How does Amarok rip Audio CDs (in Ubuntu Lucid)?

Question

I'm in the process of moving my CD collection into my Amarok library. Mostly, it works great. Sometimes however, the process just hangs forever.

The problem seems to occur at random (i. e. often, but not always at the same disk/track) and the consequences range from none (successful after cancel/retry) to Amarok's internal db becoming completely messed up.

I would like to investigate and file a proper bug report or find a fix / workaround, but I don't understand how Amarok does the ripping. When all is working, there's a lame process encoding to a temporary file, which appears in my collection once it's finished.

When the process hangs, that lame command is still there, but waiting forever for data on stdin, which seems to come from a third process. That seems to be kio_audiocd, but I don't know whether that's correct and what it's supposed to do.

What's going on?

Answer 1

I would simply not use Amarok, but Audex. Audex is specialized for Audio ripping and also allows to include the cover in the metadata of the ripped files.