MP3 Talk (Feb07)

MP3 Under Linux

What I've learned about MP3 from setting up my recently acquired Sansa E260.

MP3 vs OggVorbis

MP3 is everywhere, OGG is Open Source, A little about why I chose MP3.

Ogg Vorbis

• Open source solution.
• better compression and sound using variable bitrate.
• Ogg is supported out of the box by Fedora Core.

MP3

• The defacto standard for digital audio
• Most software and many hardware devices support MP3 files.
• Need to install non-Fedora support libraries.

Reason for my MP3 choice.

1. On my PDA I had been using OGG for all the CopyLeft reasons.
2. When we put a CD player in my wife's car we bought one that supported MP3 files burned on CDR media.
3. Ogg format personal players are a little harder to find. I liked the Sansa for a couple of other reasons and it used MP3.
4. I then found an MP3 player that can be wired into my cars such that it uses the steering wheel controls!
5. The PDA can also play MP3 files.
6. It is easiest to standardize on ONE format.

Ripping a CD collection using KAudioCreator.

An efficient way to convert your 1990's CD collection into the new Millennium.

A little configuration and time swapping Cd's into your machine quickly turns into an MP3 collection.

Gnome users should look at "Grip".

rsync

If you haven't used "rysnc" you don't know what you're missing!

A great Linux tool that works well on USB Mass Storage devices as well as networked systems.

• Consider using this with external disks or between all your Linux boxes.

I started here but moved on to Amarok because

• I was spending too much time renaming files!
• MP3 files do not have any limits on song names but VFAT devices do.
• I found out afterward that I might have been able to solve this.

I was convinced the easiest way to "trim down" my collection was to touch the files I didn't want on the target device. Then came Amarok.

VFAT and special characters

What can not be in the paths or names of your MP3 files.

• colon
• slash
• backslash
• accent characters
• apostrophe

Amarok

Listening under Linux, making playlists, and managing a music collection, as well as updating files on a media device (aka MP3 Player).

ID3 tags

ID3 Tags are data fields stored in the mp3 file.

Different versions of ID3 tags exist, so you don't know exactly what the file will have until you look.

The most basic ones have fields for Artist, Album, Song Title and year. Newer versions contain more useful data fields.

These are often used by players to display now playing info.

If you want to listen to an album in order it's nice to have "track" info.

Genre is also nice if you're in a mood for a type of music.

Tools like "eyeD3" can be used to update ID3 info in MP3 files.

udev

How to make your USB device have the same dev entry ALL the time.

"/etc/udev/rules.d/10-rea.rules":

    BUS=="scsi",SYSFS{model}=="Sansa e2*",KERNEL=="sd?1",NAME="%k",SYMLINK="sansa"
    # udevinfo -a -p /sys/block/sdb
    BUS=="scsi",SYSFS{model}=="2500JB External*",SYSFS{vendor}=="WD",KERNEL=="sd?1",
    NAME="%k",SYMLINK="bookA"
    BUS=="scsi",SYSFS{model}=="2500JB External*",SYSFS{vendor}=="WD",KERNEL=="sd?2",
    NAME="%k",SYMLINK="bookB"
    BUS=="scsi",SYSFS{model}=="2500JB External*",SYSFS{vendor}=="WD",KERNEL=="sd?3",
    NAME="%k",SYMLINK="bookC"

autofs

"/etc/auto.master":

    ...

    /misc   /etc/auto.misc

    ...

"/etc/auto.misc":

    ...

    sansa           -fstype=vfat,sync,umask=000,dmask=000   :/dev/sansa
    a               -fstype=ext3            :/dev/bookA
    b               -fstype=ext3            :/dev/bookB
    c               -fstype=ext3            :/dev/bookC

    ...

Playlist formats PLP vs M3U

M3U seems more popular, but my Sansa uses PLP/PLA format.

The complete and utter magic of "recode":

    cat ~/trash/PLAYLISTS/bike.m3u | recode UTF-16LE..UTF-8 | cat -v