PhonoRipper 0.9.4 review

PhonoRipper aims to be an easy to handle, all-in-one GUI tool for creating audio CDs from analog sources like vinyl records. Phono

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 224K Developer: Michael Lange

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PhonoRipper aims to be an easy to handle, all-in-one GUI tool for creating audio CDs from analog sources like vinyl records.

PhonoRipper uses Snack and Cdrdao (for CD writing). Features include a WAV file recorder with mixer and VU meter, automatic detection of track borders, and an intuitive drag'n'drop CD writing interface.

Here are some key features of "PhonoRipper":
sound file recorder with integrated level meter and mixer
large recordings can easily be split into several tracks ; track borders can be detected automatically or comfortably be marked in a graphical representation of the sound file.
automatic normalizing of volumes of recordings from different sources for mix CD's
intuitive drag'n'drop CD-writing gui
integrated help browser

In addition with PhonoRipper you get :

Snackmixer : another graphical mixer program for X-windows
Snackrecorder : a simple graphical wav file recorder
Snackplayer : a sound file player for X-windows with support for many file formats, like wav-, ogg- and raw- (binary) files.

Requirements:
Python >= 2.3 and Tkinter must be installed on your system (all these should be delivered with your distribution). Though it still works with Tk8.3 using Tk8.4 is highly recommended. You will also need the Pmw Mega Widgets >= 1.1 .
Phonoripper is tested with Python-2.3.3, Tk-8.4.5 and Pmw-1.2; older versions might still work, but this cannot be guaranteed.
libsnack/snack >= 2.2.2 is needed (download at www.speech.kth.se/snack ).
for track-splitting you will additionally need sox (certainly comes with your distribution).
the automatic volume adjustment requires normalize .
for CD-writing you will need cdrdao, which should be included in any recent distribution. The latest version can be found here.

for recording rawrec is needed (also pkill to stop recording, but this should be installed anyway).

Limitations:
Because of Snack's (at the moment) limited support for ALSA drivers the use of snack for recording with ALSA drivers is not recommended - that is the reason why rawrec is used as alternative.
With OSS drivers recording with snack should work without problems.
What?s totally missing yet is any filtering of noise and scratches. I recommend the excellent Gnome-Wave-Cleaner for that.

What's New in This Release:
A crash when trying to open a non-existent audio device and some oddities in the behavior of the waveform widget were fixed.