Best software for ripping music

[TimTDP]

I am new to ripping music, and mp3 players
I have just purchased my first mp3 player, a Cowon X7

What is the best software, and I don't mind having to pay, to rip music onto my Cowon?
Music management is also important. I read a lot about tagging issues!

Many thanks

[CrowdAds]

[WalkGood]

This thread should be helpful
http://anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19232

[dfkt]

For ripping CDs properly, read this sticky thread: http://anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52398

[McDougal]

For a CD ripper I recommend and use foobar2000. EAC is also another great choice.

[Ceramic]

I use MediaMonkey to rip all my CDs to FLAC and then to convert the FLAC files to mp3s.

I tried EAC, and while a great program, I found it to be too exact. I had a small, light scratch on one CD and it went on a never-ending loop trying to read it. MediaMonkey was able to read and rip that part of the CD.

[dfkt]

If you don't want EAC to make exact rips, set it to burst mode. Then it will read over the errors, like any other ripper.

[Ceramic]

If I remember right, EAC is supposed to be able to read errors that other rippers can't. In my case, it seemed to do the opposite. Anyway, MediaMonkey does all I need.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by Ceramic

If I remember right, EAC is supposed to be able to read errors that other rippers can't. In my case, it seemed to do the opposite. Anyway, MediaMonkey does all I need.

It does, eventually. I had one old scratched CD where it doggedly kept at one track for four hours before finally getting it. That was a CD that wouldn't even play through the song.

[McDougal]

Wow lol I've never had a CD ripping for 4 hours !

I wish I could use EAC, but foobar2000 gets the job done. Hell, I hardly ever rip CDs anymore. Amazon MP3s sound good enough .

[marc2003]

i'd only use something that can verify your rips against the accuraterip/cuetools database online.

http://www.accuraterip.com/
http://www.cuetools.net/wiki/CUETools_Database

a few programs which support this...

cueripper
EAC (burst mode is fine unless you have some problematic disks)
foobar2000
dbpoweramp

i use foobar2000 as it's what i use to manage/play my music.

[Ceramic]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

It does, eventually. I had one old scratched CD where it doggedly kept at one track for four hours before finally getting it. That was a CD that wouldn't even play through the song.

I gave up after it kept going for an hour. lol I compared the MediaMonkey ripped track (in FLAC) to the one on the CD and I couldn't hear a difference nor any skips. The error had to have been very small.

Originally Posted by McDougal

Wow lol I've never had a CD ripping for 4 hours !

I wish I could use EAC, but foobar2000 gets the job done. Hell, I hardly ever rip CDs anymore. Amazon MP3s sound good enough .

Same here except for some genres like classical and instrumental. I still want a FLAC copy of those types of music.

[Satellite_6]

I will recommend fre:ac until I die, because it's easy to use and not EAC slow. . .

I use CDparanoia + jitter correction in the ripper settings to be safe, although it's probably overkill.

[McDougal]

I forgot about fre:ac. I used it once, it's good software, but I ran into problems. The problem was related to the converter, not the ripper, so it's probably not an important discussion for this thread. Doesn't matter though, I use foobar2000 now anyways .

[Marvin the Martian]

In my experience EAC is only slow with old scratched CD's. Ripping a new one is relatively quick, at least on my machine.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

In my experience EAC is only slow with old scratched CD's. Ripping a new one is relatively quick, at least on my machine.

Fast on my old clunker too but my cd's are in great shape.