If you've met me before, you're probably aware of how seriously I take my music... these are the programs which build my collection of perfection. Both Linux and Windows software is included, though there is only one real operating system...

If you stick with these for a few years, you'll have a large, high-quality collection, though it will remain no match for the disgustingly large Skuj Music Folders

For a (very) brief overview of stuff worth listening to... click me

Rippers/Converters - Covert and name your CDDAs / WAVs / PCMs / FLACs to MP3

K3B	(Open Source)
	There are lots of programs that can rip a CD to .wav, but none do it as quickly and consistently as K3B. Full CDDB matching of course...

LAME	(Open Source)
	The command line interface of LAME is the most simple and highest quality MP3 output (from .wavs) available. I have a script to do this in Linux: for x in *.wav; do lame -q 0 -b 320 "$x"; done

Foobar2000	(Free)
	Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player and audio management tool. It's not 'pretty', but it is a serious tool for creating and managing music. Here are the settings for Windows encoding:

Quality Control - Make sure that there are no serious glitches, and normalize the volume

MP3Gain	(Open Source)
	One of my most used programs. If you don't use this program, your collection is garbage. Positively critical. mp3gain -c -f -r -t .mp3 Or for large collections like mine: mp3gain -c -f -r -t 1.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 2.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 3.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 4.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 5.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 6.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 7.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 8.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 9.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t 0.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t A.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t B.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t C.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t D.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t E.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t F.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t G.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t H.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t I.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t J.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t K.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t L.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t M.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t N.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t O.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t P.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t Q.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t R.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t S.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t T.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t U.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t V.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t W.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t X.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t Y.mp3; mp3gain -c -f -r -t Z*.mp3

MP3_Check	(Open Source)
	A quick test for bad frames.

MP3 Utility	(Free)
	This program does so much, so quick

Organization - Proper naming and management

KRename	(Open Source)
	A sophisticated equation-based renamer

ReNamer	(Free)
	A great little program to rename massive amounts of files

EasyTag	(Open Source)
	This program can quickly clean tags from most audio file types.

ID3Kill	(Free)
	I prefer to kill all incoming tags... the inconsistency drives me nuts.

Duplicate File Finder	(Open Source)
	A very powerful hash-based file comparison generator. sorting a few thousands songs, try this.

Duplicate File Finder	(Free)
	Once your collection get big enough, you will quite likely have a few duplicates. If you don't feel like manually sorting a few thousands songs, try this.