Grip has an option to specify the number of CPUs used for encoding (on the Config -> MP3 -> Options screen; the field is labeled 'Number of CPUs to use') Changes to this option are not applied until grip is exited and restarted
Hmm, this *is* documented in the online help file:///usr/share/gnome/help/grip/C/mp3config.html This is confusing for users (or at least for me). When I first ran grip, I configured it, told it two CPUs, and happily starting ripping + encoding. It displayed one Rip progress meter and one MP3 (ie, encoding) progress meter. I assumed it was encoding using both CPUs, and just displaying a combined progress output. Later, I exited grip. When I restarted grip, I discovered that it now displayed one Rip progress meter and two MP3 (encoding) progress meters, and realized that it had only been using one CPU the first time.... Perhaps this could be made more clear in the config screen by changing Config -> MP3 -> Options Number of CPUs to use to Number of CPUs to use (applied on restart) or something similar? I'll change this to RFE, since at least the current non-intuitive behavior is documented, for those who bother to read the docs ;-)
Other configuration settings besides #CPU's are affected. I didn't search exhaustively, but did notice CDRom device. Note that the need to restart is not documented.
grip is no longer shipped in the development tree; as such, it is unlikely older bugs will be fixed.