[Fiend]

I've just been dragged screaming and kicking into the 20th century and got my first MP3 player. Despite this I still have the arcane approach of getting music on CDs (and even worse - paying for it), thus to keep adequately supplied with top tunage, I need some program or other to convert the CDs (wav) to MP3 format.

Recommendations from the UKB massive would be appreciated. Freeware, simple, easy to use, is all that's needed.

Ta.

[Serpico]

Somebody is guaranteed to recommend EAC, but despite it's claims it's no better than most of the others, it's just very good at singing it's own praises.
Mediaplayer whilst regarded by many as The Great Satan is actually very good, as long as you make sure you uncheck the DRM box.
I tunes on the other hand was disappointing as this is the only ripper I've ever come across that actually introduced noticable artifacts.
Bottom line is: listen to the different rippers and see if you can hear a difference, anything with cymbals or piano notes fading into ambience is a real test for mp3 encoders, remember to compare against the original cd.

[Bubba]

Will your player support .flac ? Much better option.

[Jim]

í use tihis http://chrismyden.com/bestmp3guide.php

[Houdini]

And you can play them as .wavs too if your player is large enough.

I like .wavs.

[Bubba]

flac is better than wav - Same quality, much smaller file size.

[Fiend]

No .flac. Only got a 1.gig player (don't laugh). Will try those links.

[Jim]

your better off with mp3 using lame as in the guide I linked before then.
I didn't think you could get mp3 players with such little storage on them

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Sounds like a lot of hard work to me. Although everyone seems to hate it iTunes does make ripping CD's a doddle. Change the default format (in options) to MP3 and probably 192kbps (or less if your not too fussed about top quality), it grabs all the track data for you. Also if it's a shuffle you've got, it will automatically reduce the file size to 128kbps before it transfers it to save space on the player. You can do this for other players but it may be a bit more manual.

[Jim]

If you could make itunes use lame codec this would be better

[dontfollowme]

Always found CDex a simple solution to ripping cds

[Bubba]

I've always used EAC/Lame as in Jim's link. It seems a bit comlicated but once you've set it up and done it once it's easy peasy.