CDex

CDex

CDex version 1.77 running on Windows 10 Technical Preview
Developer(s) Georgy Berdyshev
Initial release 2000 (2000)
Stable release
1.81 / April 22, 2016 (2016-04-22)
Written in C, C++, Python
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type CD ripper
License GPL (free software)
Website cdex.mu

CDex is a free software for Digital Audio Extraction from Audio CD (a so-called CD ripper) and audio format conversion for Microsoft Windows. It converts CDDA tracks from a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), CDex is free software. It is developed and maintained by Georgy Berdyshev. It was originally written by Albert L. Faber.

Features

CDex is able to convert CD audio into several formats including WAV, Vorbis, MP3 (using the LAME encoder), VQF, Musepack, APE, and many others. As of version 1.70b2 FLAC encoding is native, but for version 1.51 FLAC[1] and other codecs can be used by using an external encoder. For convenience, it supports CD-Text to allow ripped tracks, with reduced user effort, to have the names of songs, artists and albums. It can also automatically identify (most) inserted audio CDs and look up the metadata by means of an online database (freedb) for automatic tagging, naming and sorting of ripped files.[2] It also includes cdparanoia for robust CD reading. CDex is considered to be very configurable and relatively easy to use.

History

In 2000, at the start of the beta phase for version 1.30, CDex was turned into a free software project (cdexos: CDex Open Source) and hosted on SourceForge.net.[3] In January 2006, the CDex homepage requested a new project manager and developer, implying that Albert L. Faber had abandoned development of CDex. On 2006-06-05, CDex 1.70 Beta 1 was released via the SourceForge.net website. It was the first official update to the program in almost three years, with CDex 1.70 Beta 2 following soon after on 2006-06-23. On 2009-11-18 CDex 1.70 Beta 4 was released. CDex 1.70 Final was released on 2014-06-29 featuring a Unicode and Multibyte version.

On June 30, 2007, just one day after the release of the GPLv3, the license of CDex was updated. However, the last version for which source code was made available is 1.70 Beta 2, and the SourceForge project appears to have been shut down in July 2015, shortly after the release of version 1.79.

From version 1.76 the installer includes the ad-ware OpenCandy.

Potential risk

The recent reincarnation of CDex has seen a number of sponsored programs being automatically selected during installation with little information about their nature. Scan results suggest there may be a substantial risk to any system these are installed on[4] along with the source code no longer being publicly accessible, preventing independent code review.

This project should be considered as exploited by the new maintainer and should not be trusted. This project should not be trusted or installed on your machine. As the new maintainer has taken over new releases have been pushed out showing activity, yet the website is now filled with adverts, the links are all broken (you cannot even download the 1.81 release direct from the web site download link as it just links back to the home page) the support links are broken, the ticketing system does not exist and is a broken link, there are no contact details or method to interact with the developer and the installer is installing adware without any notifications. The only page that still really works on the website is the "donate" button. The new maintainer has exploited the strong reputation and work of the project and turned it into mechanism to profit. Updates are being made to the application, including the installer with hidden software being installed, but the website is purposefully broken suggesting malicious intent, or at best, no desire to maintain the overall project, just a desire to push out updates to the application to help monetize his new position in the project.

References

  1. ↑ "Using CDex with Flac hints". Pfarrell.com. Retrieved 2010-05-28.
  2. ↑ Christian Brochec: Audacity 2: Enregistrez, montez, mixez. 2nd edition, Pearson Education France, 2012, ISBN 978-2-7440-9402-6, chapter: CD, section: Extraction audio aved CDex (Windows), page 96
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2000-03-04. Retrieved 2016-04-10.
  4. ↑ "beware of adware/malware". alternativeto.net. Retrieved 2015-11-28.
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