I am having quite a bit of difficulty ripping CD's to MP3 format.

I am using GRIP (w/ CDparanoia and Lame) on a SimplyMepis 2004.04 system. (KDE 3.2)

The problem is that GRIP is apparently going through the process of ripping and encoding but I end up with empty MP3 files. The files are the correct approximate size and if I play them, they will runn on XMMS for the correct song duration, with the correct song title but there will be absolute silence.

I've noted the following:

I have been able to produce MP3s on this system using GRIP. Failure often only occurs after one or two songs on a CD have been successfully ripped. In at least one case, failure occurred abruptly in the middle of a song.

When failure occurs, the WAV files that Grip produces are also empty but appropriately sized. This leads me to believe that failure is in the audio-->WAV conversion.

Once failure occurs, no other program (Kaudiocreator or K3b will produce tracks with audio, they also will rip w/ no sound)

I have ruled out the CD as a source of trouble since I have ripped tracks successfully and then been unable to rip same track subsequently (after failure occurs)

I don't think that it is the CD-ROM drive since failure will occur in both drives, (and they will just fine under win2000. (dual boot machine)

I am kind of at a loss here. What I find particularly perplexing is that things will work and then just quit. Once it quits working I need to reboot to be able to get the Grip to work again.

Does anyone have any ideas out there, or do I need to use windows I unfortunately do not know enough about where to look for solutions on this.

Does Grip (or cdparanoia) produce the correct WAV files all the time? If so, it's naturally lame (the encoder) that's causing the problem. It's been a while since I touched Grip, but if it lets you just rip the music CD without encoding, you may want to do that and then run lame from the command line to manually encode the WAV files. This isn't really a solution - just a way to help pinpoint the problem.

Can you play the CD's themselves? Say with KsCD. Try this article if you have any problems. It might be a volume problem.

Also you can use Konqueror to rip CD's. try typing audiocd:/ into the konq and grab the files off the CD. if you pick one of the sub directories and drag them to your drive Konq will encode them for you.

To answer both posts: upon failure, the WAV files are appropriately sized ( ~ 20-40 MB depending on song) but will not play in XMMS. (no sound) so I believe that this issue may reside on the ripping to wav portion.

Didn't think about trying to play CD- I will try, though again, I can't see why I would lose audio partway through a song.

Also, this problem has occurred under audiocd:/ as well. Is it possible that this is a configuration problem with the ripping program, or a conflict with other programs that may be running?

I'd doubt it's a conflict with another program. Do you dual-boot to Windows? If so, is Windows able to correctly rip/encode the music CD?

One thing to note.. if I remember corectly, KsCD will not produce any sound unless your CD drive is connected to the motherboard via sound cable. I would do the sound check using another program, such as XMMS.

You could use the ogg encoder instead of mp3. ogg files pla in xmms beautifully.

My machine is dual boot, and I have been able to encode to WMA using Media Player though to be honest, I haven't conducted extensive testing I was mainly trying to confirm that the CD was readable.

Interesting to note the sound cable situation. KsCD does work on my system though there are exactly two cables attached to my CD-ROM- a power cable and IDE cable. nonetheless, I normally use XMMS, which seems to play CDs okay.

In answer to Ronferns I would actually prefer Ogg but they won't play on my iPod --Yet. Also, have had the same problem when using the Ogg encoder.

I think that I will try ripping only to WAV format and see if there are any problems.

Now, perhaps this is a dumb question, but how system intensive is ripping and encoding? Can I have other stuff running in the background (or can I be web surfing, word processing, etc... ) or should I really only let the computer rip & encode? Could this be the root of the problem?

I think that's a good start.

Ripping/encoding does invoke a lot of disc access. How much you can do parallel depends upon your computer. I, for one, can do other tasks without any problem while ripping and encoding a music CD.

Okay, some updated info:

I run an Athlon XP1600 w/512MB PC2100( I think) Typically I have been ripping while doing some other things. Also, I am running a 2.6.7 Kernel rather than the 2.4.7- not sure if this makes a difference.

Trying to rip to WAV only files leave silent WAV files. I was watching the KDE system Guard, my computer seemed to be extremely occupied, and ripping would slow down drastically. Grip would become unresponsive for extended periods (several minutes at a time)

After this, the WAV files were full size but no sound. (tried playing under XMMS, realplayer and Audacity and Kwave) These files do not contain audio data that I can find.

Then tried using KaudioCreator- did not work, produced empty WAV files.
Then tried using K3B - did not work, produced empty MP3 files.
Then tried /audiocd in Konqueror- transfer of file stalled.

Then tried playing audio CD w/ XMMS- this worked fine
Then tried playing audio CD w/ KsCD - this worked okay as well, though it hung up while /audiocd was stalled.

Noticed that under KDE system guard, grip is on the process table, even after I close the program, what's more. I cannot seem to kill the process. After highlighting and selecting kill, I am asked if I want to kill the process, however, it still stays on process table. (not experienced enough to know if this is normal but I have not seen this behavior with K3B)

Im thinking that I'll uninstall Grip and see if situation changes. I'm wondering if Grip is somehow grabbing hold of some system resource? Or for that matter, could it be CDparanoia? May try to rip from the command line w/ CD paranoia and see if I get the same problems.