Whipper is a Python 2 CD-DA ripper, fork of the morituri project (CDDA ripper for *nix systems aiming for accuracy over speed). It improves morituri which development seems to have halted merging old ignored pull requests, improving it with bugfixes and new features.

Whipper is developed and tested only on Linux distributions but should work fine on other *nix OSes too.

In order to track whipper's current development it's advised to check its commit history (README isn't still complete).

• Rationale
• Features
• Release history
• Installation
  1. Required dependencies
  2. Fetching the source code
  3. Building the bundled dependencies
  4. Finalizing the installation
• Usage
• Getting started
• Configuration file documentation
• Backward incompatible changes
• Running uninstalled
• Logger plugins
• License
• Contributing
  • Bug reports & feature requests
  • Developing
• Credits
• Links

For a detailed description, see morituri's wiki page: The Art of the Rip.

• Detects correct sample read offset and ability to defeat cache of drives
• Performs Test & Copy rips
• Verifies rip accuracy using the AccurateRip database
• Uses MusicBrainz for metadata lookup
• Supports reading the pre-emphasis flag embedded into some CDs (and correctly tags the resulting rip)
• Detects and rips non digitally silent Hidden Track One Audio (HTOA)
• Provides batch ripping capabilities
• Provides templates for file and directory naming
• Supports lossless encoding
• Allows retagging of already completed rips
• Allows extensibility through external logger plugins

• 0.4.0 - Replace cdrdao.py with much simpler version. Logger update. Raise Exception when track rip runs out of attempts. Undelete overzealously removed plugin initialisation (fix regression). Invoke whipper by its name & README rewrite
• 0.3.0 - SoX is now used for peak detection. Migration to setuptools
• 0.2.4 - First tagged release after morituri fork (includes "new config/cache/state file paths" backward incompatible change)

With the exception of an AUR package for Arch Linux, whipper isn't currently available in a prepackaged form so, in order to use it, it must be built from its source code.

If you are building from a source tarball or checkout, you can choose to use whipper installed or uninstalled but first install all the required dependencies.

Whipper relies on the following packages in order to run correctly and provide all the supported features:

• cdparanoia, for the actual ripping
• cdrdao, for session, TOC, pre-gap, and ISRC extraction
• GStreamer and its python bindings, for encoding (it's going to be removed soon™)
  • gstreamer0.10-base-plugins >= 0.10.22 for appsink
  • gstreamer0.10-good-plugins for wav encoding (it depends on the Linux distro used)
• python-musicbrainzngs, for metadata lookup
• python-setuptools, for installation, plugins support
• python-cddb, for showing but not using metadata if disc not available in the MusicBrainz DB
• pycdio (to avoid bugs please use pycdio 0.20 & libcdio >= 0.90 or, with previous libcdio versions, pycdio 0.17), for drive identification
  • Required for drive offset and caching behavior to be stored in the configuration file
• libsndfile, for reading wav files
• flac, for reading flac files
• sox, for track peak detection

Change to a directory where you want to put whipper source code (for example, $HOME/dev/ext or $HOME/prefix/src)

git clone -b master --single-branch https://github.com/JoeLametta/whipper.git
cd whipper
# fetch bundled python dependencies
git submodule init
git submodule update

Whipper uses and packages a slightly different version of the accuraterip-checksum tool:

You can edit the install path in config.mk

cd src
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Install whipper: python2 setup.py install

Whipper currently only has a command-line interface called whipper which is self-documenting: whipper -h gives you the basic instructions.

Whipper implements a tree of commands: for example, the top-level whipper command has a number of sub-commands.

Positioning of arguments is important:

whipper cd -d (device) rip

is correct, while

whipper cd rip -d (device)

is not, because the -d argument applies to the whipper command.

Check the man page (whipper(1)) for more information. (currently not available as whipper's documentation is planned to be migrated to Sphinx).

