Best audio format for certain criteria

[joneall]

I want to know what is the best audio format given the following criteria:

(1) excellent, preferably lossless, sound quality
(2) existence of flags/tags to remember titles, artists, genre, etc.
(3) compactness, if possible (leas, it is t important criterion)

I consider a format which does not contain metadata as per requirement (2) to be quite useless.

I've seen lots of discussions of this, such as the one at

http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coff...-audio-format/

but none seem to consider these criteria.

I have tried using flac, which is good for points (1) and (3), but not all programs seem to write flac (vorbis) flags. Audacity does, but importing and exporting thru audacity in order to write flags is too tedious to consider. It seems that k3b, which I use for ripping, does not.

I realize this may not be the best place to ask this question, so maybe you can suggest better ones.

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

One more thing. Some utilities, like Easytag and even Amarok manage to edit flac tags once they have been written by something else, but are unable to create them themselves. Curious... Confusion reigns.

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

I use KAudiocreator to rip CDs to FLAC (or MP3 depending on my needs)... so far it's tagged everything ok, and I find it easier to use than K3B.

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

I use KAudiocreator to rip CDs to FLAC (or MP3 depending on my needs)... so far it's tagged everything ok, and I find it easier to use than K3B.

I used to use Kaudiocreator also (for mp3), but it does not seem to be in the distribution for Lucid 9.10. Can it be installed from elsewhere?

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

http://ubuntuupdates.org/kaudiocreator

However... I can't find it on that PPA any more.

And I removed my own installation of it while trying to figure this out.

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

Okay, got it. It's on the "falk-t-j" PPA "for musicians and producers."
https://launchpad.net/~falk-t-j/+archive/lucid/

Information:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1350304

This PPA has some very interesting stuff like low-latency and realtime kernels, Cinelerra, Cinepaint, audio/video-file-conversion-related KDE service menus and upgrades to/versions of the usual audio suspects (jack, dssi plugins, Audacity/Ardour/Rosegarden/LMMS...).

I had disabled the PPA again because some its upgrades lead to dependency conflicts (now resolved).

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

After I installed the repository by

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:falk-t-j/lucid
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 74E4CE730C706BE5C646499A133EAF26736E4F0B
gpg: requesting key 736E4F0B from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key 736E4F0B: public key "Launchpad PPA for falktx" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

I ran "sudo apt-get update", which finished with

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/ppa/ppa/ubu...86/Packages.gz 404 Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Is this serious? In any case, kaudiocreator is installed.

When I use it, I get the error message

"The file or folder /Wav/Track 01.wav does not exist."

I have set the output file to be

~/kaudio.out/%{extension}/%{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{artist} - %{number} - %{title}.%{extension}

and ~/kaudio.out/Wav/ does exist. What is this problem?

Also, I should now remove that repository. But I cannot see it in /etc/apt/sources.list. However, there is a file

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/falk-t-j-lucid-lucid.list

I presume this is another way to include it. How do I remove it?

Sorry for all the questions. Thanks for your assistance.

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

After I installed the repository by

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:falk-t-j/lucid
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 74E4CE730C706BE5C646499A133EAF26736E4F0B
gpg: requesting key 736E4F0B from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key 736E4F0B: public key "Launchpad PPA for falktx" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

I ran "sudo apt-get update", which finished with

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/ppa/ppa/ubu...86/Packages.gz 404 Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Is this serious?

Are you sure this has to do with the falk-t-j PPA? I don't get that error.

In any case, kaudiocreator is installed.

When I use it, I get the error message

"The file or folder /Wav/Track 01.wav does not exist."

I have set the output file to be

~/kaudio.out/%{extension}/%{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}/%{artist} - %{number} - %{title}.%{extension}

and ~/kaudio.out/Wav/ does exist. What is this problem?

I don't know. When are you getting this error? And isn't the extension wav, not Wav? Did you create the Wav directory yourself? I don't think that's necessary.

Do you have album artist, album title, artist and (track) title(s) set before ripping? Though I don't get any problems when I don't set them. I just get truncated directory paths/stupid filenames like " - 01 - Track 01.wav".

Try using the example regular expression replacement from " " to "_" (Settings, General). Not that it works for me, I still get the spaces.

Have you tried ripping to something other than wav?

For reference, I'm encoding to:
/mnt/collect/audiofiles/sammlung/%{albumartist}/%{albumtitle}_%{extension}/%{artist} - %{number} - %{title}.%{extension}

Also, I should now remove that repository. But I cannot see it in /etc/apt/sources.list. However, there is a file

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/falk-t-j-lucid-lucid.list

I presume this is another way to include it. How do I remove it?

