MP3tag makes light work of tagging all your music files
If you just want to play a few MP3s, create a playlist or two, then Windows Media Player will help you get started.
Otherwise,
though, the program is probably the worst of all worlds - not
particularly powerful, or easy to use - and most people will be better
off with something else.
What,
exactly? That all depends on your needs. There are programs to help
automatically tag your music, download album art and more.
Others
will clean up even the messiest MP3 collection, quickly organising
files into sensibly-named folders. And of course you'll need a great
player, to ensure your music sounds its best.
This doesn't have to
be complicated, though, because there are plenty of free tools around
which can do all of this (and a whole lot more). Just keep reading for
our pick of the best free MP3 software to download.
1. iTunes
ITunes
is a player; a media browser and organiser, and a tool to help set up
your iPod, iPhone and iPad. The iTunes Store helps you to discover new
content, and of course you're able to buy some of it, too.
The
latest version is more stripped down, too, with a simpler, cleaner
interface. Most of the key playback options can be controlled from the
Mini Player, creating and managing playlists is easier, and the store
works more like it does with iPhones and iPads. ITunes
is all about Apple devices, of course, and it does its best to get you
into the store (you can't get album art until you're logged in, for
instance). But if you don't mind that, this is an excellent player and
organiser, and now easier to use than ever.
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2. MusicZen
If
your Music folder is a real mess, with MP3s scattered everywhere, then
getting them properly organised can seem like a real challenge - until
you run MusicZen.
Point
the program at your folder and it can scan all your MP3s, reading their
tags, then copying (or moving) them to new folders based on the artist,
album, song title and more. The
files will be consistently renamed, too, so those odd mixes of upper
and lower cases, the dash and underscore separators will disappear.
And the program is incredibly simple, with no complex settings to master - you'll have your MP3s reordered in seconds.
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3. MP3jam
There are plenty of YouTube search tools around, but MP3jam is a little different: instead of accessing videos, it's all about music.
Just
enter a search term - an artist, a song or album title - and it'll
quickly return any results (complete with album art, in some cases). Each
song title has a "play" button, allowing you to stream it from the web.
You can alternatively download individual songs or entire albums, and
the program automatically organises these into folders for you.
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4. Winamp
After 16 years of development, it's no surprise that Winamp is one of the most capable music players and managers around.
The
program supports 60+ audio and video formats. It can quickly scan your
PC for audio files (or import your iTunes library), then organise your
music in many different ways, you can create playlists, update and edit
your MP3 tags, read more about your favourite artists and access
thousands of free audio and video channels. If you need more, there are thousands of plug-ins to explore, and even an Android app.
All
these features do make for an occasionally complex interface, and it'll
take a while to figure out how everything works. But if you need a
powerful player then Winamp remains a good choice.
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5. MediaMonkey
ITunes
is great, if you want to work with iOS devices. If you also have an
Android phone or tablet, though - or you're just looking for a better
organiser - then it could be time to give MediaMonkey a try.
The program quickly imports even the largest music libraries, and can
then automatically rename your MP3s, moving them into a logical folder
structure, automatically fixing tags and alerting you to any duplicates.
There
are lots of playlist options, while the core player offers lots of
features and can be extended with a huge range of effects.
If you
want to share your music, it's easy to sync with Apple or Android (and
other) devices, or UPnP/ DNLA devices (TVs, Blu-ray players and more).
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6. Advanced Renamer
Advanced Renamer
is an amazingly powerful tool for renaming, copying or moving files. If
your MP3 library is a mess, then it can give your files new names from
their audio tags, change the case of a file name, add or remove text,
change a file's attributes or timestamps, maybe copy or move MP3's to
new locations based on their tags (specific folders for that artist or
album, say). All
this power comes at a price, though - Advanced Renamer has a steep
learning curve. Experts will love its configurability, and the program
isn't only for MP3s. It works just as well with images, videos and other
file types.
