SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

[Oceanwatcher]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Well... taking it a bit further from the title of the thread, but as long as it is somewhat related and useful information ....

If your audio board is capable of maximum 48KHz, then this is what you should record at. Anything above that only adds unneeded stress on your system.

When you later work on the file, I would stay at 48KHz - your playout is locked to this, even if you up-sample it to 96KHz and upsampling do not add any extra to the audio (except maybe som noise...). Precision wise, you would normally work in 32-bit float.

Also, on board sound is rarely a good way of recording. It usually have WAY too much noise, so if you do any kind of serious audio recordings, you should think about getting a good audio board that has Linux drivers.

I fully understand your doubts about adding another sound board to your Linux installation. I am a bit worried about this myself. At the moment, audio in Kubuntu seems to be a bit of a mess. To be able to control it properly, you have to be the "Yoda of CLI". We really need good audio settings per program. And the best I have seen so far (I am only talking about the clarity of the audio settings here) is Traverso DAW - http://traverso-daw.org/ . So simple, so easy.

[abalone]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Yep, recordings through the onboard sound"card" are bad. And JACK only runs at the supported 48 kHz -- I wonder if this affects everything, or just communications with the outside world? Let's say I configure a softsynth for 96 kHz and pipe its output into a recording application -- the soundcard isn't involved in that, is it? But JACK imposes its 48 kHz limit anyway. Am I misunderstanding this?

I'm once again thinking about getting an M-Audio Delta 1010LT or 66. Preferably the 1010LT; still affordable + it has mic preamps and XLR connectors (then again I'm not too clear on microphones, dynamic vs. whatever...)

But the Delta cards seem to give (some?) people trouble with mixing, too, and I don't want any to worry about any of that, least of all with supposedly better hardware. Sigh.

[dibl]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Yep, recordings through the onboard sound"card" are bad.

Being old enough to remember what "real" audiophile equipment specs look like (and still owning my Celestion Ditton 15XR speakers) I'll venture this much opinion (aka unsubstantiated bold assertions):

The question of whether the sound system is integrated on the motherboard, or on a separate card is probably pretty close to irrelevant, in comparison to the other quality-limiting factors, assuming the motherboard was well-designed with multimedia applications in mind.

In other words, the quality (i.e. performance specs) of the microphone, the amp/pre-amp, the equalization scheme, the speaker system, and their interconnections/interfaces will be far more important in determining the quality of what you hear, than whether you processed it through an onboard chip or an add-on sound card. A well-designed motherboard will include filters to keep noise from digital parts out of the acoustic range, with respect to the sound chip's processing. In point of fact, successful filtering of the onboard chip might make it less susceptible to system noise than the sound chip on an add-on card, in a slot randomly selected by the user (and not necessarily foreseeable by the PC and motherboard designers).

Today's two cents' worth ....

[Oceanwatcher]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Sure. If the on-board chip is of a good quality and the design of the motherboard, build-quality of the rest of the computer etc. is as good as it should be. The problem is that there are too many possibilities for failure there.

And there is one BIG difference. The connector. A minijack has never been designed with pro-level audio in mind. You need balanced XLR/jack or even optical to be sure that you do not introduce any noise from your surroundings.

So while the chip might be ok, the path from the chip to the soundsource (or the other way around) is critical enough to ruin everything.

I have not seen one single on-board solution that is capable of delivering as good as or better sound than dedicated, pro-level audio boards. And these days you can get a great box that connect on USB or Forewire for a very moderate cost. But then again - maybe I did not pay enough for my motherboards

[GreyGeek]

Re: What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu?

I agree, K3B is as good as Nero anyday.

IMO, it is better.

I was running Mandriva 2009 PWP before I switched to Kubuntu 9.04. K3b for KDE4 wasn't complete yet and Mandriva simply ignored it in its 2009 release. Other cd burning software in the Mandriva repository either lacked a GUI, or didn't see my hardware, or required some outmoded form of initialization to get working. IOW, they were klutzy to use.

To get cd burning software I purchased Nero's Linux version. It worked OK, but it was not nearly as easy to use as K3b, and it occasionally burned a coaster, something which K3b doesn't do for me. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the Kubuntu team carried along K3b into 9.04 by including the necessary GTK libs, something Mandriva chose not to do.

