What's everyone's favorite CD-Ripper?

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

There are so many to choose from. What's your favorite?

Jim

[Bleeding Edge]

Navy. Don't go to that site.

Bad reference Killer, you know better.

[Pantion]

MusicMatch Box

It does all I need and the demo is very complete. So if you don't want to register for a while no prob all the features you need are enabled.

I registered and only got a couple of good things from it... unless you have a guilty concience well pay for it.

[Joel Kleppinger]

AudioCatalyst.

There's Nothing better. I've used MusicMatchBox for a while, then when I got AudioCatalyst, I dumped it. With AudioCatalyst, everything is totally easy - just load up the CD, hit CDDB to download the track names, and then click grab to rip/encode all of them.

Of course, ease of use isn't everything. Power is what we all crave anyway. That's what I love about AudioCatalyst - the ability to rip at different speeds - using buffered burst copy (possible buffer over/under flow) or a sync width (which guarantees no packet loss, but somewhat slower). You can even choose between dynamic or a fixed sync width between 1 and 10, 1 being the fastest.

You can also choose to encode on the fly during the rip, or rip to a wav and encode from there. The encoding options are immense, choices between a fixed or variable bit rate encoding - with different quality levels for each. Personally, since I use my computer as my sound system (SB Live! Value, Cambridge FPS speakers (front channel) and JBL Media 2000 speakers (rear channel), both with subs), quality is vital so I only use variable bit rate(vbr)/highest quality to get the best possible sound with interest in saving space. I honestly can't tell the difference between a CD and a vbr/high quality mp3 - I've tried.

It all comes down to the use of it - with buffered burst copy to wav, then to mp3, I can rip at 17-27x with my 50x Digital Research CD-ROM. With fixed sync width 1 (my usual) and with encoding on the fly enabled, I can rip/encode at 7-9x with either my 50x CD-ROM or my 10/40x DVD-ROM. A perfect mp3 every 30-40 seconds.

No, I'm not a salesman for them - just a very, very happy user.

Oh, and I've made approximately 600 mp3s using AudioCatalyst, and I've done the rip/encode using fixed sync width for at least 300 of them.

[bigslammer]

I might have missed it but is there a cost for audiocatalyst. is it freeware or shareware. and if so how much

[Bleeding Edge]

AudioCatalyst is as good as Joel states -no doubt about it. But don't dismiss MusicMatch's Jukebox. For the past couple revisions, JukeBox is just as good. It even lets you record from the "line-in". Direct from a turntable, tape player, MiniDisc, etc. The only real difference now (and it is a big difference) is the interface.

~edit
Guys, I'm wondering if Navy is referring to CD-R software instead of an mp3 encoder. If this is the case, other software should be recommended.

[This message has been edited by Bleeding Edge (edited 11-11-1999).]

[KillerBug]

[This message has been edited by KillerBug (edited 11-11-1999).]

[Joel Kleppinger]

AudioCatalyst is available in a slightly disabled version (only half the tracks on a CD are available for ripping/encoding - randomly selected - and no encoding mp3s directly from wav files) and the full version is something like $20-30. I forget exactly.

The disabled version is very usable.