It's been four years since I wrote the original review for CDex and I felt I needed to at least add some more details on this program. I'm going to just tack on the newer stuff in front of the older review since they both address somewhat different views and ideas.

(Edited Feb 29th, 2004)

If you are someone who enjoys listening to music on your computer or wish to make a copy of the music from your CDs to your computer or mp3 player or any other devices that can play compressed audio files, then, CDEX is probably one of the easiest and most popular CD ripper and mp3 encoder software that's out there.

CDEX, originally was an all in one audio file converter program. In the early days of mp3s and cd burning, there wasn't a specific program that will rip and encode a CD audio file into a compressed audio file such as mp3s. In those days, you had to find a software that rips the sound files from your CD, convert it to a WAV file, and then encode it to mp3 or other compressed audio file. And if you wanted to burn an mp3 file onto a CD so that you can play it on your CD player, you do the opposite. I originally used CDex for the audio file conversion to and from WAV files.

CDex, originally came out as a simple CD audio ripper/mp3/wave conversion software. When I originally wrote my review of CDex back in August 2000 (it seemed so long ago), the software's main function was to rip out the CD audio files and convert it to large wave (.wav) files. Then, you'd have to convert and encode into mp3 files. I remembered how long a process it was originally was. It was a two step process and was one of those things where you could go and brew yourself a cup of coffee while running the program. But, the main thing about CDEx is that the program first of all, is free and comes in a zip format and it's a nice little powerful software that's all self contained. You don't have to install the program and have it go through the registry. Just unzip the file and put it wherever you want and run it. If you're a total beginner, you can easily venture to the "Help" menu and go through a simple yet intuitive overview on how to use the program.

To explain how easy it is to rip and encode with CDex and why it's so popular, here's the process of doing a CD rip and mp3 encoding.

Run the program. Pop in a CD (audio CD, not VCDs or CDRs or CDRWs) and CDex will automatically detect the songs on the CD. All the tracks will be highlighted by default. Now, take the time to enter the Artist, Album, and track information. Or, if you're lazy, you can obtain the information via the CDDB website which has a large database of track and artist information, on just about every CD that's out there. But you'll have to first enter your email address in the "Remote CDDB" tab under CDEx configuration in the "Options" Menu. So, go to the "Options" menu, "Settings", "Remote CDDB" and enter your email address, "Ok". If you wish to rip and encode all the songs on the CD, just make sure they are all "highlighted". If not, just select only the songs you wish to rip and encode. Depending on the format you wish to encode to, just select the corresponding button (CD to WAV, CD to mp3, etc) and that's it! The software will start running and when it's finished, you should have a compressed digital format of the song on your hard drive. From there, you can do whatever you wish with it, transfer it to your mp3 player, burn it onto CDRs, etc. And if you have a WAV file, you can just as easily convert it to mp3, pretty much going through the reverse steps.

Later versions of CDex allows for conversion of audio files into other compressed formats such as ogg vorbis. If you own an mp3 player or a handheld PDA, you already know about ogg vorbis files and how they are an excellent alternative to mp3s, allowing you to store more songs than mp3s without detecting any deterioration in audio quality, even at a lower bitrate (eg.128 bit mp3 vs 84 bit ogg). And, now, all that's required is changing the settings to ogg vorbis files rather than mp3 if you want to rip and encode CD audio files into ogg vorbis files. I use it nowadays for ripping and encoding CD files into ogg vorbis files and transfer them to my Palm handheld.

And, another use of CDex is to convert an mp3 file into ogg vorbis or vice versa, although it's not recommended since both ogg vorbis and mp3 files are "lossy" codec (they discard data in order to compress it). For example, if ogg vorbis discards the low end of an audio file and mp3 discards the high end of the audio file, if you convert it from one to the other, you'd end up with a very flat sounding audio file since you've lost both the low and high end. So, a better alternative to converting from one compressed audio file to another is to burn the music to a CD first and then ripping it and encoding it into your desired compressed audio file. But, the feature is there if you want it. Just direct the CDex program to your compressed audio file and select your desired compressed audio file and go to the "Convert" menu and select "re-encode compressed audio file".

There are many other uses for this versatile program that you will discover if you start fiddling around with it. All I can say about this nifty little program is that I'm still using this after all these years and it works great.

(End edit)

Being a recent user of CDex and Cd burning, I'd have to say that this program makes it very easy to convert your mp3 files into wav files and vice versa, not to mention cd audio to mp3 or wav files. I discovered this program via a friend's recommendation and have since dumped using WinAmp for the mp3 to wav conversion. This program really doesn't need to be installed on the computer. You basically download a zip file, unzip the file and just move them to a directory on your hard drive. Wow! One of the few programs I've encountered that does not play around with the computer's registry or other ini files.

Unlike WinAmp, in which you have to go to the web site to read up on instructions on how to use it and convert the mp3 to wav files, the interface on the program is quite simple to figure out. On the right hand side of the program going down, there are a few graphical buttons. Three buttons with a circle representing a CD with an arrow to WAV, MPEG, MPEG, a button with WAV->MPEG, a button with MPEG->WAV, a MS IE type search icon button and a setup button. It doesn't take much to figure out those buttons convert one format to another. If you're not sure, place your cursor over the buttons and a message will pop up.

Like WinAmp, you can play your favorite songs with the program but unlike WinAmp, there is no graphical equalizer that you can play around with.

One feature I like a lot is that CDex can normalize the volume on the tracks you record. If you download Mp3 files off the net, you'd realize that some songs play at a lower volume than others. This program will allow you to record them (when converting them into a different format) at the same volume.

There are a lot more settings feature in this program that I don't really use but may be great for other users who want to fiddle around with their files.

I basically like this program for the normalization feature not to mention that it's an all in one program, rather than just a mp3-wav file converter. I find it's a pain to use several programs to do the tasks that one program can do just as well. It's easy to use, doesn't take much to figure out.

I'd recommend it for those who don't have time to fiddle around with converter programs or want to use several different programs to convert between the various sound file formats.

Recommended: Yes