After some toying with KAudioCreator, I like what I see, but I can't seem to find where the quality settings are for ripping CDs with Lame.

Also, I've read that K3b does CD ripping, too. Is there anyway to use K3b to rip with the Lame encoder, too?

Really, all I want is a tool (any tool) that will allow me to rip my CDs into MP3s and give me a good amount of options on the ripping quality. In a perfect world, I wold love to be able to rip all of my CDs into MP3s with a variable bit rate (VBR) between 128 and 320 kbps in joint stereo. If there's a tool out there that I can configure to do that, I'd LOVE to hear about it.

Thanks guys!!

You could always just use LAME from the command line..

but in KAudiocdCreator there is a way to edit the encoder (it's in the options menu...) You have to adjust the options in the config button... You can get a list of possible modifiers (of which, I believe -v is for vbr), and add it into the command.

What the GUI does for any program is just gives the user a graphical tool for what it runs into the command line. KAudio.. gives you an option to edit the command it runs, it just isn't a pretty. You have to edit the command by hand. But really, it isn't that scary.. check out man lame, it'll help

ah! ok. thanx!

Note that the ripping and converting to mp3 are two seperate processes. First, you rip the raw audio from the cd (generally into wav format), then you convert it to mp3 (of course, some apps might rip and encode on the fly giving the impression of a single process).

It's the mp3 encoding process when you'd set the quality (aside: also check out ogg-vorbis, similar to mp3 but fully open source, if you care about that sort of thing).

I use asunder for ripping and encoding. Works great and it's preference dialog covers pretty much what you're after exactly