Ripping better quality CDs in Ubuntu

No, I don't mean only recording classical music...

I use sound juicer to rip my CDs into Ogg Vorbis format.

> sudo apt-get install sound-juicer

However, I'm a bit fussy how I wanted to record them - the default bitrate is 160kbps and I wanted a tad more detail

Google to the rescue again... these notes on the vorbisenc plugin
http://blaise.ca/blog/2008/05/02/encoding-to-ogg-vorbis-using-a-gstreamer-pipeline-vorbisenc-plugin-quality-property/

To create a profile that will record at higher quality, go into Sound Juicer and select Edit..Preferences. 

At the bottom of the dialog there's an Output format. It's probably showing "CD Quality, lossy (.ogg type)". And a button marked "Edit profiles". Click that. 

Select the "CD Quality, lossy" profile and click Edit. Copy the GStreamer pipeline value, as this is what you're going to modify in your new profile. Mine was this:

audio/x-raw-float,rate=44100,channels=2 ! vorbisenc name=enc quality=0.5 ! oggmux

See the quality setting of 0.5?The quality setting is a value from 0.1 .. 1. 0.5 represents a bitrate of 160kbps. I wanted 192kbps, which is 0.6. So back in the Edit GNOME Audio Profiles dialog, cick New and enter this line for the GStreamer pipeline:

audio/x-raw-float,rate=44100,channels=2 ! vorbisenc name=enc quality=0.6 ! oggmux

and call the profile "CD Quality, better"