EZ CD Audio Converter

by: CNET staff on October 16, 2012

A ripping good time means fast, accurate, and automatic extraction of your audio CD tracks, and that's just what you'll have with Easy CD-DA Extractor. It combines an Audio CD Ripper, Audio Converter, and Disc Burner in one feature-packed interface. With a variable sampling rate up to 320Kbps, lossless audio codecs, Stereo and Mono modes, M3U Playlists, Explorer context menu integration, and up to 40x ripping, Easy CD-DA Extractor can create high-quality MP3s and other audio files for your portable player or other devices. Its Audio Converter converts between many different file types, too -- one by one or in large batches of files. And its Disc Burner not only creates Audio CDs that are compatible with any CD player but can burn data discs and MP3 discs containing hundreds of songs. The latest version of Easy CD-DA Extractor is certified for Windows 8.

Easy CD-DA Extractor's user interface is all business, starting right under the title bar with tabs for its three top tools: Audio CD Ripper, Audio Converter, and Disc Burner. We started with the ripper, which let us choose our DVD drive or virtual drive as a source. We inserted a CD, and Easy CD-DA Extractor quickly scanned it and fetched its title, artist, song list, and cover art online. We simply selected any or all of the tunes in the main list view, selected our output options, and pressed Rip CD. We chose FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) for compatibility with our MP3 library. Easy CD-DA Extractor offers variable compression levels and 24-bit Digital Signal Processing with fade-in and fade-out options. A 38-minute CD took just a couple of minutes to rip on default settings. The Audio Converter and Disc Burner both have drag-and-drop interfaces and fast operation.

We liked Easy CD-DA Extractor a lot, and most users seem to agree. The fully functional download of Easy CD-DA Extractor is free to try for 30 days, though it shows a nag screen on startup. Users are under no obligation (beyond doing the right thing) to buy the software when the trial ends, though licensing removes the nag screen.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Easy CD-DA Extractor 16.1.

EZ CD Audio Converter is the most comprehensive multi format audio converter and is extremely easy to use. Rips audio CDs, converts audio files, edits metadata of existing audio files, and burns discs. It has efficient error-detective CD-ripping, very fast parallel audio conversion (you can run up to 8 simultaneous converters), and reliable disc burning. All combined to user friendly, beautiful interface. Metadata can be downloaded from GD3, Freedb, and MusicBrainz services. Supports ReplayGain loudness calculation and normalization. Includes AccurateCDDA database (for bit-to-bit exact CD-ripping), and CD-Text support. Supports conversion of audio tracks from all video files. Includes all the best audio codecs such as Dolby Pulse and LAME MP3, no need to download additional codecs. Codecs are always kept up-to-date with free upgrades. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the software included.

What's new in this version: Version 1.3.1 features updated codecs.

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