DR MP3 Workshop

The MP3 Workshop application was designed to be an audio editor that can encode, extract, decode, resample and retag among other things.
It is designed to be easy enough to use for absoloute beginners who just want to get MP3s from CDs, while still being powerful enough for advanced users.
There are plenty of excellent players freely available so adding another would be pointless, however a good free MP3 program like this is hard to come across.
MP3 Workshop works on a queue basis. This mean that jobs of various types are set up in a queue and then are processed at once when you want all the jobs to be done. This is done so that you can leave MP3 Workshop running on its own, since extraction and encoding takes a long time especially if you are processing a full album or more.
Here are some key features of "DR MP3 Workshop":
ï¿­ Make MP3 files or WAV files from your CDs.
ï¿­ Decode MP3 files for burning to a CD-R.
ï¿­ Queue structure with processing options for each job allowing power and flexibilty.
ï¿­ Normalize/Change Volume of your MP3 and WAV files.
ï¿­ Change the bitrates of your MP3 files.
ï¿­ Retagger to change the ID3 Tag of a batch of MP3 files.
ï¿­ CD-DB Enabled so you can download CD information from an internet database and save it on your computer to save you typing it.
ï¿­ Proxy Support for CD-DB functions.
ï¿­ Can extract portions of CDs e.g 3 tracks extracted into one file.
ï¿­ Option to shutdown or close program when finished working.
ï¿­ VBR (Variable Bitrate) supported.
ï¿­ LAME encoder included.
ï¿­ Silence Stripping options.
ï¿­ Can Fade/In Out
ï¿­ MP3 File Splitter
ï¿­ Can pause processing half way through and resume again perfectly.
ï¿­ Can operate in background as taskbar icon to let you use your PC.
ï¿­ Can extract from a CD straight to an MP3 with normalization!
ï¿­ Intelligent Normalization for all kinds of jobs.
ï¿­ Unique Visualisation gives a graphic display of the audio being processed.
ï¿­ Shell extensions allow you to encode/decode/resample/retag/change volume directly from Windows Explorer.
ï¿­ Ability to save and load queues.
ï¿­ Jitter Correction for CD-drives which have trouble extracting audio.
ï¿­ Fast CD Extractor and good quality without Jitter Correction.
ï¿­ More resillient to read errors than other rippers.
ï¿­ Gives hardware information on CD drives.
ï¿­ Supports extraction from multiple drives.
ï¿­ Options to show and/or keep log of processing.
ï¿­ Can read and write .m3u playlist files.
ï¿­ Its completely free - honestly, no hidden costs or tricks.