Editing/Ripping Music from CD to MP3 Format

What application do we use in Linpus Lite to produce an MP3 file from a CD audio file?

I have Media Master, Mplayer, and Audacity installed on my system. Media Master was there from the start; I installed Audacity and probably Mplayer too, via the "Add/Remove Software" menu.

* Media Master opens when I install an audio CD, but it has no "rip" option.

* In Mplayer it isn't obvious how to open an audio CD; the CD's files don't seem to show up in the filesystem.

* Audacity has the same issue as Mplayer in opening audio CDs. Even when I try to open an MP3 file with it, I get a message, "This version of Audacity was not compiled with MP3 support." Is there a better way to install Audacity?

 

I've made some progress, but I still have issues.

I've installed "grip". It reads the audio CD successfully, once I tell it my CD rom lives at /dev/cdrom8 instead of /dev/cdrom . It produces *.mp3 files under /home/user/mp3. My other Linux apps can play these files. Unfortunately, my Windows Media Player on another device can't. That defeats the purpose of ripping the files.

Is there an option somewhere under "grip" (perhaps in how the encoder "oggenc" is invoked) that will change the output MP3 format into something Windows will recognize?

 

Why are you using oggenc to encode mp3s? I use lame and have yet had a single problem using grip to rip CDs to mp3s. You can change the option to use lame(if it is installed) in the Config>Encode tab.

 

Thanks, m4xr8d. I hope you don't mind a stupid question:

Is the front end program for "lame" called "lame"? If so, can you tell me how to get it? It's not installed on my system, even though "libmp3lame.so.0" is. And it doesn't show up on the list of things I can install via "Add/Remove Software".

My attempt to find out more about "lame" via Web search was doomed. Any search that includes the words "lame acer aspire one" just gets a bunch of unfavorable opinions about the Acer Aspire One.

 

It looks like you have at least part of LAME.

Just open a terminal and type

Code:

which lame

should return something like

Code:

/usr/bin/lame

If it doesn't return any thing you don't have all of LAME and I don't know how Linpus get's it's restricted packages.

LAME information can be found here.
http://lame.sourceforge.net/

 

Indeed I didn't have all of LAME. But a Web search on "rpm lame download" led me to sourceforge.net, plus instructions for compilation at www.gnuware.com. Linpus Add/Remove Software was at least kind enough to contribute gcc and make commands. So now I have LAME and can try the command:

lame -b 128 (input.wav) (output.mp3)

or whatever that translates to in the "grip" options settings. Thanks.

 

Mission accomplished. "grip" was kind enough to suggest the best options for encoding, once I selected "lame" from a drop-down encoder menu. I've now transferred MP3 files and played them on Windows Media Player.

Between "gimp" and "grip", my Acer Aspire One is now almost as capable as the Windows PC it had to replace - and Acer was substantially cheaper and more virus-proof too. I just have to figure out how to get Audacity to edit MP3 files now. I suspect I can now compile my own version of Audacity to have MP3 support.

 

Mission accomplished for Audacity.

Compiling was the wrong approach because SourceForge's version hasn't been keeping up with library changes. However, "audacity-freeworld" will support MP3 format.

* http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/11/inst ... linux.html had useful commands of the form "sudo rpm -Uvh <name_of_website>" to add repositories, including one that supports "audacity-freeworld".

* Once the "rpm" command has been run, the Acer Add/Remove Software utility will offer both "audacity" and "audacity-freeworld". Simply unclick the former and click the latter.

* When I did this, I got a conflict of library versions. Fortunately I now realize I can uninstall the previous library, also via Add/Remove Software. Hopefully this won't invalidate "grip".

* After audacity-freeworld is finally installed, run it as "audacity" as usual.

Now if I've reckoned correctly, I have absolutely no reason to go back to a Windows computer, which is of course as cheap as Linux but then you have to pay extra for the software. I can also continue to ignore Mac which typically costs twice as much as Windows.

 

One follow-up: The version I found for "Audacity-Freeworld" doesn't recognize the sound card on my Acer Aspire One! But it still generates a perfectly good MP3 file, playable on other Acer-Linpus applications and on Windows Media Player.