one to use is also the easiest to install. Install the soundconverter
package and then search for Sound Converter. It has a clear graphical
interface and easy-to-understand configuration options.
Listening to Music
If you’re anything like us, you might be a huge music fan. Fortunately,
Ubuntu is fantastic at working with CDs, even enabling you to rip your entire
CD collection into a vast searchable music library, letting you quickly create
playlists, and enabling you to create your own customized CDs.
Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is a useful application that plays CDs if you insert an audio CD
into your computer. It also attempts to obtain information about the CD from
the Internet. If it’s successful, you see the name of the CD appear in
Rhythmbox.
When you’re ready to play your CD, click the name of the CD under the
Devices section and then click the Play button. You can also define whether
the CD should repeat itself until stopped or whether you want to shuffle the
music (that is, randomize the playlist).
Of course, just listening to your CDs doesn’t really change anything;
Rhythmbox acts like a regular CD player, enabling you to listen to specific
tracks and define how you want to listen to your music by using playlists or
sorting by artists. The real fun starts when you click the Copy to Library
button on your toolbar. Rhythmbox starts to extract, or rip, the audio from a
CD and store it within the Music directory under your /home directory.
Depending on the speed of your optical drive and the power of your
computer, the ripping process can take up to 15 minutes for a full CD. As it
goes along, Rhythmbox automatically adds the files to your media library,
which you can access within Rhythmbox.
In the Rhythmbox interface, you can easily browse through the list of artist
names or album titles, which affects the track listing that appears at the
bottom of the screen. The numbers after each artist and album tell you how
many tracks are assigned to that specific entry, giving you a heads up before
you click them. Double-clicking any entry automatically starts the music
playing. So, for example, double-clicking an artist’s name causes the music
tracks associated with that artist to start playing. When a track starts to play,
Rhythmbox automatically attempts to retrieve the CD artwork, which it