CDex is a freeware software package for Digital Audio Extraction from

Audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...

(a so-called

CD ripper A CD ripper is software that ripping, extracts raw digital audio in Compact Disc Digital Audio format tracks on a compact disc to standard computer sound files, such as WAV or MP3. A more formal term used for the process of ripping audio CDs i ...

) and audio format conversion for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It converts CDDA tracks from a CD to standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis. CDex was previously released as

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL); however, although the website claims that this is still the case, no source code has been released since 2005. It was originally written by Albert L. Faber, and is developed and maintained by Georgy Berdyshev. Recent versions of the software may be compromised and a security threat.

Features

CDex is able to convert CD audio into several formats including WAV,

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

(using the

LAME LAME is a software encoder that converts digital audio into the MP3 audio coding format. LAME is a free software project that was first released in 1998 and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved psychoacoustic ...

encoder), VQF, Musepack,

APE Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a superfamily of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and Europe in prehistory, and counting humans are found global ...

, and many others. As of version 1.70b2

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

encoding is native, but for version 1.51 FLAC and other codecs can be used by using an external encoder. It supports

CD-Text CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows storage of additional information (e.g. album name, song name, and artist name) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The specification for CD-T ...

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 Freedb was a database of User-generated content, user-submitted compact disc track listings, where all the content was under the GNU General Public License. To look up CD information over the Internet, a client program calculated a hash function fr ...

) for automatic tagging, naming and sorting of ripped files. 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. In January 2006, the CDex homepage requested a new project manager and developer, implying that Albert L. Faber had abandoned development of CDex. On 5 June 2006, CDex 1.70 Beta 1 was released via the SourceForge.net website (ascribed to Georgy Berdyshev). It was the first official update to the program in almost three years, with CDex 1.70 Beta 2 following soon after on 23 June 2006. In 2008 Berdyshev was joined by Ariane Gomes as project developers. On 18 November 2009 CDex 1.70 Beta 4 was released. CDex 1.70 Final was released on 29 June 2014 featuring a Unicode and Multibyte version. On 30 June 2007, just one day after the release of the

GPLv3 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, 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 Installation (or setup) of a computer program (including device drivers and plugins), is the act of making the program ready for execution. Installation refers to the particular configuration of software or hardware with a view to making it usabl ...

includes the

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installatio ...

OpenCandy. In November 2017 version 1.96 was released. It is not clear who is the current code maintainer, and no contact details are provided. Four further versions were released by March 2018. The default Remote Server database in CDEx,

Freedb Freedb was a database of User-generated content, user-submitted compact disc track listings, where all the content was under the GNU General Public License. To look up CD information over the Internet, a client program calculated a hash function fr ...

, became inaccessible by June 2020. The gnudb.org site at location gnudb.gnudb.org (on HTTP port 80) using proxy.gnudb.org works as a replacement for the inactive default Remote Server database.

Potential risks and adware controversy

Online discussions over concerns relating to the safety and security of CDex have been ongoing since at least 2013 with many asserting that the software has become

malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

. Post-2013 reincarnations of CDex have seen a number of sponsored programs being automatically selected (or selected without any knowledge at all) during installation with little information about their nature. Scan results suggest there may be risks attached to installing them. Open source commentators have suggested that the current maintainer and software should not be trusted and even that CDex should be avoided outright. Support links are now broken and the ticketing system no longer exists. There are no contact details provided or any way to interact with the developer. The installer bundles

without any notifications. Despite updates nominally being made to the application, some of these have involved bundling the installer with hidden adware. MalwareBytes has adopted the stance, as of 2019, that CDex contains

potentially unwanted program A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software ma ...

s and thus flags the CDex package as malware.https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/244752-is-cdex-215-detection-a-false-positive/ The rolling back of source code availability has prevented a proper audit and stymied any potential defence of CDex's case. Further, anecdotal discussion has resulted in claims that versions of CDex from the latter half of the 2010s are adding artifacts to the ends of certain tracks ripped by the program.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://cdex.mu/ Windows CD ripping software Software that bundles malware