Our point of view
This soft is mainly dedicated to audio CD rip. Andre Wiethoff decided to program his own ripper because he estimated the audio quality of the other rippers poor. Exact Audio Copy can also play audio CD's, encode wave files to MP3 or WMA, decode MP3 or WMA files to wave, burn audio CD's, record vinyls from the Line In imput of your audio card, ... If you have the correct external codecs, you can encode your wave files to OGG, VQF, AAC, Monkey, ...
EAC is an excellent software. Try it !

Download area
Download EAC on the official website

Our point of view
This software, (Grip stands for Rip in the Gnome environment), allows the digital extraction of the tracks of an audio CD. Either you can get the Wave files or encode on the fly to Ogg Vorbis, MP3 or FLAC (lossless compression format). Grip has the CDDB option, which allows you (provided you are online) to get the data of the CD (Artist name, CD Title, Tracks' names...). The extraction of the tracks uses the internal engine CDParanoia, the best ripper for CD under Linux and one of the best rippers with Exact Audio Copy. Grip can also play audio CD's. A very good tool.

Download area
Download Grip on the official website

Our point of view
MusicMatch Jukebox is a great tool. Two versions are available : Jukebox PLUS and Jukebox BASIC. The latter is totally free. MusicMatch Jukebox BASIC reads audio CD, MP3, mp3PRO, WMA and Wave files, rip audio CD in order to copy the tracks on your HDD, encode Wave files to MP3 or mp3PRO formats with an excellent coding quality, burn files on CD-R, ... A lot of skins are available and also plug-ins to transfer music files to your portable player ! A very good tool easy to use.

Download area
Download MusicMatch Jukebox BASIC on the official website

Our point of view
dBpowerAMP (Illustrate) has a complete set of softwares that makes it a real audio suite. The ripper extracts the audio tracks of a music CD to wave files or directly rips and encodes to MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, APE, ... The MP3 encoder is built in. For the other formats, you need the correct codecs. The excellent bitrate authorized for MP3 is due to Lame (MP3 encoder engine used in dMC) (see our audio coders section). To discover !

Download area
Download dBpowerAMP Music Converter on the official website
Download plug-ins and codecs for dBpowerAMP on the official website

Our point of view
A good rip and encode tool. Audiograbber copy the tracks of an audio CD to wave files on your HDD or rips and encodes directly to MP3 or WMA files. Audiograbber is now fully free ! You can normalize your audio files and names them automatically using the data base Freedb.org. Using external codecs to encode in other standards is possible. You can choose the speed extraction : very useful when the CD you want to rip is very old. Audio quality is quite good.

Download area
Download Audiograbber on the official website

Our point of view
A good rip and encode tool. CDex copy the tracks of an audio CD to wave files on your HDD or rips and encodes directly to MP3, OGG or WMA files. Using external codecs to encode in other standards is possible. The excellent bitrate authorized for MP3 is due to the external encoder Lame (see our audio coders section). The built in MP3 encoder is a basic Fraunhoffer coder : the possible bitrate is then from 8 to 56 kbits/s. You can name your files automatically using the data base Freedb.org.

Download area
Download CDex on Albert L. Faber web site

Our point of view
The WMA standard is the counterpart to MP3. With the success of MP3 growing on the Web in 1998, Microsoft decided to respond and, in 1999, the Windows Media Audio codec is ready. WMA was born ! Compression technics are similar to the ones used with MP3. Windows Media Player is available with Windows packages since Win98. You can rip and encode audio tracks from a CD to WMA files. It is not possible to get the wave files since the program rips and encodes automatically.

Download area
Download Windows Media Player 7 for Win95 on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for Win98, 2000, ME on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for WinXP on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player for WinXP on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS on Microsoft official website

Our point of view
Rip It ! allows to rip the tracks of an audio CD to MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Monkey Audio or Wave files. When encoding to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, you can choose the compression rate.

Download area
Download Rip It ! on the official website

Our point of view
MP3Guest Encoder Wizard is a rip an encode tool. You can rip the tracks of an audio CD to wave files in order to make a copy or rip and encode directly to MP3. For the MP3 format, you can choose the bitrate.

Download area
Download MP3Guest Encoder on the official website