Windows 7 - audio CD duplication software

I'm looking for recommendations. I am in the process of cataloging my music cd collection - I want to put all my original CDs in protective sleeves that are packed away, and then use only the copies in my CD player. Once that is done, then I will rip every CD to both a lossless format for playing on my home stereo, and to some flavor of compressed format for playing on a portable device.

My questions are:

1)what are the best utilities that will allow me to duplicate an audio cd either to another physical cd or to an ISO file?
2)What are the best utilities for ripping lots of CDs to digital format - I want something that will allow me to control/manage the files on disk, and to easily edit the meta information for a given cd. Itunes and windows media player are of course out. I would also really like to be able to control not only bit rate, but also sound levels in the ripping.

I'm just planning this now - no real experience with anything but generic tools, so I am very interested in your opinions and experiences.

thanx much!

ImgBurn is a frequent recommendation for duplicating all types of discs. I use it with no problems or errors.

I don't do a lot of ripping, but use CDex when I do. No problems there either, but I don't recall any control for sound levels. You can rip to WAVE or to mp3 as I recall.

Another popular ripping choice is Exact Audio Copy. Exact Audio Copy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General advice is to rip to lossless when possible and then convert the lossless files to the lossy format of your choice with your chosen bitrate.

I use mp3tag to control the data, but don't know if you plan mp3s.

Hi scabrous1 ! Welcome to SF

Answer to Question No. 1

Free option : ImgBurn
Paid option : Nero

Answer to Question No. 2
There are many programs that can do it . Some of them are dBpoweramp (it supports FLAC) and Audiograbber .

Try this sites

Diskfaktory.com -- CD Duplication, DVD Duplication & CD Replication, DVD Replication Headquarters

DiskFaktory Jams


I recommend these sites as they helped me alot!

WTS Duplication is a great reference for your request. I have found that they not only do QUALITY work, but they do it for a great price as well. They specialize in cd and dvd duplication, cd printing, dvd printing, and much more.