How to rip a CD to MP3

It's EASY.  What you need (click on the links to download the programs).

• Audiograbber - a great CD ripping program.  It's very good at ripping CD tracks to wave files (not MP3) and has a basic MP3 encoder built in.  It's best used with a dedicated MP3 encoder such as:
• FastEnc - A fast, good quality MP3 encoder.

 Then open Audiograbber.

First of all download and install Audiograbber. Then download FastEnc.  The program is contained in a ZIP archive, so you'll need Winzip to open it.

Unzip the fastencc.exe file to the directory where Audiograbber is installed.

Close Winzip. Now open Audiograbber.  You'll see a screen like this:

Now you have to tell Audiograbber to use an external MP3 encoder.  Click on the MP3 icon.  You'll see the following screen:

What you now need to do is change the ' Grab to ' setting to 'MP3 file via intermediate wav file. Delete the wav file '.  This tells Audiograbber to rip each CD track to a temporary wav file, convert it to MP3, then delete the temporary wav file. After doing that you need to click the 'External Encoder ' tick box:

Click on the Browse button to locate the fastencc.exe file which is located in your C:\Audiograbber directory:

Click the Open button.

Now click on OK . Audiograbber now needs to know where you want to put the MP3s you rip from CD.  Click the Settings button.

Click on the Browse button to find or create a directory to store your MP3s.  You might want to set other options like the ones shown above.  This settings screen can also be used to choose which drive you want to use to read CDs if you have more than one.   RIPPING Put an audio CD in your CDROM / DVD drive.  Audiograbber will then look at the CD to find out what's on it.

If you don't see proper track & title info (i.e. just 'Track 1, Track 2' etc) click on the Freedb icon.

Make sure that all the boxes shown ticked in the picture above are ticked in your program.  Click on OK.  BTW you need to have a connection to the internet for Freedb to work.  Most CDs have a catalogue number embedded in them.  Audiograbber gets the catalogue number and looks it up in the freedb database.  The freedb database contains info about the CD such as artist etc and all the tracklisting.  Sometimes there might be more than one match for your CD in the list.  In that case you need to choose the most likely candidate. If there's no freedb entry for your CD it's very easy to edit the Artist & track info.  Just type the Artist & album name in the boxes provided.  To edit a track name, select it with a left mouseclick. Then right click on it and choose rename.  Type the name you want for the track & press enter .

TIP: As excellent as the freedb database is, sometimes there are spelling mistakes and other errors.  It always pays to check all the info before ripping the CD. When you're happy with the tracklisting etc, click on the Grab! button. The tracks will be ripped and turned into MP3s one by one - and they'll be saved where you told Audiograbber to put them.

When it's done all of them, that's it!!!  You've ripped all the CD tracks & turned them into MP3s.  The MP3s will also contain artist & title information too :D