FAQ New – AudioPhile Linux

FAQ

January 6, 2013 / Marko / Documentation

Your question has not been answered in F.A.Q. – just post it to newly opened forum.

1. I can’t add music to my Linux box with my external USB disk

Sometimes USB ports don’t recognize your external stick or disk. Just try to connect it to some other USB port like the one on the back.

2. What file manager can I use to transfer music?

Thunar. In XFCE in menu it’s called File manager.

3. My external disk cannot be mounted

If you have problems with mounting external media logout from Fluxbox and login in XFCE. XFCE is more user friendly desktop environment. Go to Menu -> Settings -> Removable Drives and Media and select first three boxes in Storage tab.

4. How can I mount external disk in terminal?

“sudo fdisk -l” will give you listings of all drives recognized in your system. Find which one is external and type this:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
Replace /dev/sdb1 with your external disk

5. How can I disable pulse audio?

Open terminal and type this: echo ‘autospawn = no’ > ~/.pulse/client.conf

6. How can I copy music from another machine via network?

First you must install sshd server. On your newly installed box type:
sudo su
apt-get install openssh-server
Then on Linux/Mac/BSD users: scp -r your-music-folder username@IP-address-of-destination-machine:
example: scp -r /home/lero/Music/flac/Mark_Knopfler lero@192.168.1.5:
Windows: install winscp
You can find your address in conky or in terminal type: /sbin/ifconfig

7. What about video?

Yes! We like to watch DVD/Blu-ray/MKV concerts as well :-). AP Linux comes with mplayer. The best and the fastest video player on Linux. We choose Linux Mint Debian as base OS because of good native support for ATI cards and video. If you have an ATI graphic card, no proprietary drivers are needed. Proprietary drivers are bad. They crash X windows and mess with the kernel. So If you can, use native drivers.

8. What graphic card is the best for this distribution?

We used ATI Radeon HD 6450 graphic card. It’s capable of displaying HD video, you don’t need proprietary drivers, it’s low profile so it can fit in HTPC case, and it’s silent! Absolute winner if you want to build HTPC for video and audio reproduction.

9. How can I tell mplayer to use jack?

Add this to ~/.mplayer/config file
afm=pcm
ao=jack
subcp=enca:hr:latin2

10. How can I use mplayer for video

MKV: mplayer /path/to/your/video.mkv
DVD: mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/cdrom
or replace /dev/cdrom with /dev/sr0 or /dev/dvdrw2 etc…
DVD: mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device Marcus_Miller_in_Concert_2001.iso where 1 is chapter 1

11. How can I backup my DVDs to hard disk

Insert your DVD into drive and type
cat /dev/sr0 > /home/yourusername/Music/Diana_Krall_Live_in_Paris.iso
If you have never played this DVD on your PC you will get some errors and before ‘cat’ command you need to play it first directly from DVD with command ‘mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/cdrom’. You don’t need to play the whole DVD. Just for few seconds so the codecs can be copied to your home directory. Then use ‘cat’ command.
Then play this file like this: replace 1 with other chapter
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /home/yourusername/Music/Diana_Krall_Live_in_Paris.iso

12. Some quick mplayer commands:

# ; change audio source, switch between DTS, AC3 and PCM
! & @ ; Previous and next chapters
3 & 4 ; Brightness control
7 & 8 ; Color
f ; full-screen
SPACE; pause
Buttons UP & DOWN; Forward and backward one minute
Buttons Left & Right; Forward and backward 10 seconds
q; Quit

13. Why vendor drivers are not good?

From Open BSD website…

Blobs are vendor-compiled binary drivers without any source code. Hardware makers like them because they obscure the details of how to make their hardware work. They hide bugs and workarounds for bugs. Newer versions of blobs can weaken support for older hardware and motivate people to buy new hardware.
Blobs are expedient. Many other open source operating systems cheerfully incorporate them; in fact their users demand them.

But when you need to trust the system, how do you check the blob for quality? For adherence to standards? How do you know the blob contains no malicious code? No incompetent code? Inspection is impossible; you can only test the black box. And when it breaks, you have no idea why.

Blobs can be ‘de-supported’ by vendors at any time.
Blobs cannot be supported by developers.
Blobs cannot be fixed by developers.
Blobs cannot be improved.
Blobs cannot be audited.
Blobs are specific to an architecture, thus less portable.
Blobs are quite often massively bloated.

14. Why build audio/video PC?

There are many advantages. First you can listen to HD audio that ordinary CD can’t reproduce. You can backup your music and videos on disk drives and listen directly from PC. No more switching CDs and DVDs when you want to listen something. No more scratching on your favorite DVD or CD. Everything is in one place and original CDs/DVDs are safe.

15. What’s with SSD disks

Some audiophiles prefer SSD disks because they don’t have mechanical parts and are quiet. Yes that’s true. But they are small and expensive. You cannot backup many things on such disks because they are small. And if you have a large collection like I have, that’s not an option. SATA disks are large and there are many of them that are very quiet. I have two SATA disks in my PC and I don’t hear them at all. So SSD disks are not necessary in my opinion.

There are some manufactures of PC cases that are more sound proof, and you can silence your SATA disks with some other methods like putting them in HDD cages or screw them with rubber between screw and HDD. This will reduce the vibration and sound. If you will be putting your HDDs in cages be careful. Some cages don’t have enough airflow for cooling and then your HDD can be damaged. There are many resources on the net like www.QuietPC.com where you can review your HDD before buying.

16. How can I backup my CDs to hard disk?

Open terminal.
sudo su
apt-get install sound-juicer
After install insert your CD into drive and open sound-juicer program. In preferences select output format Flac and go to Disk – Extract.