Copy/Rip Audio CDs to Your Computer

To copy (or “rip”) audio CDs to your computer, use a CD ripping app downloaded with Discover.

KDE Linux recommends using Audex, KDE’s application for audio CD ripping.

Launch Audex and insert a disc into the drive. It will automatically look up and download the disk metadata (artist, album name, track names etc.) from gnudb.org, if available. You can also make manual changes to all metadata.

Common file formats to use for the ripped audio files include:

  • MP3 - small files, great compatibility, good enough quality for most use cases
  • Ogg Vorbis - Smaller files and better quality than MP3, but less compatibility with proprietary music players
  • FLAC - large files, “CD quality”

You can select your preferred format from the Profile drop-down menu on the toolbar. Then click the Rip button!

When ripping has finished, the audio files will be placed in a subfolder inside /home/[your username]/Music folder. If you want to use a different location or change the naming scheme of the resulting audio files, you can do all that and many more under Settings > Configure Audex….

Alternatives

Other ripping apps known to work on KDE Linux include:

Article contributed by under the CC-BY-4.0 license.