Nowadays, a blank DVD-ROM disk costs about €0.40 and a blank CD-ROM disk about €0.20. So why stick with audio CDs and have about 20 tracks on each disk when you could convert your audio tracks to mp3 and have about 175 on each CD or even better, use a DVD and have around 1125 tracks? In this tutorial, we will discuss ways to convert your audio tracks to this highly compressed format by using freeware programs.

Programs that you will need. Click to go to the homepage of each program and to download it.

CD-Ex
Aspi Drivers (Only if you want to use CD-Ex)
dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC)

Installation:
Before the writing of this review, dBPowerAMP Music Converter was a totally freeware program. Unfortunately, during the course of writing this review, dMC switched the mp3 encoder to a 30 day trial license. Other than this, the program is 100% free. However, because of the trial license restriction, we will use CD-Ex for the purposes of this review.

CD-Ex: Installing CD-Ex is really simple and straightforward so there's no need to discuss it here. What CD-Ex does need however, is the ASPI Drivers installed in order to run properly. We used the Nero ASPI Drivers (which also recognizes USB connected drives). Download the wnaspi32.dll and copy it to the "%WINDOWS_DIRECTORY%\System32" folder (for example C:\WINDOWS\system32) or to your application directory (no need to reboot).

dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC): The installation procedure is also very simple and it only takes a few seconds.

The next step is to look through all the available formats and to determine the format we need.