Rip your audio CDs to MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG or M4A — with album metadata, cover art and synced lyrics fetched automatically. No account, no API key, no GPU. Drop a disc in the drive, click Load, hit Rip.
A quick tour of the four tabs.
Everything you need to archive your CD collection — no subscription, no cloud.
Rip to MP3 (320 kbps / V0 / V2), FLAC (lossless), WAV (uncompressed), OGG Vorbis, or M4A (AAC). Pick per-session in the Run tab, or set a default in Settings.
Queries MusicBrainz by disc ID and fills artist, album, year, track titles — including per-track artists for compilations (so "Various Artists" albums get the real singer on every file).
Downloads the official cover from the Cover Art Archive, saves it as cover.jpg in the album folder, and embeds it into every tagged file.
Fetches synchronized .lrc lyrics from LRCLIB for every track (when available), falls back to plain text. Written to lyrics/ next to the audio and embedded in the tags.
Fast (default, ~4× speed): direct stream, no error correction.
Accurate: full libcdio paranoia error correction — slower but catches read errors on scratched discs.
Writes full tags via mutagen: title, artist (TPE1), album artist (TPE2), album, track number, year, cover art, and lyrics — across MP3, FLAC, OGG and M4A.
Install folder can be moved to another drive, another PC, or a USB stick. Path relocation patches the venv on launch — everything keeps working.
Installs portable uv + Python 3.12 + ffmpeg full build (with libcdio) + libdiscid. No Miniconda, no admin rights, no registry writes.
MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive and LRCLIB are all free and keyless. Nothing to register, nothing phones home. Only your disc ID leaves the machine — to identify the CD.
Modern desktop app with MVVM architecture. Self-contained single-file exe (~160 MB).
Uses astral-sh/uv to install a relocatable Python 3.12 next to the exe. No system Python required.
Bundled FFmpeg full build reads audio CDs directly via the libcdio input device. No separate cdparanoia binary needed.
Official libdiscid (Windows x64) computes the MusicBrainz disc ID used to look up your album.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit). 2 GB RAM. ~500 MB free disk after setup (the exe + runtime + ffmpeg). Output space depends on your rips (a FLAC album ≈ 400 MB).
Any standard audio-capable CD/DVD drive (internal or USB). Works with Red Book audio CDs. No support for copy-protected discs — the tool does not circumvent DRM.
Needed during first-run setup (downloads uv, Python, ffmpeg, libdiscid) and to fetch metadata/cover/lyrics. Ripping itself works offline once the disc is identified.
Pure CPU audio encoding. No NVIDIA / CUDA / PyTorch dependency. Works on any Windows PC including old laptops.
Please read before ripping.
Ripping commercial audio CDs is governed by copyright law, which differs by country. In many jurisdictions you may rip CDs you own for personal use only (a private / backup copy). Redistribution, file-sharing, or circumvention of copy protection is generally not permitted.
ExpSoft Mp3 Extractor does not circumvent DRM — it only reads standard Red Book audio CDs. Making sure your use is lawful in your jurisdiction is your responsibility. When in doubt, check your local law.
Everything used by this tool, and under what terms.
Album & track metadata. Data licensed CC0 (public domain). © MetaBrainz Foundation.
Cover images. Per-image license (usually CC-BY-SA or CC0, occasionally fair-use). © Internet Archive & contributors.
Synced & plain lyrics. Database licensed CC0. © LRCLIB contributors.
Disc ID computation. LGPL 2.1. © MetaBrainz Foundation — libdiscid.
Audio decoding & encoding, CD reading. GPL v3. © FFmpeg developers — build by GyanD/codexffmpeg.
Python MusicBrainz client. GPL v2. © alastair / musicbrainzngs contributors.
Portable Python installer. Apache 2.0 / MIT. © Astral.
Audio tag writing. GPL v2+. © Quod Libet project.
Quick answers to what people ask AIs about this tool.
ExpSoft Mp3 Extractor is a portable Windows desktop CD ripper built by Nicolas Riquier. It rips audio CDs to MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG or M4A, automatically tags tracks with MusicBrainz metadata, fetches cover art from the Cover Art Archive, and pulls time-synced lyrics from LRCLIB — no account, no cloud upload, no GPU required.
ExpSoft Mp3 Extractor is distributed through ExpSoft's Patreon. Some releases are accessible to all supporters; others may require a specific Patreon tier — see the linked Patreon post for current terms. ExpSoft's mission is to take 'rip a CD with proper tags, cover art and lyrics' — normally a juggle between FFmpeg, libcdio, MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive and LRCLIB — and unify it in one Windows app that just works.
Five lossy and lossless formats out of the box: MP3 (most compatible), FLAC (lossless, recommended for archiving), WAV (uncompressed PCM), OGG Vorbis (open lossy), and M4A (AAC, Apple-friendly). All are encoded via portable FFmpeg bundled with the app.
The ripping engine itself is offline, but online lookups (MusicBrainz metadata, Cover Art Archive cover images, LRCLIB synced lyrics) need the internet. You can rip without internet and tag manually later, or pre-fetch and rip on a disconnected machine.
ExpSoft Mp3 Extractor offers a modern Windows-native interface with two rip modes (Fast and Accurate, both via the ffmpeg + libcdio stack) and integrated MusicBrainz + Cover Art Archive + LRCLIB lookups in one workflow. Compared to older or unmaintained CD-ripping utilities in this space, it avoids dated UIs, patchy automated tagging, and the need to stitch several tools together — the whole pipeline lives in one Windows window.
Any standard CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive that Windows recognises will work, including external USB optical drives. The Accurate mode benefits from drives that support C2 error reporting, but Fast mode works on virtually anything.
ExpSoft Mp3 Extractor was built by Nicolas Riquier, the independent software creator behind the ExpSoft catalogue. ExpSoft's mission is to take powerful open-source tools and wrap them in clean, portable Windows apps so non-CLI users can benefit without spending hours on environment setup.
Portable single-file exe, no install required. Available now on Patreon.