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CD/DVD and Music Software
by Christy Holt


Music Software

There is plenty of free and trial version (shareware) audio software available for download these days. You can convert, encode, rip, edit, burn, and even record audio off LPs or in some cases, you can record any sound you can hear using these software products. Below is a list of some popular trial version and free audio software and their respective attributes.

Blaze Media Pro

The most powerful of these products is Blaze Media Pro, an all-in-one audio/video converter (CD, MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, WMV, etc); editor; recorder; CD ripper; audio, video (VCD/SVCD/DVD), data CD/DVD burner; and much more in one fast and easy-to-use product. The software offers an easy to use, fast, and feature-rich MPEG encoder in the video converter feature, which also provides an option to encode a video of up to four hours so that it will fit on a single DVD disc. Of course, the software supports all the features you'd expect in such a high-powered product, such as CDDB/FreeDB/CDDB2 support, MP3 tagging, audio recognition, audio and video joining, extracting audio or images from video files, creating new video files from images and audio, and a seemingly endless amount of other useful features. The software is priced at $50, but is well worth the cost with all the features packed inside, taking the place of many other products in a single application. The file size is 11767 KB.

EasyISO

EasyISO is simple, standalone (no install) CD Burning software with support for CDR/CDRW, DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW. It provides on-the-fly burning without creating any temporary files. EasyISO supports Joliet as well as Multi-session, Disc Caching and Burn Proof. You can also create bootable CDs and test write before burning. It uses the standard or any other ASPI-driver. The file size is 282 KB.

DVD Decrypter

Ripping in DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 (last freeware version) is easy. By default, the program will automatically select the source (i.e. the DVD drive) and the destination folder, by finding the drive with the most free disk space. The “Main Movie” files will have already been selected for you, so you only have to click to begin ripping.
In about 10 - 30 minutes (depending on the speed of your computer / DVD drive) it will finish and you will have quality DeCSS'd VOB files on your hard disk. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX. The file size is 858 KB.

dBpowerAmp Music Converter

Using dBpowerAmp Music Converter 10.0 (last freeware version) dMC, you can digitally rip sound from audio CDs to a multitude of formats and convert from one format to another while preserving ID tags. Nearly every audio type is supported, including MP3, MP4, Windows Media Audio (WMA), OGG Vorbis, AAC, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC (with optional installs from Codec Central). For Windows Explorer integration, right-click “Convert To” and pop up useful information on audio files (such as bit rate and length). You can also record from LPs with Auxiliary Input. The file size is 1391 KB.

My MP3 Recorder

With My MP3 recorder, you can record internet radio, save to MP3 or WAV. This software is 100% Spyware/Adware free. Record streaming audio from the internet, microphone or any other source for that matter, works directly with your system sound card. If you can hear it, you can record it. This program is meant to be extremely intuitive to use, with enough features to get the job done quickly and easily. Use the scan tool to list all MP3s and WAV, AIF, SAW or Sun AU audio files on your entire computer. You can play and record portions of any of these files. It has customizable colors, timer, on top mode and skinning. The file size is 4571 KB.

Deep Ripper

DeepRipper is a freeware that will convert your audio CD tracks to a first-grade MP3, OGG, or WAV files. There is a number of presets for less experienced users and full set of manual settings for experts. It allows you to take a full control over CD ripping, do it quickly, easily and in a flexible way. Extracting digital music files from CDs becomes simple, quick, and painless with DeepRipper. You have full control over constant or variable bitrate encoding, ID3 tags management, MPEG version selection- all for first-grade ripping. The file size 769 KB.

Free CD to MP3 Converter

Free CD to MP3 Converter is an easy to use CD ripper that allows you to extract audio files from a CD and convert them to MP3 format. It can automatically retrieve title information from the CDDB database or rename the CD tracks title and remember them, normalize the output files and supports additional LAME options. You can also use the software to record to MP3 with your microphone, or to convert WAV files to MP3 format. It has easy to use interface that allows you to rip tracks of your Audio CD just by several clicks. It also can clear the play list of RealOne Player and Windows Media Player. The file size is 845 KB.

Softdiv CD Ripper

Softdiv CD Ripper makes direct digital copies from audio CDs and saves them as MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, RAW, VOX, G.723, and G.726. Softdiv CD Ripper also supports CDDB (Internet Compact Disc Database) where you can retrieve disc information from the Internet. Softdiv CD Ripper also includes an ID3v2 editor to read and edit the audio files. File size is 3.97 MB.

CDBurnerXP Pro

CDBurnerXP Pro is a freeware CD burner solution with many features. It can burn Data-CDs/DVDs, Audio-CDs, and ISOs. Since version 2.2.5, it can also create ISO files. It also has a simple cover printing function, rip audio-CDs with freedb.org support, a small audio editor, MP3 tag editor, and a converter for WAV and MP3. There are a lot of settings to customize CDBXPP. Burnproof-technology to prevent buffer underrun errors is also supported. File size is 15 MB.

Freecorder

Freecorder does exactly as it sounds. It is an easy-to-use free software program that lets you record any sound you can hear on your PC. Recordings are saved as MP3 files. Freecorder is a great way to get started with capturing audio on your PC. File size is 910 KB.

Audiograbber

Audiograbber is a beautiful piece of software that grabs digital audio from CDs. It copies the audio digitally, not through the sound card, which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders, such as Fraunhofer's L3enc, or even use some MP3/WMA encoders internally for automatic creation of MP3's. Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LPs or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make WAV or MP3 files from them. There are a number of other features also present in the software, making it an attractive option. File size is 1.6 MB.

DVD Rip N’ Burn

With this program, you are able to copy DVD to AVI, DIVX, MPEG, VCD, SVCD, and more. DVD Rip N’ Burn is a powerful DVD Ripper and DVD Burner with multi-language support is an affordable way to backup your DVD movie library. Backup your DVD's to your hard drive or CD's. You can rip your library to AVI compressed pick DivX or another codec to encode to. You can rip to VCD for burning a VCD to play in your home DVD player. You can also rip to SVCD for burning to play in your home DVD player. File size is 4851 KB.