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Topic: Easy but fully featured AAC ripper (Read 9304 times) previous topic - next topic
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Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Mother has a Nexus7, and it's a fantastic device, she wants to copy music to it from her CD's  Now I could do it for her, but I would prefer to show her how to do it herself.  The problem is, I have yet to find a suitable program.  They are either WAY to complex and are a sledgehammer to crack a nut (MediaMonkey), or don't support M4A with embeded album art (EAC), or do M4a, but don't support album (FreAc)

Surely there must be something out there suitable?

The requirements are:

  • Easy to use (1 click rip/encode/get album art)
  • M4A AAC format
  • Embedded Album Art


Help!!!

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #1
I am afraid to say it but a good and very simple one for newbies is Easy CD-DA Extractor, few friends love that one.

A better one but a little harder is dBpoweramp.

I use foobar2000 for everything, look at the dropcanvas link in my signature for a portable version to test.

Enjoy.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #2
I would not recommend it under normal circumstances, but iTunes meets your criteria perfectly.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #3
CUERipper (part of CUETools) might do. You would need to copy neroAacEnc.exe to the CUETools folder and create a shortcut to CUERipper.exe (there's no installer). Once setup it is almost one click and fairly easy to use.
    notes:[/li]
  • Art comes from musicbrainz/coverartarchive and discogs only.
  • Front cover only.
  • No tutorials currently written.
korth

 

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #4
I would not recommend it under normal circumstances, but iTunes meets your criteria perfectly.


My mother would never forgive me for getting her locked into eveything Apple.  I have never been able to fathom why anyone would **WANT** to be willingly told by Apple what proprietary formats and accessories they have to buy. Most sane people I know understand the benefits of an open market, and would never touch anything with the Apple logo on it (same applies to Kindle...)


Have a few options here to investigate. 

Many thanks.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #5
...I have never been able to fathom why anyone would **WANT** to be willingly told by Apple what proprietary formats and accessories they have to buy. Most sane people I know understand the benefits of an open market, and would never touch anything with the Apple logo on it (same applies to Kindle...)
...


I think the people here that are trying to help you are sane regardless of what tech products they use.

It sure didn't sound like you were looking for something FOSS for your mother's Fedora Linux computer FFS. Using iTunes solely as a ripper isn't going to lock your mother into Apple's evil universe. In fact, its AAC encoder is one of the best and MuncherOfSpleens merely recommended due to its seeming ease of use and familiarity.

Edited because I falsely attributed a recommendation to a different poster.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #6
Soooooo, your plan is to encode to a format encumbered with patents.. If you're willing to use AAC you might as well use itunes..

Why not encode to Ogg Vorbis? Android natively plays it..

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #7
Soooooo, your plan is to encode to a format encumbered with patents.. If you're willing to use AAC you might as well use itunes..

Why not encode to Ogg Vorbis? Android natively plays it..


I'm not that bothered by patents and legal crap.  AAC (in a standard container, not the proprietary Apple one) is the modern MP3.  Everything plays it, but you get much better sound or lower file sizes than the very aged MP3.

OGG, not so much..  I made that mistake in the past.  Ended up reripping my entire collection when I bought a device that didn't want to know...

Seems like CueRipper might be the perfect tool.  Simple and does exactly what's needed without any additional confusing bumf.


Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #9
AAC (in a standard container, not the proprietary Apple one) is the modern MP3.

(emphasis mine)


You really need to disavow yourself of some of this false knowledge.
Creature of habit.


Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #11
I'm not that bothered by patents and legal crap.  AAC (in a standard container, not the proprietary Apple one) is the modern MP3.  Everything plays it, but you get much better sound or lower file sizes than the very aged MP3.

OGG, not so much..  I made that mistake in the past.  Ended up reripping my entire collection when I bought a device that didn't want to know...

Seems like CueRipper might be the perfect tool.  Simple and does exactly what's needed without any additional confusing bumf.


Yep, it's the new patent encumbered freedom crushing format to replace the aged mp3 patent encumbered freedom crushing format.. AAC will be the new default codec because a majority of people will choose a slight perceived convenience over their own well being.

If you're not bothered by patents and legal crap then use itunes. Legalities don't impact those willing to ignore the law.