The simplest way to get started making accurate rips is:

1. Pick a relatively popular CD that has a good change of being in the AccurateRip database

2. Analyze the drive's caching behavior

   whipper drive analyze

3. Find the drive's offset.

   Consult the AccurateRip's CD Drive Offset database for your drive. Drive information can be retrieved with whipper drive list.

   whipper offset find -o OFFSET

   If you omit the -o argument, whipper will try a long, popularity-sorted list of drive offsets.

   If you can not confirm your drive offset value but wish to set a default regardless, set read_offset = 42 in whipper.conf.

   Offsets confirmed with whipper offset find are automatically written to the configuration file.

4. Rip the disc by running

   whipper cd rip

The configuration file is stored according to the XDG Base Directory Specification when possible.

It lives in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/whipper/whipper.conf (or $HOME/.config/whipper/whipper.conf).

The configuration file follows python's ConfigParser syntax.

The possible sections are:

• Main section: [main]

  • path_filter_fat: whether to filter path components for FAT file systems
  • path_filter_special: whether to filter path components for special characters

• Drive section: [drive:IDENTIFIER], one for each configured drive. All these values are probed by whipper and should not be edited by hand.

  • defeats_cache: whether this drive can defeat the audio cache
  • read_offset: the read offset of the drive

• Rip command section: [rip.COMMAND.SUBCOMMAND]. Can be used to change the command options default values.

Example section to configure whipper cd rip defaults:

[rip.cd.rip]
unknown = True
output_directory = ~/My Music
track_template = new/%%A/%%y - %%d/%%t - %%n
disc_template = %(track_template)s
profile = flac

Note: to get a literal % character it must be doubled.

• Whipper executable name changed: from rip to whipper
• Whipper has adopted new config/cache/state file paths (PR #42)

  • Now always follows XDG specifications

    • Paths used when XDG environment variables are available:

      • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/whipper
      • $XDG_CACHE_HOME/whipper
      • $XDG_DATA_HOME/whipper

    • Paths used when XDG environment variables are NOT available:

      • $HOME/.config/whipper
      • $HOME/.cache/whipper
      • $HOME/.local/share/whipper

  • Configuration file information:

    • .moriturirc, morituri.conf aren't used anymore

    • When XDG environment variables are available it's located in:

      • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/whipper/whipper.conf

    • When XDG environment variables are NOT available it's located in:

      • $HOME/.config/whipper/whipper.conf

  • Plugins folder path:

    • When XDG environment variables are available it's located in:

      • $XDG_DATA_HOME/whipper/plugins

    • When XDG environment variables are NOT available it's located in:

      • $HOME/.local/share/whipper/plugins

To make it easier for developers, you can run whipper straight from the source checkout:

python2 setup.py develop
whipper -h

Whipper supports using external logger plugins to write rip .log files.

List available plugins with whipper cd rip -h. Specify a logger to rip with by passing -L loggername:

whipper cd rip -L what

• morituri-yamlloger - default whipper logger, yaml format
• morituri-eaclogger - eac-like logger attempting to maintain strict compatability with EAC
• morituri-whatlogger - eac-like logger containing the informational enhancements of the yamllogger, for use on What.CD

Licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license.

Copyright (C) 2009 Thomas Vander Stichele
Copyright (C) 2016 JoeLametta

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301  USA

Please use the issue tracker to report any bugs or file feature requests.

When filing bug reports, please run the failing command with the environment variable RIP_DEBUG set. For example:

RIP_DEBUG=5 whipper offset find > whipper.log 2>&1
gzip whipper.log

And attach the gzipped log file to your bug report.

Pull requests are welcome.

WARNING: As whipper is still under heavy development sometimes I will force push (--force-with-lease) to the non master branches.

Thanks to:

• Thomas Vander Stichele
• Joe Lametta
• Merlijn Wajer
• Samantha Baldwin

You can find us and talk about the project on IRC: freenode, #whipper channel.

• What.CD thread (official)
• Reddit thread (unofficial)
• Arch Linux whipper AUR package
• Unattended ripping using whipper (script by Thomas McWork)