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Ripping CD's to MP3 Files

     - Saturday, August 13, 2005

A friend recently asked me for a recommendation for how to save his CD's on his computer in MP3 format. There are many reasons to do this. You might want to download the songs to a portable player, or maybe you want to make a compilation CD, or maybe you just want to backup your music collection. The process of ripping, or Digital Audio Extraction (DAE), can be complicated however.

So I did some research and have come up with a good option, and I thought I'd share it with my readers. The program that I've selected to recommend is called AudioGrabber. Of course it's free, and has a good selection of options. It is, however, a little complicated to install and use, so I'm going to take a minute to walk you through getting it running on your computer.

Your first step is to download Audiograbber by visiting their downloads page. After downloading and installing Audiograbber, you'll also need to get an updated MP3 encoder. Because of software patents, Audiograbber can't include an MP3 encoder in the installation. But, hey, that's why it's free, right?

For an MP3 encoder, download LAME MP3 Encoder 3.96.1 Stable from Free-Codecs.com. From the zip file that downloads, all you need is the file called "lame_enc.dll". Just put it in the same directory that Audiograbber is installed in. Now go ahead and launch Audiograbber. On the MP3 Settings page, change the Internal Encoder to LameEnc DLL. Whew, glad that's done!

Back on the General Settings page I'd also recommend changing the default directory to store files in. Under Sub Directories I also checked off Artist as Directory and Album as Directory.

So, now you're ready to pop in a CD and start ripping the files to your computer. You should also give a click on the Freedb button so you can get all the info about the CD so you don't have to type in the song titles.

Audiograbber CD-Ripper for Windows
Download Audiograbber
Download LAME MP3 Encoder 3.96.1 Stable from Free-Codecs.com

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |