ZoneO-tips for Mandriva Linux

How to transfer, organize, and play your favorite music with Mandriva Linux? With all the new technologies of music compression or portable devices like the iPod, it doesn't really make sense to keep a personal collection of Cd's anymore... Personally, I'm quite sick of those piles of boxes around the stereo, and it gets very heavy when you move!

 
 

Well, it was time to convert my whole collection... There are many formats one can use, but for the time being, I'd say that mp3 remains the best option. In theory, it would be great to use open formats such as Ogg Vorbis but most commercial players do not support it.

1- Software

Mandriva already has everything you need:

• Lame, a mp3 encoder,
• Kaudiocreator, a front-end tool for ripping and encoding audio Cd's,
• AmaroK, a program to sort out, and play your favorite tracks.

2- Installation

Ok, there are few patent issues regarding mp3 encoding, so some of those softwares (lame) are not part of the main Mandriva distribution. It is very easy to get though: you just need to add the PFL source for URPMI (instructions available here).

Once you configured your sources for URPMI, simply install the three packages for

• lame,
• kaudiocreator,
• amarok,

and all their dependencies in the Mandriva Control Center (go to the main menu on your mandrake system system -> Configuration -> configure your computer -> Software and packages -> Install).

3- Choose a folder

You will need to choose a folder to store your music. Be careful, it will get large very quickly! For instance, my collection of about 250 Cd's turns out to use about 20 gigabytes.

In my case, I just create a folder called Music/ in my home directory.

4- Convert your Cd's to mp3

To convert your Cd's to mp3, you will have to use kaudiocreator (Menu Multimedia -> Sound -> kaudiocreator). First, configure it (in kaudiocreator, menu Settings -> Configure Kaudiocrator) :

• In the panel CD, choose the option Perform CDDB lookup automatically: with this option, kaudiocreator will automatically go onto the internet to lookup the artist, name of album, and song titles when you insert a CD: no need to enter it by hand!
• In the panel Encoder, choose lame so your Cd's are converted to mp3. You also need to say how and where will the files be saved. In my case, I chose ~/Music/%artist/%album/%artist - %song.%extension: this means in the Music/ folder, create a folder with the name of the artist, in this folder, create a new folder with the name of the album, and save the songs in there as artist - song title.mp3.
• Evenutally, you can also ask kaudiocreator to create a playlist for each album you rip.

You're ready! For each CD:

• insert the CD, kaudiocreator will lookup the artist, name of album, and song titles,
• choose the tracks you want to convert to mp3 (all of them!)
• Click on Rip Selected Tracks,
• That's it!

5- Organize your collection

After spending a few hours ripping Cd's you'll quickly realize that you end up with hundreds of files... There is not way to open and play them individually anymore...

Mandriva has all you need: amarok! Start by configuring it: just define the folder where your music collection is (in the configuration dialog) and let it browse your collection. Amarok will build a database of your music and you'll be sorted. You'll be able to browse your collection by genre, by album, by artist, create your own playlist...

6- Play your music

To play you music, simply use amarok. Select what you want to hear, and drag it into the playlist window. There is also an option that will constantly add stuff to your playlist depending on what you played before. No need to wonder what you'll play next, amarok does it for you!

Links

• Lame, a mp3 encoder.
• Kaudiocreator, a front-end tool for ripping and encoding audio Cd's.
• AmaroK, a program to sort and play your favorite music.
• PFL, the source for packages not available in the main Mandriva distribution.
• Easy Urpmi, to configure Mandriva to find packages.