Standalone CD rippers are useful if you have a large collection of CDs that you want to rip. They are also useful if the media player you are using does not have a built-in CD ripper.

These special audio CD extraction programs typically have more features than the options built into popular media players like Windows Media Player.

EAC—Exact Audio Copy—is prized for its accuracy. The free Windows program reads each CD sector at least twice to verify that the data has been copied correctly. It then compares the copy to the original CD until at least eight out of 16 attempts produce identical results. It then repeatedly reads problematic parts of the CD, such as scratched areas, up to 80 times.

EAC's accuracy comes at the cost of speed, but if accuracy is important to you, an extra minute or so of time won't be a problem. On the other hand, EAC isn't the most user-friendly CD ripping software program and it doesn't implement its own codec. It also doesn't pull album metadata from its database until you tell it to.