Windows 10 Users - What Are We Using to Rip CD's and Play MP3's These Days?

Greetings all; I hope this is the right forum for this question... I considered putting it in "Audio Hardware", but it's really a software question.

I recently upgraded my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I've been using ITunes for years, but as many of you probably know, the latest versions have been a garbage fire. "Plan B" is to try installing an older version of Itunes to see how that works, but I would rather find some newer software to do the tasks of ripping and playing music (doesn't have to be the same software, necessarily).

I'm mostly looking to rip CDs to MP3 for convenience. They will be listened to primarily on my phone or on y computer speakers. If I want to listen to the full-bandwidth audio on my home stereo, I can play the CDs. If you feel obliged to point out that FLAC will give me better sound quality and that hard drives are cheap, please count to ten and read another thread instead.

As I mentioned, I've been using ITunes for a long time, and it has a lot of features that I really like, so ideally, I'd like to find something that can do some or all of these. If the UI of the current ITunes wasn't such a crapshow, I wouldn't be switching, but it is, and I am.

In approximate order of importance, here are what I consider my key requirements for a CD-ripper:

1. Rip to MP3 in one step.
2. I assume that most modern software will connect to freedb or some other online source to get album and track names, but the software I'm looking for must allow me to edit track/artist/album names before or after ripping.
   
3. The UI for editing track names, etc., must be well-designed. One of the best features of Itunes was that you could rename an entire album (or box set) without taking your hands off the keyboard.
   
4. Ability to add custom album art.
   
5. Ability to join tracks, before or after ripping.
6. Automatic organization of your files... I really liked the option Itunes had to (a) rename the MP3 files so the files play in the correct order when sorted alphabetically, and (b) organize everything in folders by artist and album, even if you were copying the files from another place on your hard drive.

For a PC music player, my needs are pretty simple. I don't even use that many playlists, so primarily I just want to pick an album or artist and play the tracks in order or shuffled.

1. As mentioned above, I want the ability to edit track names and album artwork after the files have been ripped.
2. Ability to join tracks after they've been ripped would be ace, but I know that's always dicey with MP3s.
3. If there are any applications that offer the IPod feature of "Shuffle Albums" (i.e. play each entire album start-to-finish, but select the albums in a random order), I love that feature, but it doesn't seem to be very widely-implemented.

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

 

Exact Audio Copy is essential if you're ripping CDs. You can rip it to MP3 in one step, as long as you have the LAME encoder (which is also essential, IMO).
Other software you might want to give a try:

Foobar2000 (Audio Player and Converter)
Mp3tag (Tag editor - writes tags to wav, flac, etc...)

All of these are freeware.

 

I use jRiver for ripping and playback. It does everything you require.
As you were using iTunes, were you ripping to AAC and maybe not MP3?

 

Thanks. I've used EAC on-and-off to rip WAV's since it first came out (back in the days when we traded bootleg concert recordings by mailing CD-R's to each other, like cavemen) but haven't used it much in the last 10+ years and didn't know how seamless it was to do the MP3 thing.

 

your everyday ripping software doesn't necessarily detect errors in your ripping. thats why its important to use already mentioned software "eac" which will report errors and also compare checksums to other's if you have "accurate rip" installed. eac needs a bit of experience when you set it up, different drives require different offsets. but this is rather easy to figure out.

 

Scanning for pre-emphasis SUBQ-
eac095pb3
Standard ripping-
dBpoweramp
Pre-Emphasis CD's-
Foobar 2000
MP3Tag if I need to manually split a song and re-name and index, like those hidden tracks after 20 minutes of silence
Playback-
Foobar 2000

 

Ripping I use Nero or DBPoweramp

Playing still use Winamp

 

JRiver for both of the main items.

I also use MP3Tag with my process as I rip to FLAC archive first, tweak the tags with MP3Tag, then transcode lossy for on the go listening.

 

Nero.

 

`MUSIC BEE` does EVERYTHING and more........
And it`s free.

