I don't know, haven't been using Windows since a long time ago, but given the fact that ripping CDs isn't that common nowadays I'd be surprised if a new tool came out that is better than EAC.
I had this kind of revelation like 2days ago when I woke up to go to the toilet, drink some water and sleep again. I don't even know exactly why this thought came to me, it was a big discovery. Wanted to make a showerthought or til post, but never made. What a cool fun fact.
(Also it's even more amazing the fact that someone made a post about cd rippers here (on an already obscure platform) and both you and I read this post. Wow.)
Edit: I recently found K3B as I'm in the process of moving to NixOS from win10. Seems like a good program.
Did they change the name eventually or was their some kind of fork of CloneCD? Because I do remember CloneCD but I also remember using another piece of software later on that was literally exactly the same with just 1 or 2 more features, but had a totally different name and used the same logo but in a different color. Could have been the DVD version, maybe... It's been so long. 🤔
You're going to hate me, I used iTunes for ripping back in the windows XP days. It was the first program I met that would recognize titles and get album art. I used iTunes to manage my collection as well.
I don't know if I ever used iTunes to rip music but I did buy an iPod in 2005 so I used iTunes for that for a while. I ran into a bug with it though where it would fuck up the song database on my iPod and half the songs showed up on the iPod as unknown, everything was fine in iTunes. Found out pretty quickly after I discovered that that Winamp could handle loading music into an iPod and never had the problem again.
There's a good mod for it now that replaces the hard drive with an adapter for two SD cards, and it would let you put a shit ton of storage on it. If you've got some spare cash and patience I'd definitely recommend it.
Lol I'd hit the library on my way home in high school, get a bunch of CDs rip, return the next day and leave with a new batch... The antitheft sticker made the discs unbalanced, so I ended up RMAing my drive three times in 4 months, before the store just gave me my money back and canceled the sale.
At the time ripping library CDs was legal, so I got like 25 albums each week, 4 weeks a months and 4 months total, so about 400 albums, legally (but ethically? No) for free.
I think I just used the ripper in MusicMatch Jukebox that came with my computer. It was only the "shareware" version, so I was limited to 96 kbps.
I still have many of those in my collection. When I throw on the actual CD or hear it in a higher/lossless format, they sound "wrong" because I'm still so used to the crappy 96kbps rips I had with me on my MP3 player for years.
On the plus side, those smaller files let me fit several more songs onto my 64 MB MP3 player from 2001 or so (it used a parallel port to transfer lol)
Audiograbber with the LAME codec. Actually still have it on my computer. I still buy the random CD now and again and rip it to my media server, and then never touch it again.
dMC. it might have been the first one i 'found', and just kept using it; up to r9, i think. after that i just used 'whatever' a distro had on linux or wmp on windows.
I don't remember what it was called, but it came with a weird spongy thing that was supposed to make it easier to apply sticker labels. I was young and stupid and thought the sponge thing would also copy the label somehow.
No idea. Whatever was the kde standard at the time I suppose.
I do remember feeding the online cd database though, back when it was still a group effort, before some asshole stole all of the data (same with the imdb on Usenet).
I didn't rip CDs but I did use StreamRipper, which was created by my officemate at the time, Jon Clegg (not the British comedian). To avoid getting sued into bankruptcy he eventually had to dissociate himself from the software after record industry lawyers sent him C&D letters - which I just now found online, holy crap! We were working together as contractors at Microsoft at the time. He was a very clever and cool guy. Hope you're out there still kicking ass, Jon!
I don't know about still maintained, but it's one of those pieces of software that did one task, did it well, and the one part you might want to update (the encoder) was a plugin. As such, even though it's not seen any significant update since 2004, it's really the only CD ripper I've ever used. All the way back to some old Pentium machine where ripping and encoding a CD to MP3 took longer than it would to play it. Though the times I've needed it in the past few years has dropped off considerably, and if I had to rip a CD today I'd actually have to boot up an old machine that still has an optical drive.
