[zachary]

Hi,
I have a real dumb question that everybody will probably know the answer to, but I don't

.

I have some audio CDs I would like to play on my mp3 player (iriver ifp). Is there a free software that allows me to convert them with little or no loss that doeznt take a billion hours (right now I am using Windows media to copy them to my computer, I am not even sure what I will do that either way).

I am new to this stuff and at a real loss

Thanks,

Zach

 

[zachary]

p.s. I downloaded flac but i am not sure what it does or how to use it

 

[titaniumx3]

I doubt your iriver mp3 player can play FLAC files. Flac is a lossless encoder, i.e. the music files are of identical quality to the original audio CD, but unfortunately only a few portable mp3 players support this format. It is more likely your mp3 player supports MP3 (obviously!) and probably OGG. Mp3 gives excellent sound quality at high bitrate and is supported by almost everything, where as OGG gives better quality for the same bitrate (hence you can fit more music on to your mp3 player with the same sound quality), but it drains your mp3 player battery a bit more.

There are many free programs that allow you to rip audio-cds to mp3/ogg. A very simple and efficient program I sometimes use is dBpowerAMP Music Converter (DMC). There are more complicated programs like EAC (Exact Audio Copy) that give arguably better results. I personally use EAC, but you have to set it up correctly in order to get good results, there are various EAC guides out there that can easily be found through google search.

 

[Bleed]

try this here http://www.bestmp3guide.com/ its where I learned how to use EAC

. I also use dBpowerAMP Music Converter (DMC) sometimes, but most of the time I use EAC now to rip to FLAC, then have Foobar2000 convert it to LAME if I want to transfer them into my mp3 player.

 

[Asr]

The best and most idiot-proof software would have to be CDex. Google it for a download.

 

[DigDub]

yea. i would say cdex is easy to use and produces very good rips. i use that if i'm too lazy for eac.