I'm hoping to get some ideas from you. I'm looking for an easy to use player/ripper/burner/organizer.
Though I may not be an audiophile like some of you, I do love my music.
I don't have too much time for a big learning curve.
I have a pc and run my music through my home stereo.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Diana

You want all in one application?
Have a look at Media Center?

http://www.jrmediacenter.com/

actually, Windows Media Player 9/10 can be player/burner/ripper too.... what's organizer? does it mean media library?

foobar2000

For strictly burning/ripping CDs I use EAC. I'm not sure any program exists that is great in all those areas play/rip/burn/organize all of them have thier pros and cons you just have to try them out and see what you like best

I also use foobar2000, and love it... but it does have a somewhat steep learning curve... at least for full functionality...

Foobar2000 won't work for you IMO because you want a non steep learning curve.
Your best bet is Windows Media Player if you run windows and do not have time to waste.
After that you can try something more advanced that will hopefully please the configuration freaks, free/open software zealots and MS haters that lurk around here. Don't hold your breath though...

I'll put my vote in for iTunes. iTunes is an easy to use audio player, audio ripper, burner, and organizer. iTunes will burn audio CDs, data CDs, and MP3 CDs. It will also organize your music into a simple Artist\Album system. It's free and quite easy to use.

Just use separate software for each. There are such software which are quite simple but do a very good job. I recommend:
Ripping: CDex
Burning: Burrrn
Player: VUplayer, XMPlay...

if you want just one program, i would agree w/ Teqnilogik. i would recommend itunes before windows media player. it my experience it is significantly more stable, and not quite as retarded... you can achieve excellent quality encodes by using their new "vbr" aac w/ your rips.

atici's advice would certainly give you more flexibility, and is also a great solution. if you are willing to try out a few easy, nice programs, the ones he suggested are all good.

I, myself, vote for seperate programs to accomplish the tasks you want.

Player: Foobar2000
Ripper: Exact Audio Copy
Burner: Burrrn for audio and burnatonce for data
Organizer: A well thought out directory structure on my hard drive(s).

dito

Edit - Sorry, this has turned out to be more of a reminder for me than help for you, but there are a couple of things here you might find useful, so I'll post it anyway.

Rip: I use EAC, set up thus, with Dmitry's Lame compile and ForceASPI, but I started with CD-DA X-Tractor because it's simple and fast. I didn't like CDex.

Burn: I use XP's built in burning - I don't burn audio CDs. I used to use Easy CD Creator until it succumbed to Windows bit-rot. When I next need a full-featured burner I intend to try EAC's built in burning, and also BurnAtOnce, particularly for its long filename support - truncated filename errors used to drive me insane when I did a lot of burning. Given the other comments in this thread I'm going to have to have a look at Burrrn too.

Play: I generally use my iRiver H320 DAP because I don't want fan noise when I'm listening to music, but if I have to play something on my laptop then I use Media Player Classic. It plays audio and video files other players choke on, but has an infuriating longstanding bug* where the automatic level control gradually lowers the output volume over the length of an album / movie - easily undone by a pause & play or simply clicking on the position slider, but for me it relegates it to checking out a track or two and nothing more. Next player I'll try will be UltraPlayer for its supposed bit-perfect playback and general all-round goodness. I keep wishing Foobar2000 appealed to me, but I tried it once and still have anti-bodies to it.

Windows Media Player can actually be pretty good - I like its tag editing. I just don't use it because it feels bloated (lots of features I have no interest in whatsoever), can be slow to respond, and mainly because it gets VBR MP3 times so completely, utterly and consistently wrong. And because in its default install it is configured to rip to WMA instead of MP3, which is just rude. And because I'm paranoid it's going to DRM me one night when I'm not looking...

Codecs: Audio generally comes in far fewer varieties than video, but I keep roughly up-to-date with K-Lite Codec Pack Full, along with Real and QuickTime alternative from the same site.

Manage: I mostly use the rather good MP3-Library, but with regular jaunts into MP3 Tag Studio for major tagging and renaming, although the latter cannot be described as simple. A half-hearted directory structure is a good idea too (as opposed to completely random).

I haven't had enough experience with iTunes to pass comment on it, but in general Apple software is brilliant if you think like Apple, which a lot of people obviously do. If you don't think like Apple then it's a forgone conclusion that you'll be launching your whole computer from an upstairs window within hours of installation.

*2nd, much later, Edit: To be fair, I wasn't keeping up - it seems that after a long period of virtualy no releases, development is back under way and this bug appears fixed in v6.4.8.7

Right now I use foobar2000 0.8.3 for almost everything, but don't forget about WinAmp. Maybe augmented by some good plug-in like Otachan's in_mpg123 and Henning Färnström's CUE Player. If you are like me you will stick with the old school skins (I've designed my own, actually).

I think WinAmp is at least a very decent choice, much better than WMP, IMO.

