We all know the deal by now…Get new cd’s at store. Get home. Rip them.

Almost as easy as iTunes “auto rip upon audio cd insertion” and much more flexible, abcde is a front end to various encoders.

With a single, heavily commented configuration file, you can change default ripping behavior such as location and format. I like the fact that I can rip to flac and mp3 in one shot.

Once configured, all you have to do after the cd is mounted is type abcde on the command line. It will ask you to confirm the CDDB settings, whether the cd is multi-artist, and then off it goes.

If you are looking for a better, simpler or whatever “-er” ripper, check out this abcde page for config files. It is in the portage tree, but check your distro.