Yes, it's just like a sources.list broken up into single files. So just delete the file or move it somewhere else or comment out the deb line in it with a # character. Then run apt-get update again. But I don't know if that's the "official way". You could use KPackagekit to disable the repository. Though if you're not doing so already, I suggest using the Synaptic package manager GUI. It makes it easy to enable/disable repositories, to see what's from which repository, to install specific versions of packages, etc.

Sorry for all the questions. Thanks for your assistance.

No problem, I hope I could help.

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

It's odd that the message is always the same, regardless of whether I choose wav, flac or mp3. And it looks like something relative to the root, /Wav/track01.wav, not ~/Wav/track01.wav.

Just for "fun", I created a directory /Wav and made myself its owner. Still get the same message.

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

Odd... I wondered if maybe it doesn't know what to do with the ~ character for your home directory but I can use it ok.

Are you using an old config file for KAudiocreator or is this a completely clean installation?

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

Odd... I wondered if maybe it doesn't know what to do with the ~ character for your home directory but I can use it ok.

Are you using an old config file for KAudiocreator or is this a completely clean installation?

I stopped Kaudiocreator, deleted ~/.kde/share/config/kaudiocreatorrc and then restarted the program. Same result. Strange...

I also tried it by specifying the home directory instead of the ~. Same pb.

[abalone]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

I'm sorry, I can't think of anything else to try!

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

I'm sorry, I can't think of anything else to try!

Thanks anyway for your help. If/when I find a solution, I'll certainly post it.

[dibl]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

And it looks like something relative to the root, /Wav/track01.wav, not ~/Wav/track01.wav.

Just for "fun", I created a directory /Wav and made myself its owner. Still get the same message.

I'm far from expert on audio file formats -- PCM .wav /44.1 rate is what I use, and name it according to the artist or title that makes sense to me.

However, the creation of a /Wav directory on your Linux system can only have been done by "root" or "sudo", and that implies that you were running the Kaudiocreator as root. That's probably a very bad idea, and may be the reason why things aren't behaving. The only packages that should be run by root are those which are inherently for system administration tasks (gparted or synaptic, for example), or else for a temporary purpose (kdesudo dolphin, for example). A user application almost never should be run by root, since every file and directory that it creates or modifies will have root privileges attached.

[joneall]

Re: Best audio format for certain criteria

Hi, dibl. Nice guess. To check, I uninstalled and reinstalled kaudiocreator. Then I ran it from the command line.

$ kaudiocreator
QInotifyFileSystemWatcherEngine::addPaths: inotify_add_watch failed: No such file or directory
QFileSystemWatcher: failed to add paths: /home/jon/.config/ibus/bus
Bus:pen: Can not get ibus-daemon's address.
IBusInputContext::createInputContext: no connection to ibus-daemon
kaudiocreator(8575)/libkcddb KCDDB::Cache::store: Unknown source "" for CDInfo
libWorkMan: ERROR: CDROM_SEND_PACKET Input/output error
libWorkMan: ERROR: CDROM_SEND_PACKET Input/output error

I don't know what all that means, tho it looks suspicious. I tried to rip a track and got the same error. However, it was not running as root, nor had it ever, I think:

$ ps -edf | grep kaudioc
jon 8575 3914 1 20:25 pts/1 00:00:02 kaudiocreator
jon 8603 1630 0 20:27 ? 00:00:00 kdeinit4: kio_audiocd [kdeinit] audiocd local:/tmp/ksocket-jon/klauncherMT1633.slave-socket local:/tmp/ksocket-jon/kaudiocreatorBZ8575.slave-socket
jon 8619 4093 0 20:29 pts/2 00:00:00 grep kaudioc$ ps -edf | grep kaudioc
jon 8575 3914 1 20:25 pts/1 00:00:02 kaudiocreator
jon 8603 1630 0 20:27 ? 00:00:00 kdeinit4: kio_audiocd [kdeinit] audiocd local:/tmp/ksocket-jon/klauncherMT1633.slave-socket local:/tmp/ksocket-jon/kaudiocreatorBZ8575.slave-socket
jon 8619 4093 0 20:29 pts/2 00:00:00 grep kaudioc


Any other ideas? I hope so, because I don't. Maybe after a good night's sleep...

Thanks for your suggestion for a format.