Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is the default player in Ubuntu. Like many other media player, it comes with the capability to import audio CD into your library.
Open your Rhythmbox. Before you start to import your audio CD, it is best to configure the location of the imported files and the song format.
Go to Edit -> Preferences. Click on the Music tab.
In the “Music Files are placed in” field, select the location of the folder where the imported music will be stored.
Next, you may want to configure how the folder hierarchy of the album. Lastly, select the preferred format that you want the imported music to be. The best choice would be FLAC format, but the file size will also be the biggest. MP3 is the most popular choice.
Once you are done with the configuration, go back to the Rhythmbox player and insert in your audio CD. You should see the CD entry on the left pane and all the songs in the right pane. To import all the songs, simply right click on the left pane CD entry and select “Extract to Library”.
To import only selected songs, first uncheck the songs that you don’t want to import. Next, right click on the left pane CD entry and select “Extract to Library”. Personally, I found that audio extracting in Rhythmbox is extremely slow. It could take up to 20 minutes to extract 10 songs from a CD. If you are looking for a faster alternative, Sound Juicer is a better choice.
Sound Juicer
Sound Juicer is not a music player, even though it allows you to playback songs. In fact, it exists only for one purpose – to rip audio CD into music files. The good thing is, it did its job well and fast. Debian/Ubuntu users can install Sound Juicer with the command: or simply click here to install. Once installed, open the Sound Juicer application via Applications -> Sound & Video -> Audio CD Extractor. As usual, it is best to configure the settings before we start the ripping. Go to “Edit -> Preferences”. Similarly, you can set the location to store your music, the folder hierarchy and the music format.
Note: The default Ubuntu does not come with MP3 support. Unless you install the “ubuntu-restricted-extra” package, you won’t be able to choose MP3 as the output format. When you are done with the configuration, simply pop in your audio CD. Sound Juicer will automatically detect the CD and fetch the album info from the Web. You just have to click the “Extract” button to start the ripping.
The whole ripping process is much faster than Rhythmbox. Typically, a CD of 10 songs (about 50mins of playback time) takes about 5 minutes to finish ripping. That’s it. Don’t forget to check out the ultimate guide to manage your audio/video files to handle all sort of media files in Linux. Image credit: LaserGuided
