CDex is a CD ripper

CD ripper

A CD ripper, CD grabber or CD extractor is software that convert tracks on a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis.It rips raw digital audio in CDDA format on a compact disc to a file or other output.- History :...

 for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It convert tracks on a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. Released under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, CDex is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

. , it is the 14th most popular download on SourceForge.net

SourceForge.net

SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...

, with over 41 million downloads. It is developed and maintained by Georgy Berdyshev. It was originally written by Albert L. Faber.

Features

CDex is able to convert CD audio into several formats including WAV

WAV

Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...

, Vorbis

Vorbis

Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...

, MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 (using the LAME

LAME

LAME is a free software codec used to encode/compress audio into the lossy MP3 file format.-History:The name LAME is a recursive acronym for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder". Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the "8Hz-MP3" encoder source code...

 encoder), VQF, Musepack

Musepack

Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s...

, APE

Monkey's Audio

Monkey's Audio is a file format for audio data compression. Being a lossless format, Monkey's Audio does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as AAC, MP3, Vorbis and Musepack....

, and many others. As of version 1.70b2 FLAC

FLAC

FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

 encoding is native, but for version 1.51 FLAC

FLAC

FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...

 and other codecs can be used by using an external encoder. For convenience, it supports CD-Text

CD-Text

CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows for storage of additional information on a standards-compliant audio CD...

 to allow ripped tracks, with reduced user effort, to have the names of songs, artists and albums. It also includes cdparanoia

Cdparanoia

cdparanoia is a compact disc ripper for *nix and BeOS, developed by Xiph.org. It is designed to be a minimalistic, high-quality CD ripper that would be able to compensate for and adjust to poor hardware to produce a flawless rip....

 for robust CD reading.

History

In January 2006, the CDex homepage requested a new project manager and developer, implying that Albert L. Faber has abandoned development of CDex. On 2006-06-05, CDex 1.70 Beta 1 was released via the SourceForge.net

SourceForge.net

SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...

 website. It is the first official update to the program in almost three years, with CDex 1.70 Beta 2 following soon after on 2006-06-23. On 11/18/2009 CDex 1.70 Beta 4 was released . Since then there has been no new release, but the 1.7X versions can still be downloaded.

On June 30, 2007, just one day after the release of the GPLv3, the license of CDex was updated.