Linux audio

Audio CD ripping

The best tools are available under Wine, i.e. either Exact Audio Copy, or better yet, CUERipper (much faster than Exact Audio Copy).

Format conversion

This section is about how to convert an audio file from one format (e.g. .flac) into another one (e.g. .mp3).

Audio Conversion using Virtual FS

mp3fs

Example:

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

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.

`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

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

Using Banshee player

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]

Using RhythmBox player

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.

Encoding / charset

Use UTF-8 as default charset, both for the filename and the tags.
Enforcing Unicode filenames — UTF-8 is usually the default charset for mounted filesystems on Linux (ext3/4, reiserfs...). However on Samba, it requires option iocharset=utf8:

mount -t cifs -o iocharset=utf8 //host/share /mnt/point

For USB sticks, make sure it is enabled with option utf8=1:

mount - vfat -o utf8=1 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/point

Enforcing Unicode tags — Note that some converter screw up with the charset (for instance pacpl). So you might need to post-process the tags after conversion, for instance id3-to-unicode or github fork).

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.

Tools and scripts

View ALL tags in a music collection

Reference: [7]

Require eyeD3.

find music -iname "*.mp3" -exec eyeD3 -v {} \; | tee index
sort -u index | awk -F\): '/^<.*$/ {print $1}' | uniq | awk -F\)\> '{print $1}' | awk -F\( '{print $(NF)}' > tags

Remove ALL tags but some in a music collection

Reference: [8], [9]

This script removes all tags except a few white listed ones. This is handy to remove inaccurate tags, or in case of conflicts (for instance when two tags are in conflict because tag editor ignored one of the tag). Tags may also contain private information (like buying date, etc).

Require eyeD3. Run as

cd ~/music
strip-tags.sh

See oktags for list of tags that are kept.

strip-tags.sh ([{{#filelink: strip-tags.sh}} download])

#!/bin/bash
# Script name: strip-tags.sh
# Original Author: Ian of DarkStarShout Blog
# Site: http://darkstarshout.blogspot.com/
# Options slightly modified to liking of SavvyAdmin.com

oktags="TALB APIC TCON TPE1 TPE2 TPE3 TIT2 TRCK TYER TCOM TPOS"

indexfile=`mktemp`

#Determine tags present:
find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec eyeD3 --no-color -v {} \; > $indexfile
tagspresent=`sort -u $indexfile | awk -F\): '/^<.*$/ {print $1}' \
| uniq | awk -F\)\> '{print $1}' | awk -F\( '{print $(NF)}' \
| awk 'BEGIN {ORS=" "} {print $0}'`

rm $indexfile

#Determine tags to strip:
tostrip=`echo -n $tagspresent $oktags $oktags \
| awk 'BEGIN {RS=" "; ORS="\n"} {print $0}' | sort | uniq -u \
| awk 'BEGIN {ORS=" "} {print $0}'`

#Confirm action:
echo
echo The following tags have been found in the mp3s:
echo $tagspresent
echo These tags are to be stripped:
echo $tostrip
echo
echo -n Press enter to confirm, or Ctrl+C to cancel...
read dummy

#Strip 'em
stripstring=`echo $tostrip \
| awk 'BEGIN {FS="\n"; RS=" "} {print "--set-text-frame=" $1 ": "}'`

# First pass copies any v1.x tags to v2.3 and strips unwanted tag data.
# Second pass removes v1.x tags, since I don't like to use them.
# Without --no-tagging-time-frame, a new unwanted tag is added.  :-)

find . -iname "*.mp3" \
-exec eyeD3 --to-v2.3 --no-tagging-time-frame $stripstring '{}' \; \
-exec eyeD3 --remove-v1 --no-tagging-time-frame {} \; 

echo "Script complete!"

Music players, library managers and organizers

Reference: [10], [11]

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 [12]:

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

Install latest version

Install build dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep cmus

Download latest version and untar it

tar xvzf cmus-2.7.1.tar.gz
cd cmus-2.7.1
../configure
make
sudo make install

Troubleshoot

Incorrect sorting of album artists.

