I'm using Exact Audio Copy now. It's very good indeed, slightly more hands-on than most and it doesn't like a network drive as the target (which I found out after a couple of totally unhelpful error messages). But it's very reliable with rip quality.

Fair enough with VLC. The versatility is virtually unparalleled, but it does have a touch of the beardies about the UI.
 
Maybe because they starting charging? There are clean, cracked versions all over teh Jimiverse, though, if you want to renew the acquaintance.

I'm not too fussed now that I've found something that works. I have two optical drives on my main desktop which is some help, but I still have to manually load each disk and remove the last one whatever I use.

have you tried foobar as a music player? a lot of people seem to swear by that. I think it's one of those ones that is quite powerful in terms of configuration, so it might be a bit wild at first but hopefully you can set it up to make it simple for MrsA.

What's your own media player of choice, Milko Bar Kid?

I stumped up for dBPoweramp - best money I've spent on software. If the price hasn't sky rocketed, I'd recommend trying it again. We've got somewhere in the region of 2000 cds and it's the quickest ripper I found - 1 cd will take less than 2 minutes to rip as FLAC. There's some inbuilt clevers which can fill in any gaps or read errors that scratches cause. It also comes with a batch converter, which was damn useful for converting the lossless files to mp3 so I could stick the entire collection on my phone.

Really. That surprises me. Complete opposite of my experience, else I wouldn't have recommended it. Simple, idiot-proof, bullet-proof. IME.

What version of Windows did you try it on?

> it totally and completely refused to even see them let alone organise and play them as a library of music

If you've got the tracks listed in Inbox, select all, right click, Send To > Music Library.

Whilst not directed at me, I find that an interesting question because I've not thought about how I play music in a long time. My answer historically would have been Winamp followed by VLC, then maybe Kodi/XBMC on the TV.

Nowadays I don't listen to an awful lot, but it is usually limited to Spotify or Google Play music. Either via my phone to a Chromecast Audio device, or using the browser on a computer. I can't remember the last time I played back anything from my large MP3 collection. If anything I just use them to transfer to my iPod for long flights.

I keep toying with the idea of making some sort of dedicated music listening room, but then quickly realise that I don't listen to enough to justify that. Whilst it might push me to listen to more, it probably won't and it'll go unused.

I think you've identified the issue right there.

I asked this question today in my (young, at least by comparison (manthorp) ) office, and the default answer was Spotify.

It partly ages me: I like to 'have' the music, in a a legacy echo of owning vinyl, or cassettes, or CDs. But it's also about rarities: I have rips from bootlegs, home recorded stuff, Jimmed obscurities etc. that the licit brands just don't - can't - have on their books.

Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to be quite so blunt. Why is the concept of an inbox suitable for somebody who wants to play music? I appreciate that it made sense for somebody who was kind enough and clever enough to write the software for anybody for free. Good luck to him, he did it all alone and a load of people love it to death. I just found the whole experience clunky, unintuitive and not fun. 

Nevertheless, I look at so much praise online and elsewhere and I probably will give it one more try to see whether the issues were my ignorance, some configuration issue, or something else.

I used to like the physical media (CDs for me), but then got lazy/enjoy the convenience of the digital tech. I'm a fan of radio, though only whilst commuting 20 mins each way these days, from the point of view of not being in control of what I listen to. That translates well to the likes of Spotify and Google Play Music, where I can let them decide what I listen to. I can pick either a song or artist and let the service play based on that selection. Can often mean I discover something new (or old) I like, or it plays songs I already know and enjoy.

Then there's the discovery and new releases side of things, based around my likes. I don't exactly go to gigs or find myself immersed in new music like I used to, so things like that are appreciated.

It does seem to be loved. I haven't tried it yet - do you love it? 

I am kind of having issues with what is undoubtedly some very clever software. I look at a program like Dopamine that asks me questions during installation like "where do you keep your music" and then follows that with a very familiar folder search dialog, and then shows me my music that it has successfully found. I think that makes sense. Then I look at many others that assume a specific sophistication around prior music storage as though this is a music-player choice switch - or something else. Maybe I'm looking for something very specific: a simple music player which doesn't hide its capabilty in layers of complexity.

Windows 10. It surprised me too because I'd heard how simple it was.

Yes, that might be useful. I did stump up for a DBpoweramp licence many years ago. Can't imagine it's still valid. We also have several hundred vinyl LPs to think about. I would love my trusty Systemdek to be allowed space in the brave new world - but it isn't going to happen (it hasn't yet so I can't imagine that will change) so the LPs will need to be converted as well. Probably WAV first and then... Still, that's another problem.

Maybe it's loads more complicated in Windows 10, like pretty much everything else? In Windows 7, I pointed it at my Ubuntu file server samba shared music folder (organized by album, as ripped) and musicbee automagically populated its library by artist/album/genre and even hunted up the album art all without me lifting a finger. Did this on my pc and my wife's pc (also Windows 7), no muss, no fuss. I like that it has a built-in equalizer too. Only thing I got wring was I dumped both mp3 and flac into the same folder (per album), but that won't be too hard to fix.

Peter and you have persuaded me. I'll try again today.

Well, fair play to advocates of MusicBee. Lying in bed this morning, reading over this thread, I logged on to the music PC and tried again. Blow me down if it didn't work perfectly. One major difference during the installation was that during the setup dialog that asks for folders to search for music, this time after I selected the folder with the FLAC files, it actually appeared in the list of folders to search. Last time even though I followed the same procedure, only the default Windows music folder (empty) was listed after I selected, and nothing I did subsequently to make it find the music had any effect. Maybe something failed in the installation - who knows?

Anyway, now I have two players to try against each other.

 
Yeah, it didn't do this bit which was a surprise. It actually appeared to have found some of the album art, which showed up on track listings, but none of the covers next to the albums were there.