Tools of the Trade - Windows

All tools featured in this section are either open source or freeware...

Audio Players

FooBar 2000

Strange name, awesome music player. How a music player should be - small, modular, customizable and versatile.
http://www.foobar2000.org/

Burn Audio CD

Burrrn

Burrn is a great tool for creating audio CDs from the many audio file formats found on the Internet.
Download
https://burrrn.en.softonic.com/

CODECS

FLAC

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.
https://xiph.org/flac/index.html
Download Codec for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
https://xiph.org/flac/download.html

Monkey's Audio

Monkey's Audio is a fast and easy way to compress digital music making perfect, bit-for-bit copies of your music - exactly the same as the original.
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/
Download Codec: for Windows Only
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/download.html

OGG Vorbis

Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology. For a given file size, OGG sounds better than MP3.
Available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix
http://www.vorbis.com/
Directshow Filters for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC
With the Directshow Filters for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC installed, Directshow applications such as Windows Media Player will be able to play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC and native FLAC.
http://www.xiph.org/dshow/

Disc Rippers

CDex Audio CD-Ripper

Convert music CDs to MP3s (LAME encoder), FLAC and other music file types. Transcode from one music file type to another.
http://cdexos.mu/
Downloads
http://cdex.mu/?q=download
Note: Needs ASPI Drivers for Win XP.
Download ASPI Driver

EAC

EAC (Exact Audio Copy) a very serious tool for extracting digital audio from a CD.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Editors

MP3 Direct Cut

Edit MP3 music files (Cut, Copy, Paste Sections of MP3) no re-encoding, so original sound quality is maintained. For Windows or Linux with Wine.
http://mpesch3.de1.cc/
Download from...
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4668.html

Audacity

A full featured Audio Editor
http://web.audacityteam.org/
Manual:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/
Downloads:
http://web.audacityteam.org/download/

Song Tagging

MP3tag

A user-friendly and versatile tool for re-tagging music files of all main types.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html
Version for Windows XP and up.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

Streaming Audio

Flash Media Player

Great for delivering audio (and video) streams from your web site. FLASH required.
http://www.jwplayer.com
Download Flash Media Player
https://github.com/jwplayer/jwplayer/releases

Format Conversion

dBpowerAmp Music Converter

Swiss Army Knife of audio conversion programs. One of the best commercial products out there particularly the reference version.
https://www.dbpoweramp.com/
DBpoweramp Music Converter 10.0 (Last Freeware Version.)
Download dMC-10.zip
Download additional codecs from Codec Central at
https://www.dbpoweramp.com/legacy/codec-central-legacy.htm

fre:ac - free audio converter

fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders. Windows, Mac and Linux
https://www.freac.org/
https://www.freac.org/index.php/en/downloads-mainmenu-33