Preconditions:

• EAC installed and properly configured. Download HERE.
• Nero Digital Audio Encoder, which you can download from HERE.

Let’s start ripping!

1. After you download NeroDigitalAudio.zip, move the file to your EAC folder (or save it there right away when downloading)
2. Using your favourite unzipping tool, unzip the file to that same folder.
3. Open EAC and go to the Compression Options window (F11). Once there, go to the External Compression tab.
4. In the External Compression set the options as seen in the screenshot on the right
   1. Make sure the “Use external program for compression” box is selected.
   2. On the “Parameter passing scheme” select “User defined encoder”.
   3. On the “Use file extension” write either .mp4 or .m4a, whatever suits your fancy. If you are an iPod user, I suggest you use m4a.
   4. On the “Program, including path used for compression” use C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe or C:\Winnt\system32\cmd.exe depending on the name of your windows folder.
   5. It’s a little more difficult now. First, find the complete path leading to the folder where the Nero encoder is. In my computer, it is C:\Music\Rippers\EAC\win32\. Then replace the entries in the following command line with that path: /c neroaacenc.exe -q 0.45 -if %s -of %d && Neroaactag.exe %d -meta:artist=”%a” -meta:album=”%g” -meta:track=”%n” -meta:title=”%t” -meta:genre=”%m” -meta:year=”%y”
   6. Unselect the “Add ID3 tag” box
   7. Finally, exit the configuration window clicking “OK”

That command line in step 4.5 will give you VBR (Variable BitRate) files with a bitrate around 150kbps. If you want to increase or reduce quality, play with the number after -q in the range from 0.01 to 1.00 If you prefer ABR (Average BitRate) or CBR (Constant BitRate) encodes, replace the -q X.XX part in the line with -br XXX or -cbr XXX, being “XXX” the target bitrate.

Now you’re ready to rip! Just pop one music CD in your ripping drive, grab the music names from FreeDB, and click the “Rip to MP3″ button (Shift-F5). In a few minutes, you’ll have neatly tagged m4a files that you can play in foobar2000, or import into your iPod etc…

17-Dec-2007 – v1.10 – Major changes in structure, ported to new platform – Ljpp
21-July-2006 – v1.01 – Minor changes – Ljpp
19-July-2006 – v1.00 – Initial release – Roberto Amorim

Feurio! has real multitasking: While burning a CD, the next CD can be read. If you have more than one CD-Rom, data can be read from multiple CDs at the same time; during reading the tracks already read can be edited. Feurio! manages any number of projects (=CDs). Individual tracks can be freely copied to and from the projects, also the oder of the tracks can be modified easily.

Author: Jens Fangmeier
License: Shareware, unlimited trial

Supports all popular audio file formats such as 3G2, 3GP, MP1, MP2, MP3, Windows Media Audio, Ogg Vorbis, MP4, M4A (AAC and Apple Lossless), AAC, aacPlus (HE-AAC, AAC+, HE-AAC+PS, eAAC+), FLAC, Musepack, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Monkey’s Audio, CUE and M3U.

Easy CD-DA Extractor is a four-in-one software that includes the following modules:1) Audio CD Ripper

Rips audio CDs with accurate, secure, high-performance CD ripping engine. Bypasses ‘copy-protections’. Reads CDs that are in bad condition and reports possible errors on the disc. Automatically downloads disc information such as Artist, Track Titles, etc, and Cover Art image from the Internet. Allows editing of ID3/metadata and can embed advanced metadata fields such as Cover Art image to the files. Includes advanced audio processing features such as Peak Level Normalization, RMS Normalization, and Fade In/Out.

2) Audio File Format Converter

Music Converter – Converts audio files from one format to another. Allows editing of ID3/metadata and can embed advanced metadata fields such as Cover Art image to the files. Cover Art images can be downloaded from the Internet using the brilliant ‘Amazon Search’ feature. Can perform advanced audio processing such as Peak Level Normalization, RMS Normalization, and Fade In/Out.

3) Audio CD Creator

Writes Audio CDs that are compatible with all home/car CD-players. Burns Audio CDs on-the-fly from all audio file formats. Writes CD-Text (a CD-Text compatible CD-player can display the track titles while playing the CD).BURN-Proof enabled for error-free CD burning.

4) MP3/WMA CD Creator

Writes MP3 CDs and WMA CDs that are playable on a CD/DVD-player that supports the feature. MP3 and WMA CDs can also be played on a regular CD-ROM drive of a computer. Supports long JOLIET-filenames. Can also be used to write standard Data CDs. BURN-Proof enabled for error-free CD burning.
Author: Poikosoft

License: Shareware

• It is free (for non-commercial purposes)
• It works with a technology, which reads audio CDs almost perfectly. If there are any errors that can’t be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with e.g. the media player

With other audio grabbers you usually need to listen to every grabbed wave because they only do jitter correction. Scratched CDs read on CD-ROM drives often produce distortions. But listening to every extracted audio track is a waste of time. Exact Audio Copy conquer these problems by making use of several technologies like multi-reading with verify and AccurateRip.

Author: Andre Wiethoff
License: Freeware (for non-commercial use)

• Lame MP3 encoder
• Internal MP2 encoder
• APE lossles audio format
• Ogg Vorbis encoder
• The Windows MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer MP3 encoder)
• NTT VQF encoder
• FAAC encoder
• Windows WMA8 encoder

In addition, WAV files on the hard drive can be converted to a Compressed Audio File (and visa versa). CDex also supports many audio file tag formats like the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags, which can be automatically inserted as part of the ripping process.

Author: Albert L. Faber
License: GPL, Open Source