I've been following along with the development of K3b ("3b" stands for "burn, baby, burn") for KDE4 and noticed that the big thing that was holding back the release of a version for KDE4 was that the Qt 4's communication between threads wasn't up to the needs of the K3b author. So, he wrote his version of QThread, and offered his functions for inclusion into Qt4, but QtSoftware rejected them. So, he'll have to include his own class library and make sure it does not conflict with Qt4's QThread.

They are beta testing a version of K3b for KDE4 right now.

Oh, did I tell you that, IMO, K3b is the best cd burner on the planet? (Don't know about ripping, I've never ripped a CD or DVD.)

[dibl]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

A minijack has never been designed with pro-level audio in mind. You need balanced XLR/jack or even optical to be sure that you do not introduce any noise from your surroundings.

That is very true -- and the coax looped over your CRT (and under your 60Hz fluorescent lights) might be serving as a very fine antenna .....

But then again - maybe I did not pay enough for my motherboards

Yep. I just looked up the specs for my D975XBX2, and found it is now in the "legacy" category at Intel ...

Here's their propaganda on the Intel HDA system on my mobo:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/hdaudio.htm

[abalone]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Yep, recordings through the onboard sound"card" are bad.

Being old enough to remember what "real" audiophile equipment specs look like (and still owning my Celestion Ditton 15XR speakers) I'll venture this much opinion (aka unsubstantiated bold assertions):

The question of whether the sound system is integrated on the motherboard, or on a separate card is probably pretty close to irrelevant, in comparison to the other quality-limiting factors, assuming the motherboard was well-designed with multimedia applications in mind.

I meant my particular onboard sound. The rest of my equipment is low-end, too, sure; have to make do for now. Sometimes, though, I'm simply capturing the computer itself, with no cables or other hardware involved. It has the same issues. It sounds a little flat, a little muffled, and there's a "just audible" hum/hiss. Just enough to make me wonder if the recording is worth using. But I don't have much to compare it to.

[Oceanwatcher]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Sometimes, though, I'm simply capturing the computer itself, with no cables or other hardware involved. It has the same issues. It sounds a little flat, a little muffled, and there's a "just audible" hum/hiss. Just enough to make me wonder if the recording is worth using. But I don't have much to compare it to.

So what kind of recordings do you do? What is the source of your audio?

[abalone]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

In the case of capturing the soundcard itself it's obviously whatever's currently playing, be it some VSTi plugin, softsynth like ZynAddSubFx, Atari VCS noise, software glitch or movie dialogue*. Quality's much better when I can use JACK to pipe the sound output directly into the recording app rather than capture the soundcard's stereo mix (although it'll still be 48 kHz due to JACK insisting on it). Sometimes I obtain instrument samples from my Roland Groovebox, record my vinyl collection, or tapes. It's nothing much but I still want it to sound good.

* all this makes sense in the context of my musical tastes.

[KeithZG]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

It's worth getting a dedicated sound card, honestly even a rather cheap ~$30-$60 one will be a vast improvement on background hiss and processing ability over 99.9% of onboard cards. Actually, I managed to snag an old Audigy 1 Platinum PCI with a breakout box with a bunch of inputs (optical, RCA, firewire, etc) from a pawn shop, and it's absolutely brilliant (recording especially), so it's quite possible to get even 5 year old or more cards that will work better than modern onboard ones.

[abalone]

Re: SOLVED via WORKAROUND - What is the best CD ripper for Kubuntu? EAC in WindowsXP

Big issue is that I rarely or never see anybody report that sound works. It's always "I can play <blah> in <such-and-such> but not in <what have you> and <something> blocks sound in <whatever>"... and I don't want to deal with that kind of thing. I've come to fear that whatever I buy will mean endless fiddling with .asoundrc and shutting down apps before starting other apps, or never even getting sound to work in the first place for some of the crankier apps. I've never seen anybody say "why, yes, I can run JACK + Flash + Wine + Amarok at the same time and I didn't have to do a thing for it!"...