help configuring mp3 ripper

[DarkTXKnight]

I have a machine that is sitting in the corner of my office that I use for guests who game with me or my wife and I was wanting to turn it into a machine that would rip my 100 + CD collection into MP3 so that I have lan access to the music in the house. The machine is a 1.2 GHZ Duron, 1 IDE 40GB , 2 SCSI 9 GB, DVD ROM and 52x CDRW with 512 MB RAM. Can anyone tell me what I would have to get software wise that would enable me to set the machine up to just pop in CDs and rip them one by one??? Are there any websites I can be directed to??? Thanks in advance!

 

[DarkTXKnight]

bump

 

[Sid59]

HERE YOU GO

he uses EAC + Lame .. the best combo for MP3s

 

[BlueWeasel]

I think your best bet would to go with either CDex or EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

You are going to need Internet access on that system, unless you want to manually type in the name of the artist and each track individually. Both CDex and EAC can search the CDDB for the information and import the album and track names in about 5 seconds. Once that's completed, it's just a matter of starting the conversion and letting the system do it's thing...

If HD space is not an issue (it doesn't appear to be), I would rip all the songs using a minimum bitrate of 192K. The higher bitrate means better quality, but will also take up more space.

For example, using a 192K bitrate, a "typical" 12-song CD takes up 70-80mb of HD space in MP3 format. Assuming you have 125 CD's x 80mb each = 10.0GB of space. Since you have alot of HD space available, you might consider going to an even high bitrate (256K or 320K)

FYI, I have an AMD XP 2000+ with a Lite-on DVD drive that I use to rip my CD's to MP3, and it takes roughly 20-30 seconds to rip a song to a 192K MP3.

 

[Wiktor]

Yes, EAC with Lame encoder is most widely used. And don't worry about the fact that EAC is still a beta... And Lame is just the .exe file that you will need to bind to EAC. Not very user friendly but best sound quality for mp3.