Linux audio
Audio Conversion using Virtual FS
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 tolame -V 0
, ie. fast extreme preset
- For mp3, quality goes from 0 (worst) to 9 (best). 7 seems equivalent to
- 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
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 covert art.
- 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.
- 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
My current favorites: banshee, beets, cmus.
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:
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.
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 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
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.