreeRIP already, or can check out it's functionality and tell whether it's really recommendable.

I recommend using foobar2000 with Lame 3.97 for MP3s or Nero's Encoder for MP4\AAC.

It looks nice and intresting, i'll try it out. My recommendation is the free CDex. It's great, it can use Lame for MP3s, and has what you need for audio-ripping. You can find it here: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
PS. Latest update is fairly old, but a new one is finally on the way!

Ckit
I never used Foobar2000 for ripping, the main reason because the settings for MP3 were to few. Did I just miss something?

I use FreeRip. Very "to-the-point" and works great.

Thank you, ckit, John, and Troken for your feedback and recommendations.

My main concern is that those ripping programs not just differ in functionality but differ in the mp3 quality (not just because of different sampling rates). But I guess and hope that mp3 ripping algorithms are standard - aren't they?

helmut wrote:But I guess and hope that mp3 ripping algorithms are standard - aren't they?

Dear Helmut, i'm sorry, theres a little more to it. Beside different settings you can input for the encoding, there are different encoders. The most popular is Lame encoder with nice quality, which is used by many programs. I haven't tested the different mp3-encoders myself, just base this on what I've read on the www. In the end, I'm not sure if I'd hear any difference anyway...

Since all rippers use almost the same encoders and decoders they all produce almost the same good sound.
I doubt that anybody here would hear a difference.
But the rippers differ in features and comfort.

I recommend PowerEnc with its very smart GUI and its powerful not bloated feature set.
PowerEnc is multi-language freeware - like the other fine tools you can find on that page!


BTW: What about editing the threads title to "Freeware Audio Ripping Tools" ?

Thank you for this interesting info. For now I'll continue using FreeRIP but I'll check out the other Rippers, too.

As suggested by Lesmo16, I have renamed this topic to "Freeware Audio Ripping tools", so all near-topic discussion is in-topic, now.

The best Audio-CD Ripper:
EAC = ExactAudioCopy
Freeware

Download:
http://exactaudiocopy.de/
(The site is in english language)

Best Converter:
CDex with Lame

Have fun ...
Pèdà
*end*

I've just installed the latest version 3.02 of FreeRIP and found that in the new version some options are restricted to registered users, only. Only some options, still a bit annoying. I've uninstalled the new version and installed the old version 3.0.

Try EAC or CDex.

helmut wrote:I've just installed the latest version 3.02 of FreeRIP and found that in the new version some options are restricted to registered users, only. Only some options, still a bit annoying. I've uninstalled the new version and installed the old version 3.0.

where can I find the old version?
Thanks

Effie wrote:

helmut wrote:I've just installed the latest version 3.02 of FreeRIP and found that in the new version some options are restricted to registered users, only. Only some options, still a bit annoying. I've uninstalled the new version and installed the old version 3.0.

where can I find the old version?
Thanks

I guess on some download portals you will still find the old version 3.0 of FreeRIP. Or you can download FreeRIP 3.0 here.

The author of FreeRIP explains in the FreeRIP forum why he had put in those restrictions in FreeRIP.

Try also "Audio Converter/CD-Grabber" - part of AIMP (best audio player IMHO) - easy to use, intuitive, also tag editor is included...