[lug] mp3 ripper

[Peter Hutnick]

> One pretty good alternative is to store your compressed audio using an
> open lossless codec such as FLAC or shorten.  Then you can re-encode
> into lossy formats without additional quality degradation.  That way, if
> ogg OR mp3 turns out to be poorly supported in future hardware, you
> won't be forced to re-rip from audio CD.  There are even FLAC and
> shorten input plugins for Winamp and XMMS (to decode on the fly).

This is what I am in the process of going to.  My CDRW is "too new" for
koncd, so it has been a slow process.

> The down side is that you can only achieve about 40% compression
> (depending on the music) with current lossless formats.  It's still a
> great way to archive your tunes (particularly when DVD+-R gets cheaper).
>
> For mp3 encoding under Linux, I think the Grip (ripper) + LAME (encoder)
> combo is hard to beat.  I'm pretty sure it's trivial to configure Grip
> to encode using FLAC or shorten.

Grip, AFAIK, is not actually a ripper.  It frontends to CD Paranoia by
default.  I have used it to compress to FLAC.  It will basically front-end
any ripper and encoder.

-Peter