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Free software.

Open source and free software for the musician, producer or engineer of the 21st century.

Audacity is a free, open source application for recording and editing audio files. It's available for various operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux) and distributed under the GNU General Public License. This fine program has too many features for us to list in this limited space.

CDex is an open source digital audio CD extractor (or ripper) for Windows, able to convert CD audio tracks into several formats (WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) CDex is a very compact and widely popular application, distributed under the GNU General Public License.

MP3 encoder. It's a free software application licensed under the GNU Lesser GPL that replaces (arguably for the better) the original Fraunhofer Gesellschaft psychoacoustic model used to create MP3 files. It's still in development, constantly looking for improvements in both quality and speed. Please note that LAME is an encoder; it either requires command line operation, an OS dependant front end or GUI like WinLAME or LameXP, or it may be included in other programs like CDex or Audacity.

Ogg Vorbis is an open source, free, lossy audio codec. It offers excellent results and usually produces smaller files than most other codecs at similar bitrates. Very popular among open source advocates, Ogg Vorbis is becoming a common format in many audio applications.

Media Player Classic (MPC) is a compact free software media player for Windows licensed under the GNU General Public License. It looks and feels like the old Windows Media Player 6.4, but includes many features found in modern media players. Latest versions can be obtained from its SourceForge homepage, but MPC is also included as an optional download in some bundles of the excellent K-Lite Codec Pack.

Yet another fine media player, both free and open source, is MPlayer, which has the additional advantage of running in many systems. Distributed under the GNU GPL, it supports most common audio and video codecs as well as many input and output formats. Even though the developers recommend to install MPlayer by compiling the source code, non-geeks should check the Unofficial Packages link in the Download section, as there are pre-packaged versions for most platforms.