Rippers

Many of the tools listed here provide CD track extraction (ripping) as part of a larger set of features; therefore, these might also appear in searches on other streaming audio software categories. If you already have a waveform editor, it might handle ripping, so take a moment to check. When researching rippers, check for CDDB or FreeDB support to helpfully provide CD artist and track information when naming your extracted tracks. An online search for the phrase "CD ripper" or "CD rippers" using the Google.com search engine turns up hundreds of choices of freeware, shareware, and purchasable CD rippers.

• AudioCatalyst(Xing/RealNetworks) www.xingtech.com/. Windows.

• AudioGrabber (Jackie Franck) www.audiograbber.com-us.net. Also encodes to MP3. Windows.

• Exact Audio Copy (Andre Wiethoff) www.exactaudiocopy.de. Good for scratched CDs, also encodes to various formats. Windows.

• daGrab (Marcello Urbani) http://linux.tucows.com/mmedia/preview/8150.html. Linux/FreeBSD.

• iTunes (Apple) www.apple.com/itunes. Macintosh.

• Media Jukebox (J. River) www.mediajukebox.com. Windows.

• RealJukebox (RealNetworks) www.real.com/rjcentral. Windows.

• Google's Ripper Directory http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Multimedia/Music_and_Audio/Audio_Formats/MP3/Software/Rippers/.