Linux audio

Audio Conversion using Virtual FS

mp3fs

Example:

mp3fs -b 224 ~/Music /mnt/mp3 -o allow_other,ro

GUI Audio Conversion

Nautilus Audio Converter

Install with

sudo apt-get install wavpack mppenc libmpcdec3 faac flac vorbis-tools faad lame libid3-3.8.3-dev nautilus-script-audio-convert

libid3-3.8.3-dev needed for id3tag.

See Ubuntu Geek - Simplest way to convert audio file(s) on Ubuntu Linux

Gnome Sound Converter

Very nice utility.

• Can convert to flac, ogg, mp3.
• Output to given directory, in {artis - album} format
• mp3, support lame vbr (but apparently --vbr-old only) — done via GStreamer pipeline.

CLI Audio Conversion

flac - FLAC encoder / decoder

flac -d source.flac
flac -d source.flac -o output.wav
flac -d source.flac -c                 # Write output to stdout

lame - MP3 encoder / decoder

See also Technical information on encoding settings.

lame -m auto --preset standard input.wav output.mp3       # Equiv to fast standard
lame -m auto --preset fast standard input.wav output.mp3  # Equiv to -V2 (~192kbps)
lame -m auto --preset extreme input.wav output.mp3        # Equiv to fast extreme
lame -m auto --preset fast extreme input.wav output.mp3   # Equiv to -V0 (~256kbps)
lame -m auto --preset insane input.wav output.mp3         # Equiv to -b 320

twolame - MP2 encoder / decoder

twolame -b 256 input.wav -o "output.mp3"

pacpl - Multi-format encoder / decoder in Perl

# From FLAC to MP3 - Using LAME (extreme quality) - recurse & keep directory structure
pacpl --to mp3 -r -p flac/ --outdir /media/USB --encoder lame --defopts 0 --eopts="-m auto --preset fast extreme"
# To decrease encoding priority:
nice -n 19 pacpl ...

To change the directory structure from "Artist - Album" to "Artist/Album":

for i in *; do eval $(echo $i | sed -r '/ - /!s/(.*)/ARTIST=Various;ALBUM="\1"/; / - /s/(.*) - (.*)/ARTIST="\1"; ALBUM="\2"/'); mkdir "$ARTIST"; mv "$i" "$ARTIST/$ALBUM"; done

yaflac2mp3 - Yet Another FLAC to MP3 script

An handy script to transcode from FLAC to MP3. Could be used as a basis for customized script. See also [1] for more ideas.

yaflac2mp3.sh -s . -d mp3

Conversion in integrated players

Banshee

• Plug external mp3 player device
• Right click on device in Banshee
• Select the media type (ogg, mp3), then click on edit button.
  • For mp3, quality goes from 0 (worst) to 9 (best). 7 seems equivalent to lame -V 2, i.e. fast standard preset, and 9 seems equivalent to lame -V 0, ie. fast extreme preset
• BUG? — apparently can't save to .ogg although ogg is selected as encoder... — SOLVED see below.
• BUG? — export all files in device root directory — SOLVED see below.
• Create a file named ..is_audio_player in device root directory. For instance, to have audio files added in OGG format to the device, using a 1-folder deep structure (ie. Artist - Album/Track. Title), use the following:

name=SAMSUNG\ YP-U1\ (1GB)
folder_depth=1
output_formats=application/ogg,audio/mpeg,audio/mp3

To have files stored elsewhere than in root folder:

name=SAMSUNG\ CARD\ (8GB)
audio_folders=musics/,other/subfolder
folder_depth=2
output_formats=application/ogg,audio/mpeg,audio/mp3

• More information at [2], [3], [4], [5]

RhythmBox

• Can also export to external mp3 player
• BUG? — Apparently only in mp3 (although there are some settings about preferred format in preferences)
• Quality seems to be lame --preset fast standard
• Export in /Artist/Album/Track - Title.mp3

Cover Art and ID3 Tags

Conventions and standards

Cover art filename

Usual names are folder.jpg (apparently the standard on Windows) and cover.jpg. Other options are front.jpg, %filename%.jpg or%album%.jpg.

Banshee supports at least folder.jpg and cover.jpg.

On Android, the standard is albumart.jpg.

Editors (GUI-based)

mp3 tag editor, idv3 tags...

MusicBrainZ Picard

Probably the most complete and powerful editor out there. Front-end to Picard database. Including cover art download.

Banshee

Banshee first takes the cover art locally from file (folder.jpg, cover.jpg...). Otherwise it will download automatically cover arts for music in the library. These cover arts are stored in ~/.cache/media-art. Cover art filename is a hash of artist and album name (See this link for a more powerful script [6]):

f="Ennio Morricone"
al="My Name Is Nobody"
echo "~/.cache/media-art/album-$(echo -ne "$f\t$al" | md5sum | cut -b1-32).jpg"

• You can edit metadata (ID3 tags) in Banshee, but click Write metadata to files to save back to library.

Easytags aac

• Edit ID3 tag, including cover arts (with automatically download)

Puddletag

• A bit buggy sometimes

folder.jpg

• Used under Windows.

