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CDex

Submitted by Peter on Sat, 2010-01-30 12:29

CDex is a CD ripper and audio file format converter. You can convert your CDs to files on disk for playback without scratching those delicate disks. You know how easy it is to scratch CDs when you slide them into a disk tray. Hard disk space is cheap and modern hard disks last 5 years without problems. Copying all those CDs to disk makes real sense. CDex is the open source choice for Windows.

Audio file formats

The CD can be copied to disk in the original raw PCM format for editing. Practically nothing plays the format.

WAV is a lossless format common on windows for storing 100% of the music with no sound loss in a format that is easily played back on the computer. Most old MP3 rubbish devices and phones will not play the WAV format because they were only ever designed to play squashed music into tiny ear buds that cannot reproduce music. Windows based smart phones play WAV. FLAC is a lossless alternative popular on Linux and now replacing WAV everywhere.

ACC, MP3, OGG Vorbis, and WMA are crumpled up music formats designed to save space on the ancient storage devices used last century. Vorbis has one advantage over MP3 and that is freedom from license/patent restrictions. They all squash fidelity out of you music and turn it into ear bud only pop.

FLAC

FLAC is the Free Lossless Audio Format from flac.sourceforge.net. FLAC is available on modern music players. If your music player does not play FLAC then your music player is obsolete, technical trash, history. FLAC is important because of the following features.

  • Free of patents
  • Free form license restrictions
  • Free from license fees
  • Free from the sound quality loss in MP3s
  • Includes lossless compression to keep file sizes small

Linux

There are open source equivalents for Linux.

Asunder

The Asunder CD ripper has one advantage over most of the other rippers mentioned here. Asunder can convert to multiple formats in one rip. If you want FLAC for playing back music on your computer and MP3 to squish into an old iPod, you can create both in one rip. Download Asunder from littlesvr.ca/asunder.

Sound Juicer

Sound Juicer is a clean, mean, and lean CD ripper for GNOME 2.
In Ubuntu you search for CD ripper and get Sound Juicer listed as Audio CD Extractor.

Download from burtonini.com/blog/computers/sound-juicer. The download includes encoders for Vorbis and FLAC but not ACC, MP3, or WAV. You need MP3 for stupid MP3 players that do not play the slightly better OGG Vorbis format or the lossless FLAC.

ripperX

Download ripperX from sourceforge.net/projects/ripperx.

soundKonverter

soundKonverter is just a graphical front end for audio utility programs, the available functions depend on what else you have installed, and you have to go research the other items to find out the quality of the result. You will probably use the same utility programs as used by ripperX. The interface is KDE instead of Gnome. If you prefer KDE to Gnome, download from kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29024.