Grip/Lame MP3 Problem

programx · 11-26-2005, 05:36 AM

Hi all,

I am sick of all the useless rubbish that gets put on my Windows machine by people like Creative, Real, etc. when I want to do a simple thing like rip my CD collection. So I turn to my Linux box to do this for me, as usual with the minimalist of interfaces and fuss.

Except that it ain't working brilliantly at the moment. I am using Grip 3.2.0 on SuSE Linux 9.3 Pro. LAME is v3.96.

My issue is that GRIP/LAME doesn't seem to want to create MP3 files that are readable by my MP3 Player or my AudioTron - but which can be played by Windows Media Player. I find this particularly odd.

I only recently set this up, so I admit once or twice I have run GRIP as su, using 320Kb/s encoding (any benefit of this for CD's?), but I have tried 128 and 160. The MP3's run fine with this. However, run it as a normal user account and the MP3's are generated, but can't be recognised by my MP3 Players. (Which is frustrating, as I do not use my PC to listen to music)

I did read an article yesterday about the configuration of GRIP that stated it should be Set with SGUID. Now I can't remember the URL, and wouldn't be abler to post it anyway, but is this correct? However, when I did this, GTK+ point blank refused to play.

When I run the GRIP app as su, I get this in my console:

gorbag:~/mp3 # /opt/gnome/bin/grip &
[1] 22056
gorbag:~/mp3 # ALSA lib confmisc.c:560

snd_determine_driver) could not open control for card 0
ALSA lib conf.c:3479

_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: Permission denied
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392

snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3479

_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: Permission denied
ALSA lib confmisc.c:955

snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3479

_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: Permission denied
ALSA lib conf.c:3948

snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: Permission denied
ALSA lib pcm.c:2090

snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default

When I run as my own user account, I get the same text.

My first inclination was to check permissions on my block devices:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2005-09-30 20:58 /dev/cdrom -> hdc
brw-rw-rw- 1 root disk 22, 0 2005-03-19 19:36 /dev/hdc

That, to me, looks good enough - indeed I had more success (in that I could use the device for ripping) after modifying the permissions on hdc to 666 instead of 644.

Can anyone help? I don't think its important, but I use my Linux box using a Cygwin X Client over SSH.

Andrew Benton · 11-26-2005, 08:58 AM

Those errors are from ALSA so perhaps the problem with grip is to do with permissions for the sound devices in /dev? I don't use Grip much, I find it a very clumsy tool. If I was to rip a CD I'd do it in a terminal with cdparanoia and then encode the .wav's to .mp3's with LAME. a script can make it easy, like so

Code:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
mkdir in_between_dreams-mp3
cd in_between_dreams-mp3
TRACK_NUMBER=0
rip()
{
	cdparanoia $((++TRACK_NUMBER))
	lame -h -V 0 cdda.wav "Jack Johnson - $1.mp3"
	rm -f cdda.wav
}
rip "Better Together"
rip "Never Know"
rip "Banana Pancakes"
rip "Good People"
rip "No Other Way"
rip "Sitting Waiting Wishing"
rip "Staple It Together"
rip "Situations"
rip "Crying Shame"
rip "If I Could"
rip "Breakdown"
rip "Belle"
rip "Do You Remember"
rip "Constellations"
rip "*"
echo "done"

Read man lame to choose different options to pass to LAME so it will encode things the way you want.

comptiger5000 · 11-26-2005, 09:02 AM

you can use sound juicer

programx · 11-26-2005, 11:24 AM

Quote:

you can use sound juicer

Didn't know what that meant, but found it (v2.10). It is much too simplistic and outputs something called a FLAC file? This is incompatible with MP3? Unless there is some way to match my quality and filetype in this app?

Quote:

I don't use Grip much, I find it a very clumsy tool.

If I could do it automatically, extracting data from CDDB, using a script - I would.

However, I think I have fixed it. I have added myself to the disk and audio groups. Seems to work fine. Thanks for all your help.

comptiger5000 · 11-26-2005, 11:27 AM

no problem, sound juicer needs an mp3 encoder seperately