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7. Foorbar2000
If other MP3 organisers and players seem too bulky and complicated, you might prefer Foorbar2000.
Just
like the competition, the program helps you build and organise your
music library, create playlists, sort out your tags, and more. The
interface is very configurable, while a strong core player supports
lots of formats, gapless playback, and Replaygain to level out volume
across tracks, and more.
Yet despite all this, foorbar2000
requires only 7MB of hard drive space (Winamp needs about 10x more), and
can even be installed in "portable" mode, so it won't touch your
Registry or install any other components at all.
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8. Freemake Audio Converter
Just as its name suggests, Freemake Audio Converter is an excellent tool for converting audio files into a more useful format.
There's
support for writing MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A and OGG files.
Various audio settings (bitrate, sample rate, channels) help you get the
best compromise between image quality and file size. The
program can join audio files together, or export its conversions
directly to iTunes, and it's even possible to extract and convert the
soundtrack of most video files.
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9. MP3tag
Changing
the tags of one MP3 file is easy (right-click, Properties >
Details). When it's hundreds, maybe thousands of tracks, though, you'll
need a tool like MP3tag.
The
program can automatically import data from various web resources
(Amazon, discogs, freedb, MusicBrainz, more), replacing tags in multiple
files without you typing anything. Or
you can apply your own rules to tweak tags however you like. Tags can
then be used to rename files; there's support for downloading cover art,
too, and all this works with a range of tag formats (ID3v1.1, ID3v2.3,
ID3v2.4, MP4, WMA, APEv2 Tags and Vorbis Comments).
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10. Audacity
Audacity is a capable and feature-packed audio editor, yet is still relatively straightforward to use.
Import
an MP3 and you'll see the usual waveform-type display; it's easy to
zoom in and select the area you need, and then you can cut or delete it,
perhaps copy or paste it elsewhere.
If you need more power,
clicking the Effects menu reveals 40 options (Change Pitch, Compressor,
Equalization, Normalize and more). There are useful tools to strip off (some) vocals, or clean up recorded audio by removing clicks and other noises.
If
this isn't enough then support for LADSPA, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit
plug-ins allows you to extend the program even further.
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11. VLC Media Player
If you're looking for a player which is simple, easy to use, but also has some power when you need it, then grab a copy of VLC Media Player.
You
can use the program as a very simple, on-demand player. Select one MP3
or an entire album and it'll begin playing, and the interface can be
reduced to a single toolbar, maybe some album art. The
program works with just about every media type, though (music, video,
CDs, discs, devices, streams). There's simple media library management,
playlist creation and tag editing.
A graphic equalizer,
compressor and spatializer help deliver great sound, the interface is
extremely configurable, and plug-ins add more power when you need it.
I ran into some problems using Windows and my old audio CD ripper, so I began a search for a replacement. Below is a great article on the subject from Gizmo's. The Fairstars CD Ripper is my new favorite.
Introduction
There are lots of rippers available. All media players including
Windows Media Player can rip. There are also some great freebies plus a
host of commercial rippers. Most will rip to WAV, MP3 and usually
several other formats.
If your CDs are like mine then some are scratched or have lots of
finger-marks. These can cause pops and crackles in the ripped file.
Rippers vary greatly in their ability to handle these problems. Some
will simply get stuck while others will skip forward over the problem or
even create a silent gap. The best programs will try repeatedly to fix
the problem with no audible effects.
After a lot of experimentation, I ended up with five free CD rippers that were impressive with their features.
Discussion
Fairstars CD Ripper is the best ripper on our list. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.
Fairstars CD Ripper is an excellent utility to rip audio from a music
CD in a variety of formats including WMA, MP3, FLAC, OGG, APE, WAV and
the not so common VQF.
In contrast iTunes wouldn't allow support for open source codecs such as OGG.
