CD Blaster is a powerful and easy-to-use CD burner and ripper. You can create standard audio CDs that can be played in regular CD players, as well as MP3 data CDs that can be played in portable MP3 players and DVD players. The program supports popular audio formats (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV), can get CD disc information from FreeDB, and has a built-in audio player. If you use your CD-RW for the sole purpose of ripping and burning CDs, you have just found the right tool.

Version 1.8 fixes small bugs.

Editor's review of CD Blaster This user-friendly program combines a ripper with a CD burner. Upon launch, CD Blaster will ask whether you want to extract tracks from a disc or make a music CD; which box you check determines what screen you'll see. Neither window boasts an attractive design, but both are simple to understand. The ripper encodes files in MP3, WMA, WAV, or OGG formats; allows you to select the bit rate; and retrieves track information from the Web. However, it can't rip files utilizing VBR compression. The burner is a mostly positive affair, demonstrating solid performance and write speeds up to 32X. However, in some instances during our testing, the program's meter that shows how much space is left on a blank disc failed to function. Nevertheless, CD Blaster seems like a good pick for less-experienced folks who don't want to download ripping and burning utilities separately.