Editors (CLI-based)

Beets with fetchart plugins

Has auto-tagging facility (MusicBrainZ support) and can fetch and embed album arts automatically from itunes, amazon, google...

eyeD3

A simple tag editor, very complete (including cover art edition).

eyeD3 myfile.mp3
eyeD3 --list-image-types            # View available image type (APIC frame)
eyeD3 --add-image=folder.jpg:FRONT_COVER:folder.jpg myfile.mp3

id3v2

Does not report cover arts.

mp3info

Only id3 v1 it seems

id3ed (no package on ubuntu)

CoverLovin — obsolete

To download cover art automatically. Broken.

Album Cover Art Downloader — obsolete

Can save into a folder.jpg file, .folder.png and an Icon entry in .directory for Konqueror, into an ID3v3 APIC frame...

Broken.

Music players, library managers and organizers

Reference: [7], [8]

My current favorites: banshee, beets, cmus and picard.

Amarok

TBC

Banshee

TBC

Beets

beets is a very powerful and extensible music library manager. It can auto-tag music files, find cover arts, browse and search for title very rapidly...

References:

• Getting started

To install:

sudo pip install beets
sudo pip install requests            # For album art download plugin fetchart
sudo easy_install python-itunes      # To allow downloading art from iTunes

First configure beet. Issue command beet config -e, and enter the following config:

directory: ~/music
library: ~/.cache/musiclibrary.blb
import:
    copy: no
plugins: fetchart
fetchart:
    maxwidth: 1000

This will configure beets to store music in directory ~/music, and build its database into ~/.cache/musiclibrary.blb. The copy: no option tells beets not to move/copy the imported music to local music folder. Then a few plugins are loaded and configured.

Import music files into your library:

beet import ~/music

Some commands:

• beet config -p

get location of the config file.

• beet list [query]

beet ls [query]

Show the full library, or search it with given query.

Some tips:

• Beets can fetch art for album already in the library [9]:

beet fetchart [-f] [query]

• Beets can embed art using plugin embedart.
• Beets can look for track duplicates

cmus

cmus is a small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like operating systems. TBC

gmusicbrowser

TBC

Guayadeque

TBC

MPD

MPD stands for Music Player Daemon. TBC.

Nightingale

TBC

MusicBrainZ Picard

Picard is a front-end to the MusicBrainZ library.

To tag files:

• First Add Folder, or (with file browser visible) drag and drop a folder to Unmatched Files.
• Click Cluster
• Click an album in the cluster, or click Clusters to lookup all albums, and click Lookup
• Right click album in right pane, and select Save.

My options:

- Cover art: 
 - embed cover images into tags.
 - embed only front images.
 - Save cover image as separate files.
   Use file name: folder.
 - Coverart providers: Amazon, CD Baby, Cover Art Archive.
 - Only use images of the following size: 500 px.
 - Download only images of the following types: Front, Back.
 - Use the first image type as the filename. This will not change the filename of front images.
- File naming:
 - Rename files when saving
 - Replace Windows-incompatible characters
 - Move files to this directory when saving: ...
 - Move additional files: *.jpg *.png
 - Name files like this: 
   if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/%album%/$if($gt(%totaldiscs%,1),%discnumber%-,)$num(%tracknumber%,2)$if(%compilation%, %artist% -,)%title%

Rhythmbox

TBC

Web Radio

Several ways to play internet radios in Linux (sources [10]).

Let's consider the following radios:

• Chromanova.fm Chillout (homepage) - playlist (.pls) content:

[playlist]
numberofentries=5
File1=http://85.25.86.69:8100
Title1=(#1 - 25/160) Chromanova.fm presents: Ambient & Chillout Deejay Sets
Length1=-1
File2=http://212.112.241.88:8100
Title2=(#2 - 25/120) Chromanova.fm presents: Ambient & Chillout Deejay Sets
Length1=-1
File3=http://85.25.86.69:9000
Title3=(#3 - 159/160) Chromanova.fm presents: Ambient & Chillout Deejay Sets
Length1=-1

Here we list the various way to play the radios listed above.

Mplayer

• Mplayer can play most streams. Give it the *stream* URL, not the playlist. Use -cache 1000 to cache audio stream. Works also fine with proxies.

mplayer -cache 1000 http://85.25.86.69:8100

mpg123

• mpg123 can also play most radio stream. Works also fine with proxies.

mpg123 -cache 1000 http://85.25.86.69:8100

audacious

• TBC

streamtuner2

• TBC

streamtuner2 -r         # Then tell audacious to open http://localhost:8000

streamripper

• Use streamripper to rip an audio stream into a file. It can also relay the stripped stream to a local port to be played and ripped simultaneously

streamripper server:port -D "%S/%q -- %A - %T"           # Rip to file (w/ naming convention)
streamripper server:port -D "%S/%q -- %A - %T" -r        # Rip and relay to port 8000
mpg123 http://localhost:8000                             # ... and play it

banshee

• NOT WORKING — can't make it work, at least behind a proxy. Giving either .pls, or stream URL, nothing works (w/o error msg)

rhythmbox

• NOT WORKING — can't make it work, at least behind a proxy. Giving either .pls, or stream URL, nothing works (w/o error msg)

amarok

• STATE UNKNOWN — Used to work in the past, but need some weird configuration for the proxy.