best program for ripping cd's to hard drive

[firteen88]

hey guys, just picked up an Ipod and wondering what the best program would be for putting my cd's onto the hard drive to transfer them....I know windows media player does it, but i would like a regular mp3 file and not just a wma file.....any ideas? thanks!!

[alex4bball]

Check out CDex. It is a very good ripping program. You can download it for free at Download.com or follow the link below:

http://www.download.com/CDex/3000-2140-10226370.html?tag=lst-0-1

[firteen88]

thanks man, i'll check it out.

[Blake]

EAC + LAME = best option.

See "Ripping Standard" here:
http://ubernet.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Files&file=uberstandard

You can download EAC 0.9 Beta 4 by following one of the links and LAME 3.90.3 is also available (See "Encoding Standard"):

http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/lame-3.90.3.zip

You don't have to follow those instructions to rip the CD to your hard drive as that guide is pretty strict, but if you follow the basics and rip with EAC and LAME (--alt-preset-standard) you'll have great rips that sound amazing (I use --alt-preset-extreme though just for that little bit of less compression). alt-preset-standard takes a normal sized CD down to about 75 megs whereas alt-preset-extreme takes a CD down to about 100 megs. I ripped all 102 of my CDs following that guide and they take up 9.23 gigs - which these days is no problem with the huge hard drives on the market.

[lxl]

EAC + Monkey's Audio = best option

[duz]

If you got an iPod, use itunes, just make sure to set the options to mp3 if you want greater compatibility.

[firteen88]

by using itunes, can i put the mps'3 on my hard drive as well as onjto the ipod? if so, how?

[duz]

When you rip using itunes it'll save the files to your music directory which is set in the options. it'll also add them to the music library and from there you can control sending them to the ipod.

[Gunshy]

Originally posted by lxl
EAC + Monkey's Audio = best option

Monkey is lossless compression correct? I use FLAC as it seemed to be more popular than other lossless codecs around (so I figure it will be around a while). Why do you like Monkey?

-Gunshy

[mtucker]

Personally I use EAC + LAME but it isn't the easiest to set up. CDEx is a little easier to set up. Honestly if you want to go the easiest possible path to the ipod I would use itunes as it will rip the CD's and control the transfer to the ipod as well.