Ripping CDs On OSX with “abcde”

Yeah you can do it via ITunes, but what if you want to rip it to a .wav / .mp3 / or whatever?

I wanted a solution that was free and I settled on abcde.

“abcde” is a free command-line utility for ripping CDs. I’m sure a lot of people will close this article as soon as they read “command-line”. However, I would like to reassure you that it’s not hard to use. It is however a little bit tricky to install.

Step 1

Install homebrew

Step 2

Open up terminal

Type:

brew install abcde

This will install abcde and *most* of the required libraries.

If you try running abcde from the command line by typing abcde and hitting return you may see this warning:

abcde: cd-discid is not in your path.

If you see that type in the following and hit return:

brew install cd-discid

Once you have abcde fully set up, you can rip from the command line easily.

Here’s a quick example:

cd ~

abcde -o wav

The above will rip the inserted CD to .wav format

abcde -o mp3

The above will rip the inserted CD to .mp3 format. You get the idea.