Installation

The package

pip install ripdoctor

Python 3.11 or newer. beets comes with it.

The tools it calls

RipDoctor shells out for everything that touches audio. These must be on the path:

Tool	Used for
ffmpeg	measuring levels, cutting tracks, encoding
ffprobe	reading duration and format
flac	verifying a FLAC decodes
metaflac	reading and writing tags
arecord	recording from the sound card (Linux/ALSA)

arecord is only needed to record. Without it you can still bring in a WAV or FLAC recorded elsewhere and do everything from the first pass onwards.

Debian and Ubuntu:

sudo apt install ffmpeg flac alsa-utils

Fedora:

sudo dnf install ffmpeg flac alsa-utils

macOS has no arecord; brew install ffmpeg flac covers the rest.

Check the install

ripdoctor doctor

It reports what is present, what is missing, and the install command for each missing piece. Run it again after any change — it is the fastest way to see whether a fix took.

Warnings are worth reading even when nothing failed. It also reports which beets plugins will actually load and whether beets and RipDoctor agree about where the library is, both of which are silent problems otherwise.

ripdoctor doctor --json prints the same results as JSON.

Next

Configuration — the pool, the capture device and the library.