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I got a new windows 10 laptop, last one was vista and died years ago so I am out of touch, and I have decided I want to put my music CDs onto it. I have an external drive that I will be using to store them so as not to clog up the laptops memory. I have no interest in paying for streaming (Spotify, I tunes etc) and just want to have my favorites tunes in a digital format that I can play on the pc, transfer to my android phone to plug in the car etc.
so before I go ripping/burning (whatever the term is) is windows media player the best for this or should I look at another?
cheers
I'm no expert, but I believe it's best not to use the windows application to rip your cds, as it saves them in a format (wma?) that then doesn't always get recognised by another music player.
Better to rip them as MP3 files, using one of the various free applications available..
You should be able to rip to MP3 in Windows 10 Media Player. That's what I use, but I wouldn't say it's the best way, just what I use.
Freac is pretty good. Works fine for ripping to MP3, or Flac, or Ogg etc. https://www.freac.org/
Ripper:
[url= https://cdex.mu/download ]CDex[/url]
Player:
VLC media player
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
Not so sure about CDex anymore - just updated it and I got a dodgy Search Manager extension added to Chrome. So beware of bloatware. Been using CDex for as long as I can remember without issues though.
Windows Media Player can rip to MP3 or WAV.
If you want to play DVDs, you'll need something like VLC though.
Don’t need anything fancy, just want something simple so think I will just go with media player.
Windows Media Player rips to lossless FLAC. It does the job fine for me. It's best to rip your CD collection to a high quality format if you're going to put the effort in.
Cdex used to be good, I used it years ago. But seems it was abandoned, and taken over by someone else. So it is not really open source, and may install adware and other crap.
Freac is actually/free open source, no added crap. It is fairly simple to use, default settings should work fine just to rip to MP3.
DB Poweramp to rip, Winamp to play
It's all personal choice of course. I've always used Winamp for over 20 years and I swapped to DB from Audiograbber about 15 years ago. Just go with what feels best to you, they all do the same thing after all...
Mediamonkey! It's a free all-in-one solution that rips CDs and tags the resulting files at different compressions, organises your library, adds artwork for your MP3 player of choice, subscribes to and downloads your favourite podcasts etc
I used to use dbPoweramp to rip CDs, something else to label files, and a third program for podcasts, but MM is way simpler.
If you do decide to go with it, the free version has everything you need; there's a minor tweak to make to keep the LAME dll working, but it takes 2 secs.
Music Bee can cope with ripping CDs, writing and it's simple to use. Oh, and it can cope with compilation albums.
Another vote for MusicBee here. Been using it a fair while and see no reason to change.
Always rip your cd's to the lossless format of your choice - you can always shrink them down to an mp3 later to put on your phone etc....
Better to rip them as MP3 files
I wouldn't reccomend this, rip them to FLAC or WAV and then convert to MP3. Keep the original rip. MP3 is a lossy format.
I use EAC for ripping and Audacity for converting - both FOS, but there are other good options as suggested above.
Edit: I also used winamp as a player, long after it was "discontinued". Currently using Resonic which I quite like, and VLC on my mobile.