X-fre:ac

X-fre:ac is a software utility whose purpose is to aid people in ripping audio CDs and convert them from one format to another, with a minimum amount of effort.

Seeing that this is the portable counterpart of fre:ac, the installation process is not a prerequisite. As a consequence, the Windows registry and Start menu/screen are not going to suffer any changes, and no kind of traces are going to remain on the drive after its removal.

You should also know that if you copy the program files to a USB flash drive, you can take X-fre:ac everywhere with you and use it on the fly, on any computer you have been granted access to.

At import, this tool enables you to upload file extensions such as AAC, AIFF, BONK, VOC, FLAC, MP3, MP4, OGG, AU, WAV and WMA, while export is available for formats such as BONK, FLAC, MP3, OGG and WAV. In addition to that, you can also save job lists to the hard drive as a M3U playlist and rip audio CDs (CDA).

There are also a few presets that you can take advantage of when going through the transformation process, while you can also customize them. To be more accurate, you can control VBR quality, set private, copyright or original bit, change stereo mode and adjust the sampling rate.

It is possible to play or stop audio tracks, as well as input information regarding them such as artist, album, title, track, year and genre, and change the output directory.

To sum up, X-fre:ac is a pretty efficient piece of software when it comes to ripping audio CDs. The interface is accessible to all types of users, although it is not very appealing, the response time is quite good and you can pause the process and resume it at a later date. It does not put a strain on the system’s performance, as it does not require a large amount of resources.