A free CD ripper that keeps your track tags

Burn by Zaweba includes one. Its Save audio CD as files tool reads your own audio CDs and saves the tracks as FLAC, MP3 or WAV, tagged with the album, artist and track titles from the disc's CD-Text, or with names you type in, and it makes a folder for each album. It's free software, offline and with no account.

A ripper that loses the names leaves you with folders full of Track01, Track02 and so on, which is useless in a music library. Keeping tags is what makes ripped music easy to find.

Where the names come from

Burn gets track names from the disc itself. Many CDs carry CD-Text, a small block of text with the album title, the performer and each track's title. Burn reads it and writes those names into the tags of the files it saves.

Plenty of CDs, especially older ones, have no CD-Text. In that case you type the names in before saving. It takes a few minutes per album and you only do it once. Since Burn doesn't look names up online, nothing is sent anywhere and it works with no connection.

Choosing a format for your files

FLAC is the exact choice: a lossless copy, smaller than WAV, which Burn decodes back and compares bit for bit with what was read. WAV is plain audio, checked the same way. MP3 is smallest and plays on almost anything.

For a collection you care about, FLAC is the safest master. You can make MP3s from FLAC later, but never get the lost detail back from an MP3.

Getting tags right first time

Check the names before you start, even when they come from CD-Text, as discs sometimes have spelling slips or inconsistent artist names. Keep the artist name identical across all albums by the same performer, or music players may list them as different artists. For compilations, it's worth putting each track's own artist in the title if your player groups by album.

Typing names for a whole shelf of older CDs takes time, so spread it out. Rip a few albums each evening and the library grows steadily, with every folder named and every track tagged as you go, rather than a pile of untitled files to sort out later.

Open the job from Home or Tools > Save audio CD as files, choose the format, check the names and start. The finished album lands in its own folder.

A careful reader, not a clever one

Burn reads plainly with three tries at each read. If part of the disc still can't be read, it stops and tells you, instead of saving a track that sounds fine until the bit with the scratch. It never works around copy protection, and is meant for CDs you own.

Names you type are useful later too. If you burn the music back to an audio CD, Burn can write the album, artist and track titles as CD-Text, and its labels and covers can print the track list on a CD insert. Pair it with Play by Zaweba for listening and you have a complete, free route from shelf to library and back.