In all the controversy about Microsoft's monopolistic business practices, specifically where bundled software is concerned, nobody really stops to look to see if the bundled software does everything that users need, therefore negating the need for third party applications. Windows XP comes with Windows Media Player 8 which is supposed to consolidate encoding and playback of many types of multimedia formats. What Microsoft is hoping is that everyone will move to their proprietary Windows Media Audio format for digital music. Nice try, but I think that MP3 is too entrenched as the internet's defacto standard that it would take quite a while for WMA to become even a blip on the digital music radar.

Since WMA8 doesn't rip MP3s without the to-be-released media pack, I decided to check out other alternatives. Windows XP supports most, if not all of the ripping applications that ran under Windows 9x/ME and Windows 2000. I took some of the ones I used under Windows ME for a test drive and compared the features to what WMP8 offers.

The applications tested:
Windows Media Player 8
CDex
Music Match Jukebox
Winamp

WAV
It's well known that the best way to make your own mixes is to copy the songs digitally off the CDs that you're mixing from in a format that doesn't sacrifice the quality of the music. On Windows, that format is called WAV. It's a straight digital duplication of the tracks from the CD with no loss in quality, unlike MP3 or WMA where there's a definite quality loss. Some people hear it and some people don't. I do. Therefore, so long as you have the 600 or so megabytes on your hard drive to accomodate a relatively full CD, the WAV format should be used to make the best mix CDs possible. Also, in order to make a CD from MP3s or WMA, it's not practical to rip in these formats to make a mix CD since you have to convert those files back to WAV to burn the audio CD anyway.

This is important because of the CD rippers I tested, only Windows Media Player doesn't rip in WAV or MP3 format on its own, only in WMA format. The other rippers, CDex and Music Match Jukebox both rip in WAV format. The file size is huge - roughly 10MB/minute so as I said before, you really need lots of hard drive space for WAV rips, but what you get back is much better audio reproduction in your mixes.

Apparently, Winamp had a plug-in that allowed you to save WAV files to your hard drive. In fact, there's something called "Disk Writer" that comes with Winamp, but no matter what I tried, it wouldn't write anything to the hard drive.

MP3
You'd have to be living under a rock to not know what the MP3 format is. In case you just slithered out from one, MP3 is a compressed version of the WAV format by a factor of about 10:1. This means that a 4 minute song will take up about 40MB of space in WAV format, but 4MB of space in MP3 format. It's a lossy format which means that it theoretically throws away what it thinks people can't hear.

Both Music Match Jukebox, Windows Media Player 8, CDex, and Winamp play MP3s with no problems. However, only CDex and Music Match Jukebox rip CDs to MP3 format without any extra software. WMP8 is supposed to have an MP3 encoder in the "media pack" which hasn't been released yet. I consider MP3 ripping to be a notch above WAV ripping in terms of importance.

Ripping times
Not all apps are created equal. I timed ripping MP3, WAV, and WMA formats on as many apps that could handle them. Here's what I came up with.

All tests were done with the same hardware, on Windows XP Pro, build 2600, the CD drive was a Creative Labs PC-DVD 6x model 6240E.

Overall, I was most impressed by Music Match Jukebox. The free version allows you to rip, burn, and play a variety of music types. For $14.99 you can buy a licensed version that does much more, and for $49.99 you buy what they call a "lifetime upgrade" where you never have to pay again. Unfortunately, the free version badgers you to pay for it on a regular basis. I despise applications that annoy their users, begging for money. Most annoying is the dialog box that pops up every time you quit MMJ. There are times I decide not to use a particular piece of software soley based on how annoying their begging is. This is one of them, but while I was testing it I really got to see what it could do. At this time, I don't know how much the MP3 encoder add-on for WMA8 will be, but if they price it competitively, it might give MMJ a run for its money. MMJ's "Annoyingware" approach to asking for payments might sway me to just get the MP3 Media Pack for WMA, but only if it supports WAV.

Winamp is still the playback-only champion. It might not rip anything, but if you don't need ripping tools, this free application is the absolute best for playback. It uses the standard CDDB database to get the data for your CD when you put it in your drive. However, their CDDB database software doesn't like some firewalls. It has many skins, and a variety of visualizations.

CDex is a great Swiss Army Knife for digital music. I would suggest downloading it for its ripping features as a runner-up for Music Match Jukebox's. It's not the prettiest application, but very straightforward.

Windows Media Player 8 is also a great application for playback, and comes bundled with Windows XP. It has great visualizations and skins, but I don't like how it didn't recognize some of my CDs. The database it gets their CD data from isn't nearly as robust as CDDB, used by Winamp and MMJ. For example, it didn't recognize my Quake CD which has music on it, and it didn't recognize Star Wars: A New Hope CD1, but it did recognize CD2. The advantage to WMP8's CD database is that it downloads album covers which XP can use to decorate the ripped album's folder with. I think it's nice to have WMP8 on your hard drive already installed with XP so that new internet users don't have to hunt for something better, but that might be the intent.

If I had to decide on one, I'd get Music Match Jukebox. The $14.99 isn't bad, and you get more out of it than the other applications. It's more flexible and rips in the formats that savvy users really need.

Runners up
I despise Real's software. Too cluttered, and too many ads. It's unfortunate that Real just can't go away in place of WMP or Quicktime. I believe that software shouldn't throw ads in your face on startup, so I didn't review Real's.

AudioCatalyst has been around for quite a while. In fact it was my first MP3 ripper for the Mac. However, its web site says that their software isn't compatable with Windows 2000 and ME, but does work on NT and 98. If a company tells you straight-up that their software doesn't work on the latest operating system, why even trust it? I got an email from someone saying that it works for them under XP, but I can't put trust in a company that won't support ME and 2000.

Links

Windows Media Player 8

Winamp

Music Match Jukebox

CDex

Audio Catalyst

Wincustomize.com