The audible quality difference between AAC and Vorbis, if any, is so slight as to be essentially ignored.
http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.org/s...8-1/results.htm

I can play OGG Vorbis out of the box on every player I own except my car stereo which ONLY plays mp3. I can't play AAC on all them out of the box.. (Sansa Clip+ doesn't support AAC out of the box).  Not to mention with AAC you have a measure of format fragmentation to contend with.

These days I personally have a harder time finding native AAC support than OGG Vorbis. But, then again, I cherish my freedom and tend to only buy and use devices and software which respect it.

And as another fine poster noted, rip to a free lossless codec and then you're not format trapped in lossy land. You're question seemed to indicate you wanted a solution for her to rip and play music on her Nexus 7, not a solution for archiving music.. OGG Vorbis will work perfectly fine in your specified environment.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #12
There's hardly anyone using raw .aac files? Last time I output something to .aac, was by mistake ...

There is in principle a difference between lossless formats as regards gapless playback ... but given the circumventing measures taken, is that much of an issue anymore?


@ OP: .mp4 and .m4a are the same container, just with different filesuffix. You can just rename one to the other.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #13
I made that mistake in the past.  Ended up reripping my entire collection when I bought a device that didn't want to know...


That's why you rip to lossless and then convert afterwards.


Storage space really.  I own all my music in lossless (as they are on CD) it seems senseless to store them again in a compressed digital form,  I wanted a format that is a modern compressor (so OGG, AAC, WMA all fit that requirement), but it also needed to play on everything I have.  And everything I have (including the car stereo) supports AAC format.


Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #14
My mother would never forgive me for getting her locked into eveything Apple.

Why don't you ask her, instead of locking her into your decision? Does she even care about being locked into a vendor? Apple is successful because they offer easy-to-use software which takes care of all the "complicated" stuff for you. Your mother just needs to decide if she wants freedom of choice, or freedom from choice. Both ways have their merit, though you might notice which one I prefer, personally.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #15

That's why you rip to lossless and then convert afterwards.

Storage space really.  I own all my music in lossless (as they are on CD) it seems senseless to store them again in a compressed digital form,

Not at all! Well, it actually depends first of all on how many CDs you have, then on how much you value your own time spent ripping them and tagging the results, plus the CD drive wear (neither CDs themselves are indestructible) and last but not least on how long you (or your mother) are ready to bear a period without music on the go, once taken this habit!

Consider that terabytes now come very cheap and is always adviceable to keep a full backup, but if you are so inclined, you can consider the physical CDs as backup.
... I live by long distance.

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #16
Ended up reripping my entire collection when I bought a device that didn't want to know...


You should have ripped to lossless in the first place. Re-ripping my CDs after I lost my backup took me weeks, but converting my entire FLAC collection to lossy takes only about 4 hours.


Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #18
Normally I would never recommend iTunes - it's a bloated piece of inflexible crap whose sole purpose on my computer is to allow me access to Apple's AAC encoder. Every time I need to disable multiple startup entries and system services because iTunes needed an update, I wonder if it's even worth it having installed.

But for the criteria you laid out, it sounds like you're looking for a piece of software that's a bit "dumbed down" - and iTunes does meet that requirement.

1-click embedded album art is the main stickler here. Certainly there are other rippers capable of embedding album art, but it seems those are more powerful/complex pieces of software which are out of the "parent-proof" category.

As far as standards compliance goes, iTunes AAC files use a normal MPEG-4 container, which I'm fairly sure is standards-compliant. Even if it isn't compliant to the MPEG standard by the letter, it's certainly the de-facto standard. For years it's been the goal of other AAC encoders (like Nero) to produce files that match iTunes format and so will play in the largest number of players.

(And if you want to get that technical, your "standard" MP3s aren't actually standard either - LAME/Xing headers were dreamt up years after the MPEG-1 Layer III standards were finalized. IIRC, even ID3 tags and VBR are non-standard extensions to the format.)

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #19
iTunes - it's a bloated piece of inflexible crap whose sole purpose on my computer is to allow me access to Apple's AAC encoder. Every time I need to disable multiple startup entries and system services because iTunes needed an update, I wonder if it's even worth it having installed.


If the AAC encoder is all you care about, you can unpack the iTunes installer exe with something that supports 7zip (like WinRAR), install only AppleApplicationSupport.msi and then use qaac. No iTunes needed!

Easy but fully featured AAC ripper

Reply #20
Why not just get your mother a subscription for Spotify?