Need application suggestions for ripping to Cowon A3 PVP

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2008-08-14 at 18:55 -0700, Dean S. Messing wrote:
> <http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/10762.html>
> 
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > Dean Messing wrote:
> > > 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.
> 
> So, perhaps I'll be able to use the tags + Amarok to organise
> all the music, and then write the file structure out to
> the Cowon?

The tag info is inside the sound file, so yes.

> > > I only know that the Cowon A3 does _not_ [use IDE tags] 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.
> 
> It evidently does not.  But it has many other features that compensate
> for that, including many open audio and video formats, It also has
> about the highest audio quality of any player out there.
> 
> For your interest, here's a link to a Feb 08 review:
> <http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/12/cowon-a3-review/>
> 
> > 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).
> 
> Agreed, though I'm not sure what that means.  Is the tag information
> carried in the file name, or in some metadata area w/in the track
> itself, or as separate files w/in the ripped-to directory?

It's part of the sound file. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id3

> > 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).
> 
> Very helpful.  Do you recommend a ripper under KDE/F8 that is powerful
> and easy.  I have very little time to rip 83 CDs, figure out Amarok
> (or whatever) for the purpose of organising things, and then putting
> it all on the Cowon.  Others have suggested KaudioCreator and I'm happy
> to try it.  Anything better?  (I've only comline ripping with cdparanoia).

Grip is reasonable, also Sound Juicer, also k3b. There are several
others.

poc