You'll need something different for burning. Burrrn! is excelent.

Foobar2000 0.9.0 (will we have a final rev as a Christmas gift???) integrate ripping and will be even more attractive, although I'm concerned about compatibility issues with several 0.8.3 plug-ins I've come to love. Never really tried, to be true.

Sergio

EDIT, Historical notes and rants:

I used to use Easy CD Creator, when it was only a very-very-good burning program. Then XP bite it. I switched then to Nero as my principal burning program, but it has things I really.. how to say... to be soft... things I HATE. Examples: 2 seconds gaps between tracks by default when burning audio, last label used for data CD remembered, impossiblity to save my preferences to a profile, idiotic behaviour for multi-session data discs. Burrrn! (or EAC) are now used for Audio CD and most data is packet-written through In-CD. I very seldom comes back to use Nero, only when I really need and everytime is a concert of four letters words.

Not the "best", but MediaMonkey fits your criteria.

WMP 10 is the easiest and most fully featured of what's available. The only part it's subpar on is burning - for that I use Musicmatch Pro.

A very well-written and easy all-in-one official guide to WMP 10 can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...nter/howto.aspx

If WMP 10 would be "most fully featured" you would not need another program for burning!
... and BTW: quality of wma-codec is not even near iTune's AAC-codec.

Thats also this one program, I don't know if any of you know about it, it starts with a W and ends in amp. I forgot the name, sorry. It does player/ripper/burner/organizer, granted it is the jack of all trades and master of none, but it still works.

Nero is fast and produces great audio discs every time - can't really see what anyone has against it. If you have it and use it, I'd stick with it.

Oh, yes. You HAVE to get the number of discs you want in 'Entire Disc Copy' right before you hit the burn button... You only need worry about the two-second option if making a compilation, and who needs those when you have a DAP?

EAC is much more awkward to use for burning - I still puzzle over it every time.

Once it is set up for ripping it is very easy and does seem to offer what the others don't by providing really good error correction.

Alex's Shefl has some potential but that's another subject for elsewhere - I haven't tested many other rippers.

I dropped WMP10 as soon as I realised my DAP wouldn't support WMAs (despite what Archos say) and that Lame MP3s were so good... Bit of a learning curve involved there though, but worth the effort.

All-in-one solutions are never the best ones in terms of quality and versatility, they always imply compromise, if I had to I'd give my vote to Nero.

I don't think so!
It's very easy just rip your tracks and then: Actions > Create CUE Sheet > Current Gap Settings and save it in the directory where you've ripped your tracks. Or you can Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet.
Then it's really easy, just start Writer and load the right CUE-Sheet and let it Burrrrn!

Clemech wrote..
I agree..
I've used nero for a long time & it has worked very well for me.

WMPlayers are like trailers on your desktop *L O L*, huge & heavy.(specially the newer ones)
i've hardly ever used WMP much. -just my opinion but the design has also, always seemed like a hoch-poch to me, not affording much ease of use. -( & there's a
difference between a program having lot of choices/options,..and a confusing
illogical interface- that's what i always found it to be). - always wondered how such big companies could get it so wrong.

smz wrote..
yes i'd second that,..I used winamp 2.81 for a longtime (there was one, the 3 series in between, that i found the sound was really bad on. ;P~)

for ripping i use eac.



foobar2000 - might need some more attention . q;)
here's a nice tutorial on it http://eolindel.free.fr/foobar/accueil.shtml

-

Player; Jetaudio
Ripper; EAC
Encoder; LAME + RazorLAME
Organizer; Tag&Scan
Burner; Nero (Express)

And for the MAC, use Amarok as player.

I'd recommend J. River Media Center for an all in one solution.

MediaMonkey (2.4 anyway) is a close contender.

The Godfather and foobar combination is great for tagging/managing/playing various formats. The library in TGF is great.

I like to massage playlists by plays/time/type. I also like the ability of JRMC to transcode from various formats to my choice of format and rate for handheld players. Of all the 'media managers' that is my current choice.

TGF and foobar are my handsdown freeware combo. I have used this and recommended it to my financially frugal friends.

Nero Ultra is fine. Itunes is too;

They're not what I use, but foobar2000 is a bit steep, as is much of the free (as in thought) software available on the market.

They should both be decent enough.

DeepBurner & DeepRipper

hey wait a minute...
foobar2000 is not steep. It's just that in the stable version (0.83) the preferences menu looks intimidating. And it doesn't have much in the way of built-in eye-candy. Just add music, play and presto-chango, great sound.

The sound quality - which is tauted as NOT being better than other popular players - just IS. ("Pure" sound?) and for this alone I would use it exclusively but my DAP ties me to that apple monster. (foo_pod - now that's steep!)

Thanks for allowing me to digress.

are there any quality differences between the different burning programs (Both audio and readable)?