Started with Music Match Jukebox that came on an install CD with my first ever MP3 player, then windows media player 10 came out. Eventually I learned about FLAC so I re-ripped everything with EAC
I had a CD drive driver that would make windows explorer show CD audio discs as folders for quality levels, and then the tracks as files. Pick the ones you wanted, drag them somewhere, and get PCM wav files of the tracks. Encode them at your leisure. I miss that utility.
dBpoweramp. Always worked really well but the UI was weird. It's bizarre, I have a bunch of CDs I need to rip and was thinking about the topic recently.
Exact Audio Copy. Open source and guaranteed perfect copy. Most fast ones would have single bit errors.
Same. EAC + LAME using config guides from NMP3s at the SomethingAwful forums, and then later Oink.
what.cd represent! This is the gold standard and if anyone is coming here for advice an what to use themselves, this is it.
EAC is closed source freeware. Still the best tool back then under Windows
Still is, right? (Open for recommendations)
I don't know, haven't been using Windows since a long time ago, but given the fact that ripping CDs isn't that common nowadays I'd be surprised if a new tool came out that is better than EAC.
CDex
I couldn't remember but knew someone would post the name.
never used it to rip discs, but it was the very first windows program i used for recording analog inputs to convert tapes and records to digital.
That's the one. It would pull data from online so you wouldn't have to enter all the track names.
Nero(n) burning ROM(e)
Later K3B.
Oh my god, how could I not have seen that. Now the icon makes sense too.
I had this kind of revelation like 2days ago when I woke up to go to the toilet, drink some water and sleep again. I don't even know exactly why this thought came to me, it was a big discovery. Wanted to make a showerthought or til post, but never made. What a cool fun fact.
(Also it's even more amazing the fact that someone made a post about cd rippers here (on an already obscure platform) and both you and I read this post. Wow.)
Edit: I recently found K3B as I'm in the process of moving to NixOS from win10. Seems like a good program.
Same
Alcohol 120%
Nice, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time!
Didn't Nero have this on-the-fly (as if flies could burn anything) copying or am I confusing DVD and audio here?
Yes, I remember this. But if the dvd wasn't closed properly it would have read issues on other computers.
Fooobar2000
Still have so many flac files from that.
Foob is the best audio player/tagger/ripper/converter ever
Something about a Sheep? I don't remember its name. Just the logo was supposed to be Dolly the Sheep (the one that was cloned).
Elby CloneCD... And how am I just realizing that's why they used a sheep... Doh
Did they change the name eventually or was their some kind of fork of CloneCD? Because I do remember CloneCD but I also remember using another piece of software later on that was literally exactly the same with just 1 or 2 more features, but had a totally different name and used the same logo but in a different color. Could have been the DVD version, maybe... It's been so long. 🤔
Elby (still) have a few products, with similar names and logos. I still use Virtual Clone drive sometimes to mount BIN/CUE.
Maybe CloneDVD?
Ah. I think I was thinking of the Elby name.
You're going to hate me, I used iTunes for ripping back in the windows XP days. It was the first program I met that would recognize titles and get album art. I used iTunes to manage my collection as well.
I don't know if I ever used iTunes to rip music but I did buy an iPod in 2005 so I used iTunes for that for a while. I ran into a bug with it though where it would fuck up the song database on my iPod and half the songs showed up on the iPod as unknown, everything was fine in iTunes. Found out pretty quickly after I discovered that that Winamp could handle loading music into an iPod and never had the problem again.
I still do. My iPod classic is still going strong. I use it every day
I miss my iPod so much
I tried turning it into a hard drive and messed up the partitions
It still in a box at my parents house I should pay it a visit
There's a good mod for it now that replaces the hard drive with an adapter for two SD cards, and it would let you put a shit ton of storage on it. If you've got some spare cash and patience I'd definitely recommend it.
Same. Still have a bunch of ALAC files from taking my MacBook to the library.
Lol I'd hit the library on my way home in high school, get a bunch of CDs rip, return the next day and leave with a new batch... The antitheft sticker made the discs unbalanced, so I ended up RMAing my drive three times in 4 months, before the store just gave me my money back and canceled the sale.
