Ask Listology: CD Ripping Software [Feedback Requested!!!]
Dear, Listology,
A long time ago (5 years?) I made the decision to purchase a copy of Musicmatch Jukebox. It worked well with my Celeron 400 MHz machine and and allowed me to rip songs off of my favorite CDs just fine. During the interim Musicmatch has released many new versions of the program but I've always clicked through the constant offers to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Over the Christmas season I decided what the heck. I'm 3 versions behind. Perhaps the new version of Musicmatch has some features I might like. So I took the plunge and upgraded the software 2 or 3 times to get it to the current version. I've found out that this may have been a mistake.
What used to be a very smooth process has now become cumbersome. Prior to my upgrade I could slide a CD in and choose some tracks to rip and it worked fine. Now whenever I try to rip one or more tracks from a CD it throws a C++ error when it gets to the end of the first track and shuts down the program.
This can be very annoying especially when you have a lot of good music you want to transfer to your computer.
At this point I have 2 options:
#1) I can try and dig up an old copy of the Musicmatch (version 6?) that I know worked with my machine. I'm sure I have one somewhere but I'm going to have to dig through an awful lot of old media and even if I do locate it there's no guarantee that the media hasn't degraded.
#2) I can try and find a good ripping alternative. This may be an alternative that just gets me through this hump while I try to get a response from Musicmatch about why their software no longer works properly.
I typically rip at either 192 or 256 kbps. I've tried a number of different programs both freeware and trial versions of payware and I've yet to find something that accurately rips. Typically the ripping program will just speed along and when I listen back to the ripped song they'll be a bunch of parts of the songs skipped over. I never have this problem when I'm using Musicmatch. I think it's more cognisant of the limit of my machine, the same old 400 MHz Celeron.
So my question is to you, Listology.
I'm looking for a CD ripping software which can rip at speeds up to 192 and 256 kbps. This software needs to do a good job of dealing with possibly slow I/O and/or limited memory and CPU. I use an external CD writer which is NOT USB 2.0. If it's freeware that's great or if it's a really awesome piece of payware at a reasonable price then that's ok, too.
If anyone knows whether software of this nature exists I figured it would be you, Listology.
Thanks, As Always,
Dan
Good news! They have old versions of Musicmatch on Old Version. So I always have that to fall back on. But I'm still definitely interested in your suggestions, Listology. :-)
I cannot tell you how well it works on your 400Mhz machine, but give CDex a try. You can rip to virtually any bitrate, use any filename setup, query CDDB, rip to wav or any of many compressed formats, etc. And it's free. For MP3 ripping you'll need the free LAME MP3 Encoder.
Thanks, lukeprog. That's actually one of the ones I tried and it does a horrible job of ripping tracks for me. The current distribution comes up with an MP3 encoder built in. I'll give it another look-see just in case but I have a feeling it will fail me.
Have you looked at FreeRIP yet? I use it when I need to rip an mp3 file in a hurry. Otherwise I'd recommend Exact Audio Copy, which is the best I've seen at copying tracks straight to .wav format. For making mp3 files, it requires the LAME encoder that Luke linked to above.
Hey! Thanks for the link to FreeRIP. That is exactly what I was looking for. It seems to handle the limitations of my machine just fine and produced perfect (as far as I can tell) 256kbps rips.
I actually have EAC on my machine already and does work as advertised but it takes _forever_ to do it. I'll keep using FreeRIP until I get my situation with MusicMatch straightened out. It's so good however I may just start using it for all my ripping needs. Thanks, again!!!
Is FreeRIP faster than CDex (if you've tried both)?
Yes!? Actually I don't know. :-)
I would say give it a whirl. Make sure when you install it you choose to NOT install the MySearch feature. I would say I liked it more than my experience with CDex, ripping issues that CDex aside. Your mileage may vary.
I finally tried it, and I do think it's faster! Perhaps not by tons, but it seems noticable. More importantly, it doesn't slow down my computer while ripping. With CDex I couldn't really run it and work at the same time, as everything bogged down and the computer started responding sluggishly. But with FreeRip I can happily rip CDs while I have about a million other applications open for work, with apparently no ill effects.
Thanks!
I use itunes at their VBR high (so minimum 192 kbps) and have had very few problems. I'm running it on a much faster computer though.
Thanks, K! I've been planning on upgrading for a long time now. But I can never find any reason to do it as long as my current machine does what I need it to do. And unfortunately gaining the ability to play Half Life 2, which I would like to check out, hasn't been cutting my mental mustard. :-)