With lots of music materials in hands - hundreds of CDs, thousand of songs in iPod, and amounts of APE files in computer - how can I categorize them and make a favorite music list from them?
Although it is easy to create and customize my favorite playlist on iPod, I prefer the high quality timbre of CD music and APE files to the convenience of iPod gadget. On that way, it becomes a headache to me to choose my favorite music from diverse CDs and APE files. Likewise, alternative insertion of different CD discs takes a little dangerous for me in driving, even though the CD player in my car contains six disc drivers. Any way can help me out?

Description:
Aim: high quality timbre, car available, burn favorite music to CD.

Source:
(1) Music CD
(2) APE files

Problems:
(1) How to rip music from CD
(2) How to rip music from APE files
(3) How to make your own music CD

Requirements:
(1)High quality timbre
(2)Convenient
(3)Less money

Ok, let’s begin:

Rip CD:
While CD Ripper software has been popular for years, so much software for this function is available to download and use via Internet. In addition to some free ones, windows media player and iTunes can do that so. But to attain the high level quality of timbre and make your own music CD, choosing WAV format is gonna be a good choice of output files as a lossless compression format rather than using WMA and MP3 which may loss information from the audio stream. Just Google the “CD Ripper”, and many lists for you.

Convert APE files:
It seems a little difficult. I’m used to Foobar 2000 for WAV format converted from APE file, but the latest version doesn’t support APE input. Fortunately, I’ve held the old version reserved.

BTW, it’s gonna be great if it can be done straightly to make your own music CD from APE file due to its essence as an image folder, but it is not such easy as I thought. Seems Nero might do it with some plugs, so I did a search for the appropriate plugs after Nero installed. Downloaded, installed manually, distributed carefully to the local folder regarding Nero…...done! Opened CUE file of your APE file thru Nero, there are still several steps to follow while suffering pop-up windows all the time. Anyway, parts of my requiring were resolved, though it costed me $79.99.

Burn CD:
It is not hard. Nero can do that as a CD maker. But after $80 I spent, all I owned were a lengthy conversion stuffing many redundant functions I don’t need, manually handle by myself, and a CD rip tool found by myself.

Is there anything can content all my needs? Yes, a program named Xilisoft Audio Maker comes into my sight, and it’s likely to deal with all my problems – a CD ripper, an audio converter, and a CD maker!

There are three main function labels in the interface specified to Convert audio, Rip CD and Burn CD. And lots of audio and video formats are supported by it. You can see the CUE of APE file I dragged into this software was highlighted as above. Obviously, it can be converted to WAV and MP3 smoothly.

Rip function:
CD ripping works well as you wish. It can rip CD to any format you specific.

Burn function:
It’s cool! It supports input not only almost all audio formats but also some kinds of video files. And both of them can be converted and burned to music CD disc directly.

BTW, it’s gonna be terrific if it could support ripping DVD-Audio, and I haven’t found any software able to do it till now. On the other hand, it is more fantastic if there is some software can burn audio files to DVD disc. At least, DVD disc has more capability to store music than CDs.

OK, a CD maker comprising functions of audio converter and CD ripper. Thank God, that is definitely what I want, so yours?

you can try several of those, then decide.