jukebox app for linux?

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

I have a lot of cd's at home, and I am lazy to be switching to a different cd every once in a while. I figured out that Ogg, was the best encoder to use, and I use grip. To rip and encode my cd's. My question is:
1. What application should I use to manage a whole bunch of music files? I was looking at rhythmbox, but it doesn't seem to be at a high level of development, and if I don't close it correctly, or linux crashes, I have to import all the music again.
2. At the moment I am using xmms, but it looks uggly are there different thmes for it? if so could you provide a linky.

Thanks,
pitupepito

 

[n0cmonkey]

There are themes for xmms. Check the xmms page or themes.freshmeat.net (I think!) for examples.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

rhythmbox, mpd, bossogg, quark, ...

Check freshmeat, I know there are a ton.

 

[drag]

I like to use RipperX to rip cdroms. It's uses cdparanoia...

I encode them using ogg vorbis (can do it in lame(the library name)-based mp3s, FLAC and a couple other codecs are supported) at approx. 192kb/s setting. I tell ripperx to put them into a file (named after the album/band, all automated using CDDB stuff) into a ~/music directory.

I then tell zinf to scan the music directory then it puts the songs into a music database and arranges it according to artist/album/song listings.

Then from that I can pick and choose all of them or some of them to put into playlists.

Kinda like itunes but better since it keeps track of the songs you build the playlists out of instead of just using the manually created playlists. (or something like that)

 

[civad]

Zinf Is Not FreeA*p

I have used RipperX before. It quite a useful app. Never tried into .ogg format though. Will give it a try sometime.

 

[drag]

Ogg is much (subjective of course) better then mp3.

But still I can't understand why people get so excited about buying songs in lossy formats like 128bit/s mp3's. It realy is quite poor quality if you sit their and listen to the difference between cdrom and mp3's. Ogg is better at it, but i wouldn't buy any songs that were in a format with anything less then FLAC, which is a lossless format. Anything encoded in Flac will have as close to 100% quality as you can get. The problem is of course the files are much larger then mp3's or Ogg.

 

[JustMike]

I'm with you drag. I will not pay money for a song encoded in 128kbps. Luckily some record companies are distributing music in various formats (I believe the band Primus distrbutes FLAC).

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
There are themes for xmms. Check the xmms page or themes.freshmeat.net (I think!) for examples.

He can also use old winamp 2 skins as well.

 

[Vadatajs]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
There are themes for xmms. Check the xmms page or themes.freshmeat.net (I think!) for examples.

You can also use your favorite winamp 2.x skins. Just rename the extension to .zip and put it in your ~/.xmms/skins/ directory.

damn, beaten to it.

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Vadatajs

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
There are themes for xmms. Check the xmms page or themes.freshmeat.net (I think!) for examples.

You can also use your favorite winamp 2.x skins. Just rename the extension to .zip and put it in your ~/.xmms/skins/ directory.

damn, beaten to it.

Actually you don't have to rename it. You can use the .wsz extensions just fine.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

So here's an update on my situation. I am using grip to rip and encode my cd's to ogg format, and I am putting them in a vfat partition. This takes a long time for each cd. I have two questions:
1. Is there a way (or program that allows me to use both drives, I have a cd-rom and cd-rw) to rip and encode the cd's? Would doing this speed the process?
2. Is Zinf a free application? I was able to find a deb package, but I didn't find anything about it not being free.

Thanks,
pitupepito

 

[drag]

Well it's has GNU's seal of approval


With Debian, you can go into dselect and check out the package. (go to the selection section and press "/" to start a search).

If it's not under non-free or contrib catagory then usually it is completely free sourced.

I use unstable so I don't know if it's aviable by default with stable or testing.

 

[pitupepito2000]

drag, thanks for the response. I also use unstable debian 2.6.0. I did installed it and I love it, it's just what I was looking for. Do you know if there's a way to rip 2 cd's at a time using 2 different optical drives?

thanks,
pitupepito

 

[drag]

Well I know ripperX uses cdparanoia to rip the cd's into wav files...

If you go to the options and the mp3 section IIRC you'll find their a place to put command line options. You go man cdparanioa and find the modifier to select the device you want to rip from manually. Then you can stick that into that command line option box and that way have cdparanioa and ripperx use a different cdrom device then the one being indicated by the /dev/cdrom symlink.

So I am guessing you could have 2 ripperX sessions open and just keep them using seperate devices using the command line options. I don't know how well that will work, I suppose it depends on how well it was programmed. (like will changing the config on one change the .config file and screw up the other one?)

If that happens, their are dozens of other good programs, or you could try it with 2 different users (the su command will make you other users then root if you want).