What pleasantly surprised me was that Fairstars CD Ripper doesn't
feature an autorun option. This means that you can pop in an audio CD
and expect to rip without launching the program directly. Although this
can be a short toe, it wouldn't really bother the average user who would
have a handy desktop shortcut.
The program doesn't allow a user to tweak the settings for an output
format on the same pane; you have to click on options and then browse
down to the required format in the tree and adjust settings there.
It allows you to query for info. The button is nicely placed. This
can be a life saver! It also allows you to enable ID3 tags in options.
Let me now go into the details of my extraction. I have a Realtek HD
sound card... not very high end and ripped at 320kbps in MP3 format,
Constant Bit Rate, 44khz sampling rate. Again the extract button is
nicely placed and follows up in a nice order to the buttons from the
left.
There's an 'output file name preview' if you're interested.
My desktop has a Core i7 processor and I was done with ripping in
around 3 minutes, which is a good speed. I used the encode with high
speed option under options. Turned out to be pretty nippy. Thank you!
Another very amusing fact is that it chose to rip into a separate 'My
Music' folder in my 'Local' drive rather than the regular 'My Music'
folder in 'My Documents'. This can be a good thing. I can always check
on the quality of the ripped music before I finally move everything into
my 'My Music' folder to sync with my iPod. Most CD rippers do this
anyway.
The quality of the extracted music is very good and up to what is
expected. The music sounds natural; there are no alterations. The volume
level can be adjusted again in options, although I didn't find it
necessary for the CD I was ripping.
If you're unhappy with the the extraction you could always do this
again and if the files exist it will automatically rename the files.
I reran the program. It is very light and doesn't crash or freeze... far from it.
Though the other products reviewed here were capable, Exact Audio Copy (EAC) was outstanding in its ability to handle CD imperfections.
If you head over to any audio forum one of the most common tools
discussed among experts would be EAC. There are so many options for
editing from the command line, the list is virtually endless. If you are
an audiophile, this is the ripper for you. At the same time, beginners
would want to stick with some of the other rippers mentioned in this
list which includes our top pick, Fairstars CD Ripper.
I recently started the long task of ripping my 1200 CDs to my hard
disk. I'm now two thirds of the way through my ripping exercise. Of the
800 or so CDs ripped I've only had 7 tracks that EAC couldn't rip
perfectly. Given the condition of some of my CDs, that's a mighty
impressive performance.
EAC can rip to WAV, MP3 (using the LAME encoder), OGG, FLAC, APE and
more. You could add any custom encoder from the Add encoder dialog in
the Compression Options window.
This is one piece of software that may not require as many updates as it encourages the use of third party tools.
The interface for Fre:ac
is a bit too plain. You can see it all too clearly in our screenshot.
But that said, it allows a lot of tweaking for each encoder. You can
also find files matching by patterns. That's why it's up here in our
list.
I tried the rip at 320 kbps and much to my surprise the output is clear and well rounded.
This is a portable application so you can install to a usb stick and
take it with you. Fre:ac comes in 38 languages. Check to see if yours is
included.
Comes with support for Lame, OGG Vorbis, FAAC, FLAC, and Bonk
Encoders. An encoder for VQF format is available at the Fre:ac website: www.freac.org
Fre:ac can use Winamp 2 input plugins to support more file formats.
Copy the in_*.dll files to the Fre:ac directory to enable Fre:ac to read
these formats. You can also submit freedb entries that include Unicode
characters.
Of course there is jitter correction that can be enabled in the
configurations dialog. In addition to which, there is a special paranoia
mode. Doesn't have support for APE which is a little sad though Monkeys
Audio is a format that has been sadly overlooked.
The same goes for the Fre:ac ripper. This great opensource project has somehow been overlooked.
Free Rip Mp3 is another really cool CD ripper. It extracts audio tracks from CD to MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC and OGG Vorbis.
What's more? If you really need the feature, it can extract more than one track into a single audio file.
