[Earwax]

I want to give a friend a Sansa Clip for Chrismas. I'm going to pre-load some music on it for her so she can use it right away. She's never had a MP3 player herself and she's rather impatient about learning new stuff on a computer.

I want to be able to recommend some software to her that she can easily use to rip her CDs and put them on the Clip. She has a Windows XP laptop. It's OK if I have to load the software and set it up the first time for her, but I don't want her to have to call me everytime she gets a new CD.

I use EAC + Lame then drag'n'drop myself, but I know that would drive her nuts before she ever got it working. I haven't been keeping up with what's available in software rippers and players.

What would you recommend?

 

[RAQemUP]

Free or a program you need to pay for?

For free, I have always liked cdex which you can read up on and download here.

For a paid program, I like dBpowerAMP Music Converter which you can read up on and get here.

 

[LingLing1337]

mediamonkey is extremely easy to use- very easy cd ripping and one click syncing. It's a do-it-all program.

 

[Kicksonrt66]

If she's going to have more music on the computer than fits on the player, then the program will also have to be convenient for removing what she doesn't want at the moment.

For adding, ideally something where you can select music by genre (load it up for Christmas, for example), latest acquired, etc.

Does she want podcast support? (automatically load the latest episode and delete older ones)

Need DRM support? Then might be stuck with "trusted" media managers like WMP.


If it was Linux, I'd say AMarok. On Windows I've been doing drag'n'drop in explorer.

 

[linuxworks]

another vote for cdex. great ripper.

I used to swear by EAC but that stopped working for me (also had issues a long time ago with usb drives for some reason).

cdex is better written (it seems) and less buggy too.

for unix, I'd use 'grip' which is a similar front-end (and trustable; has been for years and years).

 

[immtbiker]

dbPoweramp, is the best overall convertor/ripper that I've ever used. It does everything that a neophyte could ever ask for.

 

[Philski]

If it's a Windows XP machine, then it should have Windows Media Player installed - anything wrong with that for ripping?

 

[immtbiker]

WMP only rips into lossy conversions. WMA is their proprietary file extension.

No FLAC, ALAC, 320 kbps, etc.

 

[linuxworks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Philski /img/forum/go_quote.gif If it's a Windows XP machine, then it should have Windows Media Player installed - anything wrong with that for ripping?

yes.

next question, please.

 

[Caribou679]

I stay away from Windows Media Player. I use Easy CD-DA Extractor for ripping in ogg or flac.

Only bug I have with this program it does not support well Ipod type files, in encoding or converting. But I do not use that program for those files.

regards,

 

[kazakore]

+1 for CDex for ripping CDs.

 

[TheAzhrei]

I've used CDex in the past. I liked it a lot. Right now I'm using dbPoweramp in this latest round of ripping my entire CD collection. It's pretty great and convenient, even if it's not free. Another program I've tried in the past is J. River's Media Center. It will do everything she needs for ripping and managing music, it's pretty easy to use, but it's not free. It doesn't cost very much either.

Chris

 

[krmathis]

+1 for CDex.
My favorite audio CD ripper back in my MS Windows days, and its still very nice it seems.

 

[Earwax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Philski /img/forum/go_quote.gif If it's a Windows XP machine, then it should have Windows Media Player installed - anything wrong with that for ripping?

Well, personally, I never found WMP to be very easy to use. Maybe it's easier for someone that doesn't already have a lot of pre-concieved ides of what a music manager should do. Practical objections are no MP3 VBR output and it automatically throws everything into one output directory unless you specifically create a new folder for every CD.

Media Monkey looks pretty cool. I know DbPowerAmp was a good product years ago, I'll have to take a fresh look at it.

I was hoping there was one clear consensus choice, but it looks like I still have some research and evaluation to do.

 

[DJGeorgeT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Earwax /img/forum/go_quote.gif I was hoping there was one clear consensus choice, but it looks like I still have some research and evaluation to do.

that's head-fi for you