[Zintu]

Hello. I'm beginning my journey into finally having great portable home audio. I love music but am almost completely technically ignorant. There will be a rather severe learning curve for me I'm afraid. I purchased the iBasso DX90. My money is tight and haven't yet purchased good headphones. My immediate interest is in ripping/converting my music cds into flac files. Can anyone recommend a simple program to do that. I downloaded "Exact Music Copy" but am totally lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[dstockwell]

I currently use JRiver, but one that i used before free and easy is FLAC Frontend http://flacfrontend.sourceforge.net/
 
dBpoweramp Reference $40
JRiver Media Center $50
Media Monkey Gold $50

 

[Zintu]

@dstockwell
 
Thanks. I downloaded flacfrontend from sourceforge.net. I need to add the flac codec but lost at what to do at that site. I will have to try to find a tutorial.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Another vote for dBpoweramp. It has great features and is very easy to use. I use it to rip CDs, convert files, edit tags and artwork, and even edit audio, among other things. It has a fully-functioning free 21 day trial that reverts to a permanently free version. You never need to upgrade unless you want the extra features. I also keep Exact Audio Copy installed for the rare cases when dBpoweramp's error correction doesn't rip error-free copies of damaged discs.
 
You could also try foobar2000, which is totally free, does many of the things dBpoweramp does, and is also a music player.

 

[Zintu]

Thank You.

 

[KewlMunky]

I also recommend dbPoweramp. I used Exact Audio Copy for a while, but I couldn't figure out how to actually embed album art when it ripped my music. dbPoweramp does it for you with little effot. It will find some album art and choose one to automatically do, but you can always select one from the list it found or even find your own and add it in easily.
 
dbPoweramp also has quite a few options for how to rip. You can use a burst mode that just goes over the CD onces, or have it pass a selected amount of times. With that mode, it will check to make sure it read the information the same for every pass. If it doesn't, it rereads the CD at whatever frame(s) with a discripency 10 times. However, this can be a nuance if it happens to misread multiple frames, as it takes a lot of time and can be bad on your drive and CD. If you are very picky about music being ripped correctly, I believe their perfect tunes (which you buy separately) has an online database that it will compare your rip against to let you know how accurate, according to their database, your rip was.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I also recommend dbPoweramp. I used Exact Audio Copy for a while, but I couldn't figure out how to actually embed album art when it ripped my music. dbPoweramp does it for you with little effot. It will find some album art and choose one to automatically do, but you can always select one from the list it found or even find your own and add it in easily.
 
dbPoweramp also has quite a few options for how to rip. You can use a burst mode that just goes over the CD onces, or have it pass a selected amount of times. With that mode, it will check to make sure it read the information the same for every pass. If it doesn't, it rereads the CD at whatever frame(s) with a discripency 10 times. However, this can be a nuance if it happens to misread multiple frames, as it takes a lot of time and can be bad on your drive and CD. If you are very picky about music being ripped correctly, I believe their perfect tunes (which you buy separately) has an online database that it will compare your rip against to let you know how accurate, according to their database, your rip was.

 
This is slightly incorrect.
 
AccurateRip compares your new rip with others' rips to ensure the data is identical. It is free and comes with both dBpoweramp and Exact Audio Copy. Illustrate (the company who owns dBpoweramp) developed AccurateRip.
 
PerfectTUNES is a paid add-on that automatically adds missing album covers, checks existing lossless tracks for ripping errors (via AccurateRip), and removes duplicate tracks. There is also a free version.

 

[Roy Munson]

EAC is a great ripping tool. Take a bit of configuring and doesn't really hold your hand - as you've noticed. Try spending some time with it I think it's worth it in the long run. There are some good guides out there you might need to dig around a bit though to find them. Here's one guide that seems pretty solid - http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Beginners_guide_to_EAC
 
I did a quick look through the instructions and it looks to hit most of the important stuff.