Best Programs for Ripping CDs, Tagging and Normalizing Volume???

[javeryh]

I'm about to try and organize my entire music collection on one harddrive. I have about 1,000 CDs and god knows how many mp3s (in 3 different places). What is the best way to go about doing something like this?

I want all of the mp3s to be tagged properly with at least artist names, album names and album covers and I want to normalize the volume levels across everything so when I hit shuffle I'm not constantly adjusting the volume.

What do you guys do?   

[DaveMMR]

I personally use iTunes.  I know it's cliched and bloated as of late, but it does do the things you're looking for and I've never really had any problems with it.  It keeps my songs nicely organized and tagged with cover art.

      

[TheShanMan]

MP3Gain for normalizing. I just use RealPlayer for ripping and tagging.

[fronty]

.

[headkaze]

Spesoft Free CD Ripper

[NelsonPJ]

I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC)

www.exactaudiocopy.de

Look around the web for tutorials on how to set it up.  This is highly regarded sofware for accurately ripping CDs.  It uses error correction techniques that can rip even scratched/damaged CDs.

[TheShanMan]

+1. For any old CD's that had scratches that RealPlayer couldn't deal with, I resorted to EAC and it did great. Come to think of it, when I was ripping my whole collection I think I just stuck with EAC after I needed it the first time. However, for new CD's I just like the simplicity of RealPlayer - I'm too lazy to figure out other stuff.

[MPTech]

Another kudo for EAC to rip CD's.  I've ripped hundreds with it and as previously stated, it has an error process that will keep trying to rip even bad CD's (you can specify how hard to try).

I use Media Monkey to manage my MP3 collection (over 500gig).  It does a great job of album art and ID3 tags and can also convert format and level volumes too.

[GadgetGeek]

Over in Audio/Jukebox/MP3, Drew has a sticky on using EAC

I use CDEX (a sourceforge project) with great results.

[javeryh]

Over in Audio/Jukebox/MP3, Drew has a sticky on using EAC

I use CDEX (a sourceforge project) with great results.

I followed Drew's EAC guide but I am having trouble with the ripping process.  I'm reasonably sure I set everything up properly (I have had success ripping CDs) but I am getting about a 50% failure rate.  The CDs that fail are virtually flawless - I mean not a scratch on them - and they are still failing.  I've tried setting it up on 2 separate computers with the same results so I'm thinking it's a problem with my set up.

I downloaded the latest versions of EAC and Lame and what I think is the proper ASPI file (from here: http://ftp6.nero.com/wnaspi32.dll).  I installed EAC, extracted the Lame.zip file to the EAC folder and put the ASPI file in the EAC folder as well.  I can't figure out where I'm going wrong... any help would be great.

Thanks.