Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Asunder is a GTK2 Audio CD ripper and encoder for Linux. It can be used to save tracks from Audio CDs and encode them in various popular audio formats such as MP3, OGG, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, Musepack, Opus, AAC and Monkey's Audio.


The application can retrieve tags from CDDB (with configurable server address, proxy support), lets you configure the filename formats and much more.

Asunder preferences - Encode

Asunder features:
  • Can save audio tracks as WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Opus, Wavpack, Musepack, AAC, and Monkey's audio files;
  • Uses CDDB to name and tag each track;
  • Creates M3U playlists;
  • Can encode to multiple formats in one session;
  • Simultaneous rip and encode;
  • Allows for each track to be by a different artist;
  • Does not require a specific desktop environment.

Asunder is available in the official Ubuntu repositories, but it's a pretty old version (2.2 for Trusty and Saucy and 2.1 for Precise - the latest Asunder version being 2.5). WebUpd8 reader N. W. has asked me to upload the latest Asunder to a PPA so I have backported Asunder 2.5 from Debian (same version is also available in Ubuntu 14.10) to Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 and 12.04.

I've tested the latest Asunder 2.5 in Ubuntu 14.04 and it worked great but, because I can't test it properly under older Ubuntu versions, I can't guarantee that it will work (in theory there's no reason it wouldn't work but anyway). That's why I've uploaded it to the WebUpd8 Unreleased / Backports PPA.

Changes in Asunder 2.5 (compared to the version available in the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories - 2.2):
  • Can now encode into OPUS;
  • Allow metadata to contain invalid filesystem characters (e.g. "Artist" can contain punctuation like "J. S. Bach");
  • AAC files are now tagged using neroAacTag (instead of no tags at all)
  • Dots are now allowed in filenames;
  • Added the application to the list of apps for audio CDs in Gnome;
  • Added support for XDG_CACHE_HOME;
  • Fixed some memory corruption bugs that may have caused crashes and undefined behaviour;
  • Fixed the eject functionality to be more reliable;
  • Fixed a bug where the CDDB info from a removed disk still showed up in a newly inserted disk;
  • Fixed two major bugs that caused Asunder to hang while ripping.

A complete changelog can be found HERE.


Install the latest Asunder Audio CD ripper in Ubuntu via PPA


As I was saying, Asunder is already available in the official Ubuntu repositories, but it's a pretty old version. If you prefer this official Asunder package, install it by clicking the button below:

Available in Ubuntu Software Center

Or, via command line:
sudo apt-get install asunder

To install the latest Asunder (2.5 at the time I'm writing this article) in Ubuntu by using the WebUpd8 Unreleased / Backports PPA, copy/paste the following commands in a terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install asunder
If you don't want to add the PPA, grab the deb file from HERE.