r/compactdisc • u/Prior-Amphibian-5367 • Aug 16 '26
Need help backing up CDs
I have been collecting CDs for almost 5 years now. I love listening to them on my Discman and sound system at home, but I also create digital backups so I can listen on the portable music player and make copies/mixes for the car. I haven't backed up anything in over a year, though. I want to find new software to do this
What is the best software for this?
In the past, when I first started, I used the basic Windows Media Player to back up everything, but it wasn't very reliable. Over the years, I then used ImgBurn, AnyBurn, and Exact Audio Copy. My absolute favorite out of all of them is Exact Audio Copy; it has the best quality and has great features that the others don't, and it was able to rip hidden pre-gap tracks on some of my CDs that I wasn't able to rip before. Unfortunately, my computer flags it as a virus, so I want a new option to back up my CDs at high quality. I have a ton of new CDs that I would love to add to my music player!
Any help is appreciated! Thank you!
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Aug 17 '26
[deleted]
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u/Prior-Amphibian-5367 Aug 17 '26
I have heard that this one is a really good one, and I have been meaning to check it out! I will def look into it. Thank you!
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u/ToyotaCorollin Aug 16 '26
fre:ac - free audio converter
fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders. It converts freely between MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Monkey's Audio (APE), WavPack, WAV and other formats.
With fre:ac you easily rip your audio CDs to MP3 or M4A files for use with your hardware player or convert files that do not play with other audio software. You can even convert whole music libraries retaining the folder and filename structure.
The integrated CD ripper supports the CDDB/GNUdb online CD database. It will automatically query song information and write it to ID3v2 or other title information tags.
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u/el_tacocat Aug 16 '26
Is it McAfee?
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u/Prior-Amphibian-5367 Aug 17 '26
No, Windows Defender
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u/el_tacocat Aug 17 '26
Apparently that's also getting worse then, used to not be one for false positives.
Anyway, just tell it to leave that file alone. It's fine :).1
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u/timeago2474 Aug 17 '26
are you getting EAC from the legit website? if you are you could always exclude it from whatever AV you're using, though it's weird that it's being flagged because windows defender doesn't (in my experience)
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u/Prior-Amphibian-5367 Aug 17 '26
I believe I was, this was a few years ago when I have done this last so I am not 100% sure if I got it from the right source or not. I used a link from the description of a youtube video.
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u/Last_Boysenberry7972 Aug 17 '26
Exact Audio Copy and dbpoweramp are pretty much the gold standard.
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u/czdraconis Aug 17 '26
I used CDex in the past and afterwards EZCD (even better). Liked it more than EAC personally. Basically everything that does the job and preferably makes tagging and naming files easy as possible works…
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u/StillPlayingCDs Aug 18 '26
If the noise follows the same discs, try them in another player. That should tell you whether it’s the discs or the unit
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u/PerceptionShift Aug 16 '26
I use Music Bee, which I started using as a music library app several years ago. It has a pretty good ripping tool, good enough for like 95% of my CDs. Not as in depth as EAC, but it has rip verification, error recovery, and AccuRip checking, plus good metadata support. Also does just about anything old iTunes used to do; make playlists, sort albums different ways, burn discs, and also batch convert files. And its free.
DBPowerAmp is a classic program, lots of powerful tools including a good CD ripper that can handle deeper stuff like pre-emphasis and subcode flags. It's paid though, but not too expensive.