Need application suggestions for ripping to Cowon A3 PVP

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 16:49 -0700, Dean S. Messing wrote:
> Mark Haney wrote:
> > Dean S. Messing wrote:
> > > I have little experience with CD ripping so your kind help wd. be
> > > appreciated.  I have purchased a Cowon A3 (60GB) PMP for my daugther.
> > > She has asked me to load up a selection of her classical music CD's
> > > (83 of them!)  on the Cowon.  It does not use ID3 tags so I'll
> > > organise things myself, probably by composer
> <snip>
> 
> > 
> > Generally speaking any current CD ripper (in GNOME it's Grip isn't it?) 
> > and I use KaudioCreator in KDE will hit CDDB and give you plenty of 
> > options to fill in ID3 tags on the fly for those CD's you have. 
> > Assuming of course they aren't self created CD's.  That should be more 
> > than adequate for your needs.
> <snip>
> 
> Thanks Mark.
> 
> I'm not actually even sure what "ID3" tags are.

They are meta-information records included with most digital sound files
(e.g. title, composer, artist, year, bitrate, genre and so on). In
Fedora they are supported via the id3lib package. Amarok, RythmBox etc.
simply use this information to organize tracks and playlists.

> I only know that the Cowon A3 does _not_ for
> automatic searching and organisation (according to
> reviews).

I know nothing about this player, though I'd be surprised if it had no
support at all for tags. In any case, you definitely want to add tag
info to your tracks for your own future sanity (and some other model of
player you might eventually own).

Tags for CDs you rip yourself have to be either added manually or
downloaded from an online database such as http://www.freedb.org/. Most
rippers can do this for you automatically (they calculate an ID based on
the combination of track durations, which is a fairly unique fingerprint
for each CD). If for any reason your CD isn't in the database, you get
to add the tags by hand (and preferably return something to the
community by uploading them to the database). The rippers will allow you
to create tags, or you can use a package such as easytag (yum install
easytag).

> What I hope will happen is that the name of the files ripped will
> contain what's on the CD jacket, stuff like 
> 
> "Nocture no. 20 in e minor"

That depends on whether anyone has uploaded the tag information
somewhere. Otherwise you do it yourself.

> and not "track3"
> 
> Several months ago, before I returned the iPod I orignally bought her
> due to it not working well with linux, I was told on this list that
> I'd need to use an application like Amarok with it.

I've had reasonable success with gtkpod, though the user interface
leaves a lot to be desired (note that gtkpod is only for managing your
ipod, it's not a music player though it can call on Amarok for that).

Then again I also think iTunes is overrated as a user interface.

poc