Ripping CD audio to MP3 in Debian or Ubuntu using Grip

I recently had a need to backup some CD audio to my file server and was looking for a good, free, open source way to do this from a Debian or Ubuntu desktop. I found the solution in Grip. This tutorial is specifically for Debian but by enabling restricted repositories in Ubuntu, you can accomplish the same thing ( Ubuntu tutorial here)  So lets get into it:

Installation of Grip

If you don’t have it already, in Debian you will need to add the Debian Multimedia Repository to your APT configuration. Login or su to root,  Visit http://debian-multimedia.org/ , find your Debian version listed on the page and add the repo line to /etc/apt/sources.list. In my case I am using Lenny so mine is configured as show below:

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.0 _Lenny_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20090214-16:03]/ lenny main

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.0 _Lenny_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20090214-16:03]/ lenny main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main

deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main

deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

Once you have added this execute the following commands as su or root to get the software we need:

#apt-get update
# apt-get install lame grip cdparanoia

That is it! Your now ready to go – stick in a cd and go to the menu shown below:

Then you will see Grip open as shown in the next screen:

Select the files you wish to rip by clicking the check box as shown below:

Before ripping, select your desired encoder. I prefer LAME which will encode this to mp3 for us:

The click on the RIP tab and you will see the rip and encode selection screen:

Click on rip and encode and the slected tracks will be processed. This will keep any id3 tags etc intact during the encoding process. This particular CD does not have any. You will now see the ripping and encoding status windows which will progress as it rips the cd. Note that damages cd’s will take longer, but this does seem to handle those pretty well.

By default, the files once completed will be in /home/youruser/ogg/ as shown below:

If you have any questions or comments on this please post them here