With so much choice and so little time, what's a busy music lover to do? Although MP3 is an excellent choice with much sex appeal due to its name recognition, we at TUX support Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, and not simply due to Ogg's awesome name. The myriad reasons boil down to two advantages, freedom and quality. Regarding freedom, both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are brain children of people who value open-source, nonproprietary, patent-and-royalty-free solutions, all of which we hold very dear. MP3, on the other hand, is a closed, proprietary format. Regarding quality, both Ogg and FLAC provide you with superior audio quality vs. MP3, which frees you to base your decision on whether space (Ogg Vorbis) or quality (FLAC) is a higher priority.

Getting to these file formats entails a two-step process, ripping and encoding. The ripping part is the act of obtaining the audio track you want from a compact disc (a WAV file) and getting it ready for encoding. Encoding involves applying sophisticated compression algorithms to the WAV file to convert it to the new file format that's smaller in size. For example, the algorithms will shrink a 40MB, four-minute WAV track to about 20MB as a FLAC and less than 3MB as an MP3 or Ogg Vorbis track. How cool is that?

In order to work this trick, several different tools are needed. It helps to know that KAudioCreator is your all-in-one tool that steers the activities of a number of sophisticated, clandestine sub-tools that do the heavy lifting for you, depending on what file format you choose. For instance, if you choose to encode to the Ogg Vorbis format, OggEnc goes to work. On the other hand, if you want MP3s, LAME is called to task. (Yes, it really is called LAME, which cleverly stands for LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder.) Finally, flac is the encoder for FLAC files.

Okay, I think you've got enough theory under your belt to run with this. Let's move on and get our hands dirty with an example.

Before doing anything else, place a compact disc into your CD drive before launching KAudioCreator. Otherwise, it won't recognize the CD. I put in Lay It Down from Cowboy Junkies, but feel free to choose any CD you prefer. Then open KAudioCreator by clicking on CD/DVD Tools, which is located at K→Multimedia. That's the way it looks on my SuSE system. On a Mandrake system, you'll find KAudioCreator listed by its own name under Multimedia→Sound.

Those of you who hate manuals will be tempted to start the ripping process by clicking various buttons once you start KAudioCreator. If you hang with me, you'll see the features that this action-packed program has under the hood are worth the wait.

With a CD in your CD drive and the program launched, you should see an interface similar to Figure 1. KAudioCreator finds and displays your CD-drive address and sees the individual tracks, but it doesn't yet know the artist(s) or song titles. Luckily, though, KAudioCreator has an integrated Compact Disc Database, or CDDB, which makes importing CD information a snap. To do a lookup, simply click on the CD icon located on the far left of the toolbar and voilà, you have yourself a fully labeled CD.

Figure 1. The KAudioCreator interface shown before doing an album (CDDB) lookup on http://freedb.org.

I had some problems with CDDB at first, but then I checked out the FAQ on freedb, the default CDDB provider on KAudioCreator. There, I learned that my port for the CDDB server incorrectly was set to 8080 for the HTTP protocol. Instead, it should be changed to 80, which I was able to do under Settings→Configure KAudioCreator→CDDB configuration. After that modification, the CDDB lookups have been flawless.

What happens if you have an obscure audio CD that is not in the CDDB? Though my obscurest indie CDs worked like a charm, you might have a homemade or foreign disc to rip. In this case, click on the Edit Album icon, the second icon from the left in the toolbar, which looks like a piece of paper and a pencil. Here you can enter new data describing your music, or you can go back and tweak the info downloaded from CDDB, such as artist, song titles, genre, year, and so on.

If you plan to rip numerous CD tracks with the same file format, it's wise to select a default to make your life easier. You always can override the default on the fly later on. Here's how you set the default: click on Settings→Configure KAudioCreator→Encoder Configuration. This brings up the dialog box that's illustrated in Figure 2. As you can see, you set your default encoder to OggEnc for Ogg Vorbis, LAME for MP3, FLAC for FLAC formats, respectively. Let's choose OggEnc for our example.

Figure 2. Setting defaults and determining file locations with the Encoder Configuration window.

That same dialog box offers powerful tools for organizing your audio files in an automated way. Click the Wizard button under Encoded File Location, and you get an array of options for determining the storage location for your files. The wizard lets you modify each element in the directory structure. By default, each album is saved automatically in a subdirectory of your home directory, based on its file format. For instance, I ripped five different albums in Ogg Vorbis format, and each one landed in its own subdirectory in home/JamesGray/ogg. Similarly, the albums I ripped in MP3 format ended up in a different directory, home/JamesGray/mp3.

Finally, this dialog box creates an album playlist file for you and places it in the directory of your choice. If you do nothing beyond checking the box labeled Create an album playlist file, the album playlist is saved by default in the same directory as the audio tracks.

As promised, we finally get to rip some files. Be sure that the CD Tracks tab is selected on the main program interface, and then follow these steps:

After KAudioCreator rips and encodes the entire batch of files, the entry disappears from the Jobs tab. This means that your files are ready and waiting for you to use. You can go and find the files in their own directory, organized by album title. In my example, I went with KAudioCreator's default on file placement, which led me to find my Ogg Vorbis files using the Konqueror file manager as follows: file:/home/JamesGray/ogg/Cowboy Junkies/Lay It Down/RespectiveSongTitle.ogg You also can see the results in Figure 3.

Figure 3. I used Konqueror to locate the ripped files in KAudioCreator's default directory.

Although the topic of audio on Linux is worthy of its own article, let's go over some of the ways to enjoy your MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC tracks.

As we conclude, I want to be sure you are aware that KAudioCreator has many other neat features with which to tinker and that we've only scratched the surface. Because you now have solid knowledge of the main features, procedures, and file formats, you should feel confident as you try new things. I wish you much success and enjoyment as you explore this exciting area in digital audio. Rip and encode with confidence!

freedb: http://www.freedb.org

Ogg Vorbis Home Page: http://www.vorbis.com

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC): http://flac.sourceforge.net

James Gray has worked in marketing and promotion for several Linux companies over the past decade, including SuSE Linux, No Starch Press and Linux Journal (his current gig). By night, he is working on his MS degree in Environmental Science, which lets him play with GIS and other cool technologies. He welcomes your feedback at jgray@ssc.com.