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Can anyone tell me if there is any freeware or shareware out there that they know of that can convert a cda file from a music CD to a MP3 file ?

Thank You for your time...

JD

CD DAE is a free program that rips CDA to WAV, and I'm sure that there are free programs to convert the WAV to MP3.

CDex is free and easy to use.

cfitz

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the classic Exact Audio Copy (EAC) program. It provides more power but is harder to use, in my opinion.

By the way, although you asked for a program to convert .cda files to .mp3, I am assuming you have the actual CD you wish to rip. The .cda files that you see in Windows Explorer (size = 44 bytes, typically rounded to 1 KB in the Explorer window) do not contain any music information and thus it is impossible to convert them to .mp3 or any other music format. They just allow media players to locate the actual music track on the CD.

cfitz

cfitz wrote:Exact Audio Copy (EAC)

Still the best (exept if you have a Plextor drive, in which case Plextools is even better). Don't forget to use the LAME-encoder to convert to Mp3 format. This site has all the Mp3encoding info you'll ever need (or want):http://www.audio-illumination.org/forums.

MikeTR wrote:

cfitz wrote:Exact Audio Copy (EAC)

Still the best (exept if you have a Plextor drive, in which case Plextools is even better). Don't forget to use the LAME-encoder to convert to Mp3 format. This site has all the Mp3encoding info you'll ever need (or want):http://www.audio-illumination.org/forums.

Huh? EAC/LAME and Plextor works great here. Not sure how you think Plextools is better since LAME is doing the encoding.

tazdevl wrote:Huh? EAC/LAME and Plextor works great here. Not sure how you think Plextools is better since LAME is doing the encoding.

Plextools has an edge in the extraction department.

cfitz

Extract using EAC in secured mode (if rom drive is capable), which should result in the most errorless extraction possible.

Nextly, encode using LAME.

Using "--alt-present-standard" as the only parameter, the result will be extremely high quality VBR mp3's that typically average around 180-220kbps, depending on type of music, while maintaining the high range quality of 256-320kbps CBR.

EAC has an option in the program to encode files after/during the rip, however, I prefer to use RazorLame in batches after I'm done ripping several CD's that way I can just let lame do it's thing while I go do something else for a little while.