Bling Bling with Xing (Audiograbber)

Name: Morgenhund

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Product:	Audiograbber
Date:	08/10/02 (849 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: useful for ripping non-CD material, normalising feature, small download

Disadvantages: manual configuration of ripper, trial version only lets you copy half a CD, bit out of date now

If you own a portable mp3 player the chances are that you?ll either have downloaded a heck of a lot of music (take me, with an mp3 collection approaching 3000 tracks for example ? approximately 15Gb of hard drive space) or you will have got an MP3 ripping program. After all, how do you think that mp3 files are made originally? Friends have often entrusted their musical masterpieces to me for ripping ? not so that I can send them off to people all over the net but so that they can send mp3 demos via e-mail (with is next to free if you are a pikey student and don?t want to get 250 demo CDs rejected which you?ve had to pay for!). In order to rip audio tracks into mp3s, I have used Xing Audiograbber ? a very useful bit of kit indeed.

I originally got the free version, being a pikey student at the time myself, and this was perfectly adequate to get me into the ripping mp3s to start off with. The free trial version can be downloaded from the Audiograbber website at http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/, clocking in at a tiny 1.4Mb for the setup files, or from any download portal (e.g. tucows.com, download.com or similar sites). You will also need an mp3 encoder too ? lame3.92 is the current version I use, and again can be downloaded through a link from the audiograbber site. The setup process is pretty straightforward, and just as long as you copy the mp3 encoder to the same directory as audiograbber you should be up and running pretty quickly, once you have configured audiograbber to recognise the ripper. If you don?t then you can rip CD-DA (CD Digital Audio) tracks into .wav files, but that it about as much use as a chocolate fireguard in a blast furnace! There is however a slight restriction with the trial version in that you cannot rip all the tracks off a CD ? you can only rip half the tracks each time you open the program, and there is the problem that you won?t automatically get one half of the CD and then another. Have no fear though, the registered version
is only USD 20 (about the cost of a CD album?) so you can soon get round this?

The current version works on all current incarnations of Windows, previous versions having been somewhat more selective about which versions of the operating system they would work on. There are various language versions available ? English, French, Spanish, German and Italian versions are part of the standard pack with a host of alternative language options downloadable. The latest version is also usefully compatible with the MS Media Player?s WMA format including the packaged WMA format ? great if you want to make a copy and don?t want it to be copied (some doodah means it can only be played on the machine on which it was ripped ? and who said that Audiograbber didn?t want to prevent music piracy on a widescale!).

Whistles and bells:

Okay, so far I?ve just given the basic rundown of the very basic features of the software, the bare minimum that will get you ripping and burning to start with ? but there is more to Audiograbber than this.

Act normally: Normalising is something I would recommend to everyone ? files that are not normalised are often of different volume levels ? bit like how adverts on television seem to be louder than the programmes! If you don?t rip directly to mp3s (the fastest option ? a five minute song can be ripped in about a minute or quicker depending on your CD Rom drive!) but convert to a temporary wave file (.wav) you can then rip to mp3 after normalising and the CD volume levels will be the same throughout ? great for compilation CDs!

Name that tune: If you have ever downloaded an mp3, you?ll know that generally there is information about the file included. For example: the name of the song, album, year of appearance, artist, genre, length and bitrate (sampling rate ? 128kbps corresponds to CD Audio quality ? 44100 samples per second). So then when you chuck it into an mp3 player (e.g. Winamp) you get all the inform
ation which is very useful when compiling playlists?

Quantity over quality: Decreasing the bitrate will mean that the mp3s take up less space on your mp3 player. If you can handle no getting CD quality (well the equivalent thereof!) then you could always decrease the bitrate from 128kbps to 112kbps or 96kbps to get more music on your mp3 player ? I don?t tend to bother with this any more, since I effectively use my computer as a jukebox and therefore go for the bigger files.

8 track cartridge?: As long as you have an audio input you can rip from any source ? audiograbber has an interface so if you really want to rip your favourite C-90 or 12 inch LP you can ? and if you have got eight track cartridge I dare say you could manage to rip from that too, although I think trying to rip a 78 would not be possible... And then you can get rid of the pops, hisses and crackles ? but that wouldn?t be half as much fun, would it kids?

System requirements: A CD Rom drive (for ripping those CDs doofus!!!), hard drive space (you?ll be letting rip more than the Phantom Raspberry Blower probably!). As far as processor power goes you?ll have no probs running this on a very old Pentium with a quad speed CD Rom drive ? providing the CD Rom drive supports digital audio ripping, and obviously you?ll require a sound card that is connected to your CD drive... If you don?t have a burner this could be the one for you ? a cheap solution, which whilst now showing its age is still very useable.

All in all this is still a good little program, even if shipped software with CD burners is now on a parallel to it, and doesn't have the hassle of having to manually configure the mp3 encoder. You may well still find a use for this one!

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