Easy but fully featured AAC ripper, Looking for something "parent-proof" Options

[ClashRocker]

Mother has a Nexus7, and it's a fantastic device, she wants to copy music to it from her CD's Now I could do it for her, but I would prefer to show her how to do it herself. The problem is, I have yet to find a suitable program. They are either WAY to complex and are a sledgehammer to crack a nut (MediaMonkey), or don't support M4A with embeded album art (EAC), or do M4a, but don't support album (FreAc)

Surely there must be something out there suitable?

The requirements are:

• Easy to use (1 click rip/encode/get album art)
• M4A AAC format
• Embedded Album Art

Help!!!

[slks]

Normally I would never recommend iTunes - it's a bloated piece of inflexible crap whose sole purpose on my computer is to allow me access to Apple's AAC encoder. Every time I need to disable multiple startup entries and system services because iTunes needed an update, I wonder if it's even worth it having installed.

But for the criteria you laid out, it sounds like you're looking for a piece of software that's a bit "dumbed down" - and iTunes does meet that requirement.

1-click embedded album art is the main stickler here. Certainly there are other rippers capable of embedding album art, but it seems those are more powerful/complex pieces of software which are out of the "parent-proof" category.

As far as standards compliance goes, iTunes AAC files use a normal MPEG-4 container, which I'm fairly sure is standards-compliant. Even if it isn't compliant to the MPEG standard by the letter, it's certainly the de-facto standard. For years it's been the goal of other AAC encoders (like Nero) to produce files that match iTunes format and so will play in the largest number of players.

(And if you want to get that technical, your "standard" MP3s aren't actually standard either - LAME/Xing headers were dreamt up years after the MPEG-1 Layer III standards were finalized. IIRC, even ID3 tags and VBR are non-standard extensions to the format.)

This post has been edited by slks: Nov 25 2012, 12:01

[skamp]

iTunes - it's a bloated piece of inflexible crap whose sole purpose on my computer is to allow me access to Apple's AAC encoder. Every time I need to disable multiple startup entries and system services because iTunes needed an update, I wonder if it's even worth it having installed.

If the AAC encoder is all you care about, you can unpack the iTunes installer exe with something that supports 7zip (like WinRAR), install only AppleApplicationSupport.msi and then use qaac. No iTunes needed!