Probably due to conflicting tags (see [13], [14]). Cmus uses the content of tag TPE2 if present instead of TPE1 used by other players like Amarok. The solution is to update the tags, or strip unnecessary tags using the script above strip-tags.sh.

gmusicbrowser

TBC

Guayadeque

TBC

Troubleshoot — Cannot load album information in Picard 1.2

This is a known bug in Picard 1.2 that prevents Picard to download album information when album art are associated with unknown types. Upgrade to version 1.3.2 from Ubuntu repository (ex. Xenial release).

Select the CORRECT LABEL

See detailed explanation. Clue: Look at the logo, not the (P) and (C) stuff!.

Tag files - easiest method: Easiest method is to use the CD lookup feature.

Insert the CD
Click on CD lookup.
This will find the release in MB database.
Then drag and drop your locally extracted album onto that release.

Tag files - easy method

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.

Tag files - scanning: When Picard does not find a release corresponding to the cluster, use the scanning tool to find the release.

Click an album in the cluster (or Clusters' to select all clusters), and click Scan.

Tag files - manual lookup

Click an album cluster, and click Lookup in browser.
Browse the MB database. When the matching release is found, click the TAGGER link (the tag with green background)
The release opens in Picard (it was send via port 8000 that Picard is listening to). Now either drag & drop the album on that release, or drag&drap each track individually. On error, just right click on the track and click remove.

Encoding a new release - Examples

Label: Columbia, Cat. No: COL 488791-2

My options:

Tags Cover Art File Naming

Before tagging

Clear existing tags
Remove ID3 tags from FLAC files
Remove APEv2 tags from MP3 files
ID3v2 version: 2.3

Location

Embed cover images into tags
Embed only front images
Save cover images as separate files. Use file name: folder.

Coverart Providers

Amazon
CD Baby
Cover Art Archive

Cover Art Archive

Only use images of the following size: 500px
Download only images: Front, Back
Use the first image type as the filename

Rename files when saving
Replace Windows-incompatible characters
Move files to this directory when saving: (update as necessary)
Delete empty directories
Move additional files: *.jpg *.png *.cue *.accurip *.log *.m3u

Name file 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 [15]).

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.

Linux audio

Contents

Audio CD ripping

Format conversion

Audio Conversion using Virtual FS

Nautilus Audio Converter

Gnome Sound Converter

`flac` - FLAC encoder / decoder

`lame` - MP3 encoder / decoder

`twolame` - MP2 encoder / decoder

`pacpl` - Multi-format encoder / decoder in Perl

`yaflac2mp3` - Yet Another FLAC to MP3 script

Using Banshee player

Using RhythmBox player

Cover Art and ID3 Tags

Conventions and standards

Editors (GUI-based)

Editors (CLI-based)

Tools and scripts

View ALL tags in a music collection

Remove ALL tags but some in a music collection

Music players, library managers and organizers

Amarok

Banshee

Beets

cmus

gmusicbrowser

Guayadeque

MPD

Nightingale

MusicBrainZ Picard

Rhythmbox

Web Radio

Navigation menu

Linux audio

Audio CD ripping

Format conversion

Audio Conversion using Virtual FS

Nautilus Audio Converter

flac - FLAC encoder / decoder

lame - MP3 encoder / decoder

twolame - MP2 encoder / decoder

pacpl - Multi-format encoder / decoder in Perl

yaflac2mp3 - Yet Another FLAC to MP3 script

Using Banshee player

Using RhythmBox player

Cover Art and ID3 Tags

Conventions and standards

Editors (GUI-based)

Editors (CLI-based)

Tools and scripts

View ALL tags in a music collection

Remove ALL tags but some in a music collection

Music players, library managers and organizers

Guayadeque

Web Radio

Navigation menu

Search

`flac` - FLAC encoder / decoder

`lame` - MP3 encoder / decoder

`twolame` - MP2 encoder / decoder

`pacpl` - Multi-format encoder / decoder in Perl

`yaflac2mp3` - Yet Another FLAC to MP3 script