Audio CD Ripping and Extraction Software

CD drive in laptop

 Getty Images/Willyan Wagner / EyeEm

by Mark Harris
Brings music expertise, including a background as a music producer and composer, to digital music articles.
Updated October 26, 2018

Stand-alone CD rippers are useful when you have a large collection of CDs that you want to rip. They're also helpful when the media player that you use doesn’t come with a built-in CD ripper. Dedicated audio CD extraction programs typically have more features than the ones that are built into popular media players such as ​Windows Media Player. ​

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Exact Audio Copy

EAC—Exact Audio Copy—is valued for its accuracy. The free Windows program reads every CD sector at least two times to verify the correct data is copied. Then it compares the copy to the original CD until at least eight of 16 tries produce identical results. Troublesome sections of the CD, such as scratched areas, are read repeatedly up to 80 times.

EAC's accuracy comes at the cost of speed, but if accuracy is important to you, a minute or more extra time isn't a problem. EAC isn't the most user-friendly of the CD ripping software programs and it doesn't apply its own codec. EAC also doesn't pull the album metadata from the database until you tell it to do so.

Despite these shortcomings, free EAC is probably the best and most powerful ripping tool available.

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FreeRIP 3 Basic Edition

FreeRIP 3 has a well-designed interface that is intuitive to use. This free CD ripper can extract the audio from your music CDs to MP3, WMA, WAV, Vorbis and FLAC formats. The program supports CDDB query, which is used to automatically fill in the information for your digital audio files. FreeRIP 3 can also be used as an audio format converter and a tagger. When you're converting from one audio format to another, you can either add files manually or drag and drop them using your mouse. If you’re looking for a free CD ripper, converter, and tagger, then FreeRIP is a solid choice.

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Koyotesoft Free CD Ripper

Koyotesoft’s Free CD Ripper is Microsoft Windows compatible and supports the creation of MP3, OGG, and FLAC digital audio files. It has a good interface that is easy manage and also has a built-in CD player, which is useful for previewing audio CDs before ripping them. What makes this CD ripper so different from most other programs of this type is its ability to create and burn Audio Bin/Cue images. This is a useful feature if you need to work with audio CD images. Overall, Koyotesoft Free CD Ripper is a solid CD ripper that does a good job.

Visit Koyotesoft Free CD Ripper

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foobar2000

Foobar2000 is a free advanced audio player for Windows. Although primarily a player, its audio component supports secure ripping of audio CDs. The software supports a wide range of audio formats including MP3, MP4, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, and WAV.

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FairStairs CD Ripper

FairStairs CD Ripper is a donationware Windows program that is powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats. The interface is user-friendly and includes ID3 tag support. It supports multiple CD/DVD drivers and includes audio playback controls. FairStairs CD Ripper supports normalization when ripping.