Rip Audio CDs on Linux

To rip songs from audio CDs and directly convert them to MP3s, you need Grip (ripper) and Lame (encoder). Mount this month’s CD and change to the directory cdrom/linux/rip and install RPM lame-3.89-fr2.i686.rpm. Next copy the Grip archive file to /opt. Change to /opt directory. Untar and uncompress the file as:

tar —zxvf 



grip+cdpar-2.96.tgz

This will produce a directory named ‘grip-2.96’ within /opt. Change to the subdirectory ‘cdparanoia’ within this directory and issue:

./configure



make lib

Change to the ‘grip-2.96’ directory and issue:

make



make install

Start X window and in a terminal window issue ‘grip’. A GUI-ripping program pops up. Click on the ‘Config’ tab and then on the ‘MP3’ tab. From the ‘Encoder’ list, select ‘lame’. Insert an audio CD in the CD drive. Click on the ‘Tracks’ tab to see all the audio tracks. Select the desired tracks by right-clicking, click on the ‘Rip’ tab and select ‘Rip+Encode’. The encoded audio tracks (MP3s) can be found in the directory mp3 in your home directory.