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Audiograbber has a nice feature that allows you to normalise a batch of files as though they were a single file. I like this feature very much and use it frequently. Windows-only, though.

For curiosity, I'd like to know what sample rate is "good enough" for digitising vinyl. How does 96 KHz do? the higher the better, obviously, but at some point there's going to have to be a trade-off between file size and sample rate.

I use Audiograbber and the lame mp3 codec. http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

(drat - hit submit rather then preview - wish there was an edit)

For those looking to rip CD's, but not learn how the command line LAME encoder works, check out audiograbber. Makes quick work of turning a collection into MP3 format.

Audiograbber is great too.

I thought the easier and more acceptable solution was to press SHIFT as you inserted the CD and then rip with your favorite software. Hell, maybe even iTunes could handle it from there.

my olde SB!Live!Value! with a hoontech adaptor works pretty well hooked into my Yamaha AX1 home cinema amp using fibre. Oh yeah, the downside is that this card has a fixed 48kHz sampling rate, so playing back mp3's captured off CD means the sound has been through some mangling, but when I record* off digital satellite which is also 48kHz, the sound quality is pretty good.

* I use audiograbber, once commercial, now free, which as well as a no-brainer GUI for ripping CDs, has an excellent line-in timed-recording feature.

Why are you creating MP3's on your MP3 player?
Do you like wasting your time? Your PC will make Mp3s much faster than any Mp3 player.
If you are getting DRM protected MP3s you're using crap software.

Please try this:
1) Download Lame (Linux) or Winlame
2) Rip CD Audio to Wav using Audiograbber or EAC
3) Create Mp3's using lame, like this (lame.exe --abr 256 filename.wav filename.mp3). You can also enter the --abr 256 in Audiograbbers MP3 tab so it will do all of this automatically, including assigning a full ID3 tag to all your new DRM, HQ Mp3s.

That's it!

Besides the confusing name, Lame IS and Mp3 encoder!

I agree that OGG is excellent. In fact, I can often hear weird tinny-sounding artifacts and clicks in MP3 even at 160, while OGG sounds clean. Moreover, the sound of OGG is more, how should I say this, luscious than MP3, even when I compare OGG 80 mbps to MP3 128.

By the way, you should try that compile someone did that allowed Vorbis to encode to -2 quality at 500 BITS per second. It sounded quite amazing, considering the size...

This is what I have found in my own tests. Using Audiograbber (open-source cd ripper that supports ogg, LAME mp3 and more), I ripped several tracks into mp3 and ogg at different bitrates. I found, to my amazement, that I couldn't tell the difference between ogg at 80mbps (!) and CD most of the time. Now all of my music on my iRiver iHP-120 (around $200 for 20gb player on ebay) is in ogg, at about half the space that mp3's would take, and at better quality.

Also see this comparison of OGG, MP3 (LAME 3.91), WMA8, and MP3Pro at 64mbps and 128mbps, which I didn't believe until I reproduced the results with my own encoder.

I found everything I needed to create a streaming jukebox-like server in the open source world. I use Apache + mod_musicindex to provide an acceptable user interface. The music is streamed via Icecast. For ripping on the Windows side I prefer Audiograbber because it will rip directly to ogg. It's not opensource, but it is freeware.

The interface provided by mod_musicindex could use some improvement, but is friendly enough to use and allows for playing or shuffling everything, by artist, and by album, as well as custom playlists. Since it is opensource, I could always tweak the parts of the interface I dislike, but it's not such a big deal that I have bothered.

I can access my music from any computer with a decent player (e.g. winamp 5 on a Windows box), so I can listen to my entire collection (that I've ripped) from work (yes, I have enough bandwidth). To keep the the RIAA off my back, access from outside my home network requires a username and password.

Unfortunately, this solution isn't possible for someone unfamiliar with Linux and Apache. Plus, Icecast can be a bitch to configure properly.

Why go through all this? Do it the old school way.
You get force aspi, you get Audiocatalyst or Audiograbber, you rip your CD, and you burn a new one DRM free, or you encode it straight to MP3's.
Done! You have a CD that can be replicated indefinitely.

You may have to use Sound Forge or your favorite sound editing app to remove any DRM induced pauses/noise, but that's rare.

I'm gonna go put on my tin foil hat now...

Ever heard of TUCOWS? You can search for software there, and order by license.
AudioGrabber 1.83 is freeware, and is rated 5 stars. I used to use it to rip CDs, but the description claims it can do exactly what you need.

