Exact Audio Copy 1.8

Overview

One day you may come to the conclusion that, because of your ever increasing music CD collections, you no longer have enough storage space in your apartment or home. This can be quite a problem and, as a result, ripping your entire music collection to your hard drive seems to be the most logical solution. Of course, not all of your disks are in perfect condition, some may be scratched and others have become slightly distorted. Thus, in order to successfully accomplish your task you need not only a CD ripper software product, but also a very good tool.

There is no shortage of rippers available on the market and the competition is very strong. Both free utilities and commercial products can be found and add to that the fact that all of the contemporary media players are able to rip music, the task of finding an excellent CD ripper becomes even harder. One of the best products to rip your music disks is called Exact Audio Copy and it does wonders on your less than perfect media surfaces. It sports a lot of useful features and it really is one of the best CD rippers out there. Let’s analyze Exact Audio Copy and see exactly what features it offers to its users.

Installation

The installation process of Exact Audio Copy is fast, smooth and a very straightforward step. The setup kit of this tool only measures 4MB in size so you should quickly download and install it. You will be prompted to select certain components during install, such as the freedb Metadata plugin as well as the FLAC codes and other several plugins. It is a good decision to install all of these plugins and codecs, as Exact Audio Copy needs them in its ripping process. You should be happy to find out that Exact Audio Copy supports all of the available versions of Windows and it doesn’t come with other adware/spyware or programs installed, besides the already mentioned codecs and plugins. As you should already know by now, if you have any experience with CD ripping, Exact Audio Copy doesn’t need the latest hardware as any decent computer system will be able to get the job done.

Interface

After installation, you will be taken through a small wizard that will configure your current CD-ROMs. Whilst it is a very hard process to find a balance between the interface of a program and its functionality, it has to be said that Exact Audio Copy features an attractive interface that will please the majority of users. When opening the program, the majority of the window’s space is occupied by an Excel like table that features a lot of information, such as the title’s track, artist, composer, lyrics, length, size, and a lot more. The menus have been placed in the upper part of the Exact Audio Copy's main window. It is an easy to use tool and the placement of the controls and buttons allows for a quick and smooth navigation. The menus are structured in a tight and logical manner and things will become extremely user friendly once you will get past the small learning curve.

Pros

Exact Audio Copy is one of the best products on the market and it becomes very clear why this is a fact as soon as you start ripping music CDs. The content of your audio CDs will be ripped to either WAV or MP3 file format. In addition, a CUE copy of the disc's content can also be made if this kind of file is your thing. A nice feature of Exact Audio Copy is the fact that it eliminates the need for third party software by allowing you to write the content of the CUE files on a new CD. Ranges of music data, not just tracks, can be copied by EAC and it implements several useful features, such as hidden sector synchronization, automatic speed reduction on read errors, automatic renaming of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag, CD-Text support and a lot more.

Cons

Some users have reported problems with EAC recognizing their CD-ROMs.

Alternatives

Alternatives to EAC include these audio rippers: MediaMonkey, CDex, dBpoweramp and more.

Conclusion

All in all, Exact Audio Copy is an excellent tool that will allow you to rip all of your CD collection in a fast and reliable manner. Don’t miss out on it!