At the time ripping library CDs was legal, so I got like 25 albums each week, 4 weeks a months and 4 months total, so about 400 albums, legally (but ethically? No) for free.
Windows Media Player did the job for me.
Same until I got an MP3 player and it didn't know what the fuck a .wma file was. Had to re-rip them to a proper format.
I think I just used the ripper in MusicMatch Jukebox that came with my computer. It was only the "shareware" version, so I was limited to 96 kbps.
I still have many of those in my collection. When I throw on the actual CD or hear it in a higher/lossless format, they sound "wrong" because I'm still so used to the crappy 96kbps rips I had with me on my MP3 player for years.
On the plus side, those smaller files let me fit several more songs onto my 64 MB MP3 player from 2001 or so (it used a parallel port to transfer lol)
Every time I think back I picture Winamp. And sure enough I looked it up and Winamp could rip tracks and the UI is exactly what I remember
So: Winamp
Winamp
Audiograbber with the LAME codec. Actually still have it on my computer. I still buy the random CD now and again and rip it to my media server, and then never touch it again.
dMC. it might have been the first one i 'found', and just kept using it; up to r9, i think. after that i just used 'whatever' a distro had on linux or wmp on windows.
KAudio....something. It was a KDE tool that could rip and encode in parallel.
i remember acidrip. i remember it was a gtk program, written in some interpreted language: perl or python.
Whoa. Blast from the past.
My only objection is '00's
Infants
I don't remember what it was called, but it came with a weird spongy thing that was supposed to make it easier to apply sticker labels. I was young and stupid and thought the sponge thing would also copy the label somehow.
Something command line based on Linux that produced mp3. I don't remember the name.
Winamp. Still do.
Same! Still kicks the llama's ass.
I was on Linux and used grip
That one. Was great. Software used to be fun
No idea. Whatever was the kde standard at the time I suppose.
I do remember feeding the online cd database though, back when it was still a group effort, before some asshole stole all of the data (same with the imdb on Usenet).
I didn't rip CDs but I did use StreamRipper, which was created by my officemate at the time, Jon Clegg (not the British comedian). To avoid getting sued into bankruptcy he eventually had to dissociate himself from the software after record industry lawyers sent him C&D letters - which I just now found online, holy crap! We were working together as contractors at Microsoft at the time. He was a very clever and cool guy. Hope you're out there still kicking ass, Jon!
I don't know about still maintained, but it's one of those pieces of software that did one task, did it well, and the one part you might want to update (the encoder) was a plugin. As such, even though it's not seen any significant update since 2004, it's really the only CD ripper I've ever used. All the way back to some old Pentium machine where ripping and encoding a CD to MP3 took longer than it would to play it. Though the times I've needed it in the past few years has dropped off considerably, and if I had to rip a CD today I'd actually have to boot up an old machine that still has an optical drive.
Started with Music Match Jukebox that came on an install CD with my first ever MP3 player, then windows media player 10 came out. Eventually I learned about FLAC so I re-ripped everything with EAC
Not old enough to answer the question, but I used iTunes when I was a wee lad. Now I use Exact Audio Copy.
Tracker or cdparanoia. IIRC cdparanoia was more reliable.
I had a CD drive driver that would make windows explorer show CD audio discs as folders for quality levels, and then the tracks as files. Pick the ones you wanted, drag them somewhere, and get PCM wav files of the tracks. Encode them at your leisure. I miss that utility.
makemkv.
Since nobody else has said it yet - that's before my time. I'll ask my folks.
dBpoweramp. Always worked really well but the UI was weird. It's bizarre, I have a bunch of CDs I need to rip and was thinking about the topic recently.
I remember using CDParanoia on Linux and some GUI for it (Sound Juicer?), CDex and Exact Audio Copy.
Audiograbber for a while, then used Foobar2000 since I always had it open anyway, and then finally EAC because its the best and I am still using it.
I use sound juicer. I used it this month.
I did use AudioGrabber at the turn of the century though.