As far as desktop apps go, I can only discuss Windows apps, since I don't use X at all. Linux = command line as far as I'm concerned.

• Windows Only
• AVG - Antivirus, free if you don't live in Europe.
• Spybot - Antispyware, freeware.
• Winamp - Nice for playing those mp3 collections.
• Kazaa Lite - Nice for getting those mp3 collections. For the legal-minded, substitute a good cd ripping program (I don't know of a good free one, I use a pay app).
• MAME - Bring back the memories.
• Trillian - Save them from the AIM/MSN/ICQ mix and match hell.

• Cross Platform
• Tight VNC - Install it so you can remote-admin their computer easily when they screw it up.
• Mozilla - Either Moz itself or one of it's 'light' siblings Firebird and Thunderbird for email and web browsing.

• Shareware Worth Trying

• Audiograbber: It's free to try, easy to rip with, and only $20 to register.
• GetRight - Assists in downloading all those patches and apps.

As far as desktop apps go, I can only discuss Windows apps, since I don't use X at all. Linux = command line as far as I'm concerned.

• Windows Only
• AVG - Antivirus, free if you don't live in Europe.
• Spybot - Antispyware, freeware.
• Winamp - Nice for playing those mp3 collections.
• Kazaa Lite - Nice for getting those mp3 collections. For the legal-minded, substitute a good cd ripping program (I don't know of a good free one, I use a pay app).
• MAME - Bring back the memories.
• Trillian - Save them from the AIM/MSN/ICQ mix and match hell.

• Cross Platform
• Tight VNC - Install it so you can remote-admin their computer easily when they screw it up.
• Mozilla - Either Moz itself or one of it's 'light' siblings Firebird and Thunderbird for email and web browsing.

• Shareware Worth Trying

• Audiograbber: It's free to try, easy to rip with, and only $20 to register.
• GetRight - Assists in downloading all those patches and apps.

One of the more popular ripping programs for windows, Audiograbber, has supported ogg vorbis officially since at least Feb 11, 2003, and it was very simple to use it with vorbis before that, since it has plugin support to encode to anything you want.

Just bout the new Donnas CD (Spend The Night) from Amazon.com. Pre-ordered it, even! And when it arrived, I found it would not even fire up in my Dell 8100 with a CD-RW drive! I wasted the money! What really sucks is that there was NO WAY for me to tell it was copy-protected BEFORE I ordered it. Otherwise, I simply wouldn't have bought it. The CD played ok on someone else's computer with no CD-RW, but on MY laptop, it simply wouldn't even run. Couldn't get it to play at all.

I'm returning it now for a refund, but I'm out the shipping charge. So, screw Atlantic records for perpetrating this crap on me as a consumer. I'm really tempted to rip the tracks using Audiograbber (which reads the copy-protected CD's audio tracks just fine, thank you very much!) and distribute them just out of spite. I spit on such tactics - pah!

A disgruntled customer,

Joe G.
Bishop, CA

Do any MP3 rippers support 5 Disc CD-Rom changers, like Panasonic's vintage(SQ-TC520N)? Ripping with x20 speed drive, 5 discs back to back, with FreeDB Table of Contents, using one PC 5.25" bay/power/IDE space, would reduce the malingering over the computer.
WinDAC32 V1.53 ripper reportedly has some CD changer support. Audio Grabber has two cd-rom drive support, similar idea, and much more common, but not a 5 CD changer. NEC and Nakamichi also sold (sell?) changers.

My preferred ripper Audiograbber has also dropped CDDB in favor of freeDB.

This can only be a good thing.

My preferred ripper Audiograbber has also dropped CDDB in favor of freeDB.

This can only be a good thing.

(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.

Actually, based on this and the other criteria for applicability, it sounds like Jackie Franck (author of AudioGrabber) has a pretty good case for getting the AudioGrabber.com domain. This is definitely one instance that I'd like to see happen.

Some more information here from Dimension Music. Apparently Robertson simply refuses and ignores requests to have the rightful domain name handed back to their right owners. The programmer behind Audiograbber is getting pretty upset, since mp3.com wholeheartedly endorses MusicMatch, audiograbber's competitor, and audiograbber.com redirects people to mp3.com.

Audiograbber and Radium's hacked Frauhnhofer codec is your best bet for quality on a Windows platform. I don't use Linux for desktop use (I prefer UNIX-based OS'es for serving only), so I highly recommend you go with the above combination. You'll have to search on EFNet IRC for the Radium codec though, there are plenty of people on IRC that have this.

Good luck...