Having been recently donated an XP box, without the option of installing linux on it, I’m slowly rebuilding my music toolkit.  Fortunately most of the bits of software I favour come in both windows and linux flavours…

The key tool that used to be a one stop shop for me was Grip, a combined ripping and encoding program with the obligatory CDDB lookup for track details. This though is a linux only tool, so I’ve been forced to find something else, enter CDDA Ripper XP.

The main reason for picking that one over the others I looked at, was the fact that it can use the LAME mp3 encoder, widely recognised as the best free mp3 encoder out there.  It’s a separate download, but well worth the effort, giving me the option to encode tracks with the ‘extreme’ settings, VBR with a maximum bitrate of 320kbps.  Large file size, but sounds great…

Those in addition with Audacity, which I wrote about earlier, give me all the tools I used to enjoy on my linux box. (Audacity also uses the LAME encoder, but not all the options are available, particularly the VBR ones…)  Let the merriment ensue.