MusicBee - The Ultimate Music Manager and Player

 

I use:

"fre:ac" for ripping (various formats, tags catcher and it can join tracks) ;

"VLC" for standard playback;

"Foobar2000" for gapless playback and conversions;

"MP3Tag" for tags edit.

I'm a fast guy, if a thing works and it's easy, here I go.

 

went to windows 10 recently, a big new machine - so I could run the entire Adobe Creative Suite - Premiere Pro and After Effects wouldnt run on 7 - not the latest versions anyway

So I'm still running a lot of the same programs I had before. For CD rip, I use Media Monkey Gold. It seems fine for this purpose, and to play mp3s, good old Foobar.

I dont really listen to music on the windows 10, and the only reason I play mp3s on a computer is to learn a new song. Foobar is better for me, for that, with the handy hot keys for "back 5 seconds" etc.

Windows 10 has these built in programs, like Groove, and if you dont find the "Settings" area, it will keep defaulting to use those instead. You have to go into Settings, Apps, find the Default section, and then click the program it has selected (usually some windows 10 thing like Groove or Movies and TV) and change it to something else.

Actually some of these windows 10 default programs arent bad. I used Groove for mp3s for a little bit, just to check it out.

 

for tagging mp3 files and adding custom artwork, I still use Mp3Tag, which was still free, the last time I checked.

 

My tools (I rip to separate FLAC files with a CUE sheet, so I can reconstruct the CD if I need to)

Ripping: CUETools and/or EAC. CUETools works faster than EAC, but EAC will rip damaged CDs better. CUETools can also repair some CD images if they are damaged
Playing/Converting: Foobar2000 with the free encoder pack, and iTunes. I use Foobar to transcode to AAC for my iPod and car using Apple's AAC encoder that comes with iTunes.

Tools:
FFMPEG, Firefox with VideoDownloadHelper - I use this toolchain to pull music from Youtube videos. I only rip stuff that is otherwise unobtainable (I like rare program music / electronic music that has long gone out of print)
VideoDownloadHelper will pull down the raw WEBM/MP4 file, and FFMPEG can extract the audio track, bit-for-bit, to an OPUS or M4A file without any conversion steps. FFMPEG is handy to have in any case, as it can convert nearly anything to anything, including audio files. It's a command line program, so it's a bit wonky to use, but there are extensive guides online that tell you what options to use to accomplish nearly anything.

MP3tag - Good batch utility for adding/modifying tags on all files

 

Foobar
Audacity
Mp3TAG
generic ripping software

 

dBpoweramp
Foobar2000 with The DarkOne skin (4k mod)

 

For ripping: dBpoweramp
dBpoweramp: mp3 Converter, CD Ripper, FLAC, Apple Lossless, WAV, AAC, AIFF. Fix album art, Asset UPnP Server

For tagging and tag correcting: Tag & Rename
Mp3 tag editor Tag&Rename - edit tag in mp3, wma, mp4 files, automatic discogs and freedb import

For music / media player software: JRiver
JRiver Media Center

There, these are excellent place to start!

 

I repurposed an obsolete 12-year-old MacBook running iTunes as my dedicated CD ripping and digital music library computer. A multi-step process involving a half-dozen individual Windows programs may be able to do it better, but this does it a whole lot easier.

Foobar2000 comes fairly close in terms of functionality, but still can't shake off the feeling it gives you of being like an old Windows 95 program that was designed for programmers to use, rather than ordinary people. I've even used an MP3 player program for DOS that was nicer-looking and easier to use than it (MPXPlay).

 

You can also use EAC to rip to FLAC, AIFF, or several other formats. I rip to FLAC.

 

On the PC:
EAC to rip
Foobar2k for playback
Qobuz app for streaming

 

It does?

 

I've not given MP3's that much thought, but do MP3s ripped with JRiver, Foobar or whatever sound better than rips from windows media player? Thanks in advance.

 

On the Windows side you can find all in one solutions as well.

Like iTunes for Windows.

 

Keep on whippin' the Llama's a$$

 

I would recommend them over WMP as LAME is still in development and is what programs like Foobar leverage.