A few other free utilities:
ImgBurn -- excellent free CD / DVD burning software. Mastering an audio CD isn't exactly intuitive unless you know where to look (Tools --> Create CUE File); but once you know, it works exceptionally well. You can tweak pre-gaps, set CD-TEXT values, and drag and drop any media for which Windows has the appropriate DirectShow filters. If you also install the
DirectShow 5.1 Filter Pack, you'll be able to add FLAC, ALAC, OGG, and other types of media files not supported otherwise to your CUE file, and ImgBurn will automatically handle turning them all into CD audio when you're ready to burn a disc.
CueTools is another good CD ripper similar to EAC that'll auto compress to your choice of lossless (wav, flac, alac, etc.) or lossy (mp3, ogg, etc.), download metadata and cover art from freedb.org and elsewhere, and is very easy to use.
dupeGuru Music Edition is a tool to scan your media files for duplicates. It finds them not only based on file name and metadata, but also based on musical content, which is handy if the same song is encoded as a WAV in one location and an MP3 elsewhere, even if they're named differently. It's available for Windows, OS X and Linux.
There are dozens of free uPnP media servers available, each with its strengths and weaknesses. My favorite for the moment is
MinimServer, available for many platforms as it's Java-based. Be advised that if you're running a 64-bit operating system, you'll probably have to go to
www.java.com to download the x64 Java runtime environment. Anyway, what sets MinimServer apart is its unique way of organizing your media, what the author calls "intelligent browsing".
From the site:
"Intelligent Browsing in MinimServer allows you to make any combination of selections in any order. For example, you could search for a violin concerto by artist, then composer, then conductor, then orchestra, then album. Alternatively, you could search first by composer, then select violin concertos, then artist, then orchestra, then conductor (or any other order of selection). At each step you see all the music that matches your previous selections."
But beyond that, for the most part, it behaves the way a uPnP server should. It serves FLAC, ALAC, MP3, WAV, and a few other media types without transcoding if you wish (unlike some servers that indiscriminately transcode everything whether you want it transcoded or not); or it can optionally transcode to 16- or 24-bit PCM should you need it. It serves metadata and artwork correctly. And it's quick to set up. All you really need to do is run it, go into its options, and point the "contentDir" value to your media location. All other config options are, well, optional; but the default behavior works well enough for most people without tweaking.
