Quick facts
- Time: about 4 minutes per disc, so 100 CDs is roughly one weekend
- Cost: $0 in software; $20โ$30 for a USB CD drive if your computer has none
- Storage: about 40 MB per album as 256 kbps AAC, 300โ400 MB as lossless FLAC
- Scale: 300 albums in FLAC need roughly 100 GB, which a $25 external drive covers
CD sales are having a retro-tech moment.
The ones already in your house are worth more once they also live on your phone.
Ripping a collection is tedious, not hard.
Every step below uses free software and hardware you may already own.
One careful pass with the right settings means never touching the discs again
Step 1 is choosing a format, and lossless is the safe answer
The format decision comes first because it decides how much space you need and whether you will ever have to redo this.
FLAC is a lossless format: a perfect copy of the disc, at roughly half the size of the raw audio.
AAC at 256 kbps or MP3 at 320 kbps are compressed.
Most listeners cannot tell the difference on ordinary speakers, and files are about a tenth the size.
If you have the disk space, rip to FLAC once. You can always convert FLAC into smaller files later; you cannot go the other way.
| Format | Size per album | Sound | Plays on |
|---|---|---|---|
| FLAC | 300โ400 MB | Identical to the CD | Most phones and players; not Apple's Music app |
| ALAC | 300โ400 MB | Identical to the CD | Apple devices natively |
| AAC 256 kbps | ~40 MB | Near-CD for most ears | Everything |
| MP3 320 kbps | ~50 MB | Near-CD for most ears | Everything, including older car stereos |
Step 2 is the software, and it is free on both Windows and Mac
Windows users can rip with the built-in Windows Media Player.
Open Settings, then Rip music, and pick FLAC or MP3.
For a more careful rip that re-reads scratched discs, Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is the long-standing free choice.
Mac users have ripping built into the Music app. Insert a disc, then choose Apple Lossless or AAC under Settings, Files, Import Settings.
fre:ac is a free cross-platform alternative that handles FLAC, MP3, and AAC in one place.
Whichever tool you pick, turn on automatic track naming. The software looks up the disc online and fills in artist, album, and track titles.
The disc takes four minutes to rip. Fixing a mislabeled album later takes longer than that.
Step 3 is the ripping loop itself
Insert the disc, wait for the track list to load, and confirm the album name and artist look right before you click Rip.
Clean smudged discs with a soft cloth wiped from the center outward, never in circles.
Let each disc finish before opening the drawer.
Interrupted rips are the usual cause of clicks and gaps.
Work in batches of 20 or so.
Most people stall out from boredom, not difficulty.
Discs that fail on a laptop's slim drive often rip fine on a $25 external USB drive, which reads at a slower, steadier speed.
Skip the copy-protected discs from the mid-2000s if they refuse; a handful of major-label releases from that era were built to resist ripping.
Step 4 is putting the files where you will actually listen
Copy the finished folder to a second location before you do anything else: an external drive or cloud storage.
For an iPhone, the simplest route is syncing through the Music app on your computer, or uploading to a cloud music library.
Android phones play FLAC natively. Copy the folders across, or use a free player app that reads from cloud storage.
A Wi-Fi speaker or a network drive can also read the folder directly, which turns the whole collection into a jukebox for the living room.
Keep the discs. They remain your backup and, for the collectible ones, are worth more now than they were five years ago.