I used the same PC I used for Fairstars to perform the extraction
again. Before that a quick word about the interface. To start with it is
a little difficult to locate the encoding options: not just because of
where its positioned but because of the layout. It just seems a bit
cramped.
That said the program makes a clear distinction of whether you would
like to go with a ripper, a converter or a tagger. Of course I chose the
ripper and ended up with this screen.
As always I chose 44khz MP3, encoding at 320kbps. It's all in the
same pane, so if you want to opt for OGG or FLAC, you can do it in a
jiffy.
This took me a little longer than Fairstars CD Ripper to accomplish
the rip. A note on the sound quality: I found it to be a little closed
as compared to the earlier rips but the vocals sound even more natural.
It is quite as sharp as I would want it to be.
Apart from being a ripper, it is also a converter and a tagger which
ought to enhance its usefulness, but haven't we seen all these features
already? This still ranks number 4 though.
And no crashes at all in reruns.
CD rippers interact strongly with your CD hardware and so it's
possible EAC or the above mentioned others may not work with your
particular CD drive. If that's the case, take a look at CDex. While its performance with scratched CDs is not as good as EAC, it's still an outstanding and capable free product.
It can convert to WAV, MP3 (using the LAME Encoder) OGG, APE, and more.
An especially nice feature of CDex is the ability to transcode one
compressed file format to another, while EAC does not have this option.
It also has the feature of recording straight from analog in.
Audiograbber
is the last CD Ripper on our list but be sure not to ignore this one
bit. It is a nifty good piece of software and the developer has taken it
up to put in multi-language help files that are accurate and user
friendly. Now how does the ripper itself work? Getting to that in just a
bit.
The website says that it can actually read many different cd drives…
So I put a CD ROM drive from way back in 1998 to the test and to my
amazement it read it quite well. I wouldn’t comment on the speed of
ripping though. Now I did try two other external DVD –RW drives as well
(recent ones of course) and it read the CDs quite well. In addition to
its other features, it would commonly share with other CD Rippers on our
list. It has Line-in sampling as well. This is a wonderful little CD
Ripper delightfully made by its creator that offers up almost any option
you could ask for.
Why is it here on our list then, well shouldn’t it be higher up? It
should be and it would have been right there at the top had it not been
for the Funmoods search settings that it installs and a tab to go along
with it. I think that changing my search settings can be a real bother
and I am sure quite a few of you out there would share the same feeling.
So here it is Audiograbber. If you are willing to put up with the fact
that it hasn’t been updated in quite a while and the Funmoods tab, then
this might be the CD Ripper for you.
Gizmo's Freeware award as the best product in its class!
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
ID3 tags in options.
It allows you to query for info . The button is nicely placed.
The quality of the extracted music is very good and is sharp.
if the files exist it will automatically rename the files.
lightweaight and no crashes or freezes fastest in our tests.
doesn't feature an auto-run
option
The program doesn't allow a user to tweak the settings for an output
format on the same pane, you've to click on options and then browse down
to the required format in the tree and adjust settings there
There is no portable version of this product available.
Windows 95/7
Additional software required: LAME Encoder - available here.
Non-English languages supported: many available here.
Free Rip Mp3
4
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
The program makes a clear
distinction between whether you would like to go with a ripper, a
converter or a tagger. vocals sound even more natural though it sounds a
bit closed
To start with it is a little
difficult to locate the encoding options. This took me a little longer
than Fairstars Cd Ripper to accomplish the same rip.
Caution! uses a wrapped installer! - see information panel below
There is no portable version of this product available.
Compatible with all versions of Windows, including Windows 7
Uses the Offercast APN
Install Manager to install additional software you may not want. Users
may wish to consider blocking this program with their firewall as it
will attempt to connect to the internet when the installer is first run.
Audiograbber
4
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
nice clean interface
easy to use and portable
has just about ever feature you could ask for along with line in sampling
installs a third party search tool and alters browser settings
badly in need of an update
