CUETools 2026

CUETools 2026 is an independently maintained Windows fork of CUETools focused on trustworthy CD ripping, verification and repair, lossless conversion, and auditable release engineering. It preserves disc layout, gaps, CUE-sheet semantics, metadata, and audio while making the evidence behind a “verified” result visible.

This repository contains both the modern, self-contained CUETools 2026 desktop application and the classic CUETools/CUERipper applications. It is not the official upstream repository or website.

Downloads and release trust

Public builds for this fork are published on the GitHub Releases page. Prereleases are evaluation builds and are explicitly labeled unsigned. Stable v... tags are production-signing boundaries: the release workflow fails closed if its approved signing provider is unavailable or any required signature cannot be validated and timestamped.

Read the code-signing policy, privacy policy, and the detailed release-signing implementation before redistributing a build. SignPath Foundation did not accept the project's 2026 application because this new fork did not yet meet its project-reputation threshold. No SignPath signature is claimed. Until an approved public-trust signing provider is configured and independently verified, this fork publishes only clearly labeled unsigned previews; stable tags continue to fail closed.

Capabilities

• Secure and paranoid optical-disc reads, Test & Copy, AccurateRip and CTDB verification, and source-preserving CTDB repair.
• Track or single-image output with embedded CUE support.
• WAV, FLAC, APE, ALAC, TTA, WavPack, WMA, MP3, AAC-family, Opus, Vorbis, Musepack, OptimFROG, and external-encoder integration, subject to the codec and platform documented by each release.
• MusicBrainz and Cover Art Archive discovery, optional TheAudioDB integration, local drag-and-drop artwork, bounded image decoding, and reproducible JPEG preparation.
• Exact release manifests, native-dependency provenance, SPDX and CycloneDX SBOMs, warning budgets, and release evidence.

Audio processed through the classic conversion engine is normally CD PCM (16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo). Format availability and verification guarantees are reported by the active encoder rather than inferred from a filename.

Privacy and network use

The distributed applications do not contain a first-party analytics or automatic crash-reporting client. Verification and metadata features contact external services and some legacy services still use plaintext HTTP. CTDB contribution is off by default and requires an explicit preference; its prompt discloses the data and transport before submission. See PRIVACY.md for the complete data map and controls.

Building

Clone this fork and initialize its submodules:

git clone https://github.com/LynxTWO/cuetools_2026.git
cd cuetools_2026
git submodule update --init --recursive
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File eng/ci/Prepare-VendorSources.ps1

Build with Visual Studio 2022 or newer. The full classic solution requires the .NET Framework 4.7 targeting pack, .NET desktop development, v143 C++ tools, C++/CLI support, a Windows SDK, and Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects. The modern application requires the .NET 8 SDK. Open CUETools.sln for the classic solution or use the checked scripts under eng/ci and eng/release for the same gated paths used by GitHub Actions.

Third-party codec packages should be enrolled with the release archive's Install-CUEToolsPlugin.ps1; see Installing a user plugin. External executables remain user-controlled and are preferred when the user explicitly imports and approves them.

Uninstalling

For a portable ZIP, close CUETools and delete the extracted application folder. To remove per-user state as well, delete %AppData%\CUETools2026 after reviewing or exporting any settings, verification history, calibration, logs, and imported encoders you want to keep. Classic profiles use %AppData%\CUE Tools and %AppData%\CUERipper; CUEPlayer has separate settings and playlists. An installer-based build can be removed through Windows Installed apps.

License and upstream

First-party CUETools code is distributed under GPL-2.0-or-later. Bundled third-party components retain their own licenses and notices; consult License.txt, each release's THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES, SBOMs, and native-dependency evidence. CUETools was created and is maintained upstream by Grigory Chudov and its contributors; this fork's changes do not imply upstream endorsement.