Audiograbber

I am really glad to have the chance to review this software. It is some sort of personal affinity... maybe because Audiograbber was the first software of its kind I have ever used, so many years ago, or maybe because it works so good. Anyway, I hereby declare on my personal behalf that Audiograbber IS one of the web's best ripping software.

Free, which is very good, Audiograbber is also a fast and highly reliable "piece of code". At the same time easy-to-use and still having a lot of options you can tweak and set up, this software is one of the most complete in its category and one of the most popular. I am quite sure that you, the reader - whether you already know the ways of Audiograbber and you read my words out of pure curiosity (or at least you've heard about it, or my reviews, ha-ha) or are looking for the "perfect tool" - are lucky: you clicked the right link and you are minutes away from getting what you needed.

The looks

It just can't get clearer than it already is. Audiograbber is so close to the perfect balance between a simple and easy to use Graphic User Interface and the amount of buttons/options to be accessed and tweaked.

Audiograbber's icons/buttons have been carefully drawn while at the same time remaining simple and extremely intuitive. Even the most inexperienced user needs just one close look over Audiograbber's UI and almost everything is clear. Whether we're speaking about generic interface elements or editable fields and checkboxes, all this gets quite easy with this software.

Besides all these, Audiograbber has also its own player, a totally integrated one, mostly for previewing purposes I assume, but which has all transport and playback controls in their places, both easy readable and usable, with progress and volume bars and offering info about the number of tracks on the inserted CD, corresponding track size (in Mbs), their total playing time and the total time of the user-selected songs.

Having no dedicated skins, the Audiograbber shows itself with the native skin used by the operating system on which it runs. Even if Audiograbber seems rather oriented towards functionality, its looks do not lack a certain sleek feeling. I really do not know if it's its whole appearance, or just its simplicity or maybe just the thought that it works so well, but this software can gain sympathies in a very short time.

One more thing about Audiograbber's GUI: even if it has no bright and "punchy" colors, everything is very readable and its look is rather pleasant and comforting to the user's eye.

The works

Rather than its looks, Audiograbber distinguished in the way it does the job it's meant for. And for this, words like "close to perfection" are not exaggerated. I hope that everyone who has ever used the Audiograbber will agree with me, even those who don't like this software that much, for various other reasons.

The first thing I would like to speak about is speed - everybody's constant daily concern in so many domains. Well, Audiograbber can rip your CDs in two different modes: ASPI and Analog. While the analog mode allows you to hear the currently-processed track and ripping at an (obvious) 1X speed, the other mode can easily reach rip speeds of 20X and even more, depending only on your PC configuration and letting your audio to your own disposition. Meaning you can even watch a movie or listen to different music while your audio CD is being ripped.

Features like Normalization have a lot of side-options which allow you to output nice results from virtually any kind of CD, even from an amateur-made audio CD. Along with the adjustment of peak levels, the user also has the possibility to use a permanent compression tool. "Permanent" because there is no "Attack" setting and this means that the compression will be applied to the whole track as soon as the user-defined limits have been passed.

The Audiograbber has lots of handy settings own might use to fully customize its ripping experience/results and the great thing is that the default settings are so well-chosen that they could very well work for almost every CD ripping one may think of. From naming to silence options and from ripping offset to ripping using various effects that may be used by the PC's soundcard, the user has almost everything at hand.

Encoding to mp3-format files supports both Audiograbber's internal encoders and also external ones, according either to your likes or to your possibilities. Internal encoders list has Ogg Vorbis Official, Fraunhofer, Microsoft's WMA, LameEnc and even MS' PCM. The quality of the resulting mp3s depend as well on your settings and it ranges between broad limits, restricted only by the particular encoder's limits and specs.

Checksum options are also found among Audiograbber's many settings, along with song-comparison and even a manual recording tool usable for Line In sampling. And if you think it's not enough, this recording tool can also provide time scheduling, meaning that you can sample from a CD without being present and having scheduled this operation.

5 languages are available for Audiograbber: English, German (native), Italian, French and Spanish, so the direct reach of the software is even greater. Also regarding integration, the Audiograbber allows an external media/mp3player to be user-configured. Another good thing is that renaming tracks has been made easier by allowing the use of Windows' native command, F2 so now only keyboard and no clicks are necessary to edit the ID tags even for large albums such as compilations.

If your system is well-tuned up and working great on its own, Audiograbber will also be extremely reliable and fast, producing great-sounding mp3/wav in the shortest time.

The good

Everything, ha-ha! Well, it's free, it looks good, and works almost flawlessly. It can easily be used by both inexperienced people as well as by sound engineers alike. Great defaults for the first category and lots of supplemental options for the latter. Audiograbber is also "Freedb" - so you can easily get or submit info over the net, provided you have net access.

The bad

It's me who would be really bad to say nasty things about this absolutely nice and well-worked piece of software. But if I were to ask for more, I'd ask along with the rest of today's IT community: "Can't you make it a bit faster?" :)

The truth

Indubitably, one of the world's leading ripping software, let alone the fact that Audiograbber is freeware. It's fit for everyone and really, I feel I have to say a smiling "thank you" to its creators. And I guess so should everybody who ever used Audiograbber.