KAudioCreator

[BobGuy]

KAudioCreator is a front-end tool for ripping audio CDs and encoding the wav files using your favorite encoder. It uses the kio_audiocd slave internally for ripping to WAV before it encodes it using one of the MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or FLAC format encoders.

I'm using KDE 3.5 here, your mileage may vary.

Insert your audio cd into the CD-Rom or DVD-Rom drive, in a few moments you will see the KsCD player pop up.

The next dialog box to pop up a few seconds later is...

Since I want to make a .ogg I select...
Extract and Encode Audio Tracks

One day I'll tire of the above Audio Disc - KDE Daemon pop up when I insert a audio CD and click on the Do Nothing icon and then tick off the Always do this for this type of media. Click OK.

Of course then I'll have to click on the KAudioCreator icon in the start menu after I insert the audio CD. Or launch it from the Alt+F2 keyboard combo.

Type in kaudiocreator then click on Run

Either way, the KAudioCreator now pops-up.

The first time that it does, you will get a dialog box stating that no encoders have been found, don't worry about it, just click on OK. It doesn't know they are available yet, you have to select one first. After that it remembers.

After the CDDB goes out to the Internet and grabs the names of the songs from the Compact Disc Database it will fill it in on both applications. Presuming the album data is in the database, and the server is up.

To do a lookup manually, simply click on the CD icon located on the far left of the KAudioCreator tool bar and bam, you have yourself a fully labeled CD. Click on the CDDB icon in the KsCD player to setup the CDDB server closest to your location on this planet.

Here you can see the Audio Disc icon on the desktop, it will disappear when you are done with the KAudioCreator. If you forget to eject the CD before you exit KAudioCreator a left click on this icon will show a eject entry to click on. When the CD ejects, the Audio Disc icon will disappear.


Now it's time to select what songs you want to extract and encode. You can do them all at once or just one at a time, or however many you want. The KsCD CD player is handy to go through each one as a preview of what is actually on the CD. Listen to each one for however long it takes you to decide if you want to select that song or not. Usually 10 seconds for each one is all it takes.

Click the name of the song, or songs and you will see the Rip column now has a check mark in it.

Before I extract the songs I close the KsCD player.

[BobGuy]

The KsCD player sits in the system tray.

Right click on the CD icon.
Click on Quit and this next dialog box pops up.

Click on Quit again.
I also check off the "Do not ask again" entry, your choice.

Now it's time to extract and encode those two songs.
The way it's done is to click on the gear icon in the tool bar and select which encoder to use. A quick click will select the OggEnc encoder, while a click and hold will open up the selection menu you see here.

Click on the encoder of your choice.
OggEnc=.ogg
Lame=.mp3
Leave as wav file=.wav
Flac=.flac
And the next dialog box popping up is...

When you have a mix of artists or greatest hits, the songs are usually not all recorded in the same year. So you have to select a year that is somewhat close, or just rip anyway. Either way the year will be incorrect in the meta data.

Here I changed the year from 1900 to 1960. All, or in this case both of the songs will show up as 1960 in the meta data which is not true. But closer than 1900.
Click on OK to save the change.

I had to reselect the two songs to extract again after the edit, so it's always worth the extra click on the edit icon in the tool bar to have a look before you make your selections. After I reselected the two songs, I clicked on the gear icon and selected the Lame encoder, this dialog box popped up.

Click on OK and head over to the jobs tab.

While I was taking the screen shots it was busy riping and encoding.
When it's done encoding, the jobs tab will be empty and the ogg, flac, wav, or mp3 will be in its folder.

How do you know what folder they are going in?
This is not the most user friendly part of this utility.

I suggest that you copy the &File location: text into a text file so that you can paste it back in if you get lost trying to add or remove a entry. You can always click on cancel, but if you click on OK and it's somehow wrong, you could be here a long time. Personally I can do without the track number. The default has what most people want already selected. It is here that you can remove the "year" meta data entry.

KAudioCreator plus the OggEnc encoder will create, if not already created an ogg folder and populate it with .ogg's
The same holds true for .mp3's .wav's and .flac
(i.e. /home/user/ogg /home/user/mp3)

Folder names go by the extension of the encoder you selected.

For this article I did flac, mp3 and ogg. Here is the result.

Probably what audiophiles love. 14.9MB

A more reasonable mp3 at 3.5MB

Only 2MB for the ogg. Same song, different file sizes, your choice.

This is a nice easy to use utility, the only draw backs are:
1. No easy setting to change the bit rate to encode at.
2. It's to windows like with the initial pop ups when a audio cd is inserted.
3. No handbook or users guide that I have been able to locate.

On the plus side it's easy to use, once it's setup the way you like it.
1. The default encoding bit rates are sane.
2. The setup options are few and simple to set.
3. The defaults should suit most users.

Yes you will have to do a little setting up on your own, not much and it's fairly easy to do with the exception of the file location wizard if you want to make any changes to the defaults. I suggest that anyone rip and encode a few tracks first and then see what you have in your file manager before you start changing the file location settings. It could be exactly what you want.

There is a Auto-eject CD after last track is ripped setting. It was ticked by default and if you only rip 1 song then the CD will eject and you have to push it back in (if you want to rip another track) and wait while the KAudioCreator grabs the CDDB list again which may not be what you want.

Generally I rip a few tracks at a time then do a few more until I have exactly the ones that I want, as opposed to ripping the whole CD at one time. Eject the CD when I'm done and close KAudioCreator.