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Rhythmbox Sound Quality issues

post #1 of 5
3/28/11 at 6:43am
Thread Starter 

I just switched to linux in the past few days, and i'm now stuck with rhythmbox as my music player. Several questions, 1) how can i play the 30 or so protected .m4p files that i bought from itunes, if theres no way, ill live, these weren't songs i really loved, but id like to have them. 2) how do i manage my ipod now? 3) Rhythmbox sounds like crap to me, is there anything other than foobar that i can use? I didn't like the interface for foobar, and found that it could be sluggish and confusing to use at times.

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post #2 of 5
3/28/11 at 7:11am
In my experience, audio quality problems on Linux are more likely from the underlying sound system/daemon than the player.

What distribution are you running? If it's Debian-based, you're probably running ALSA. The first thing I would look at is making sure your output is at 100%. Run the command-line utility 'alsamixer' to check.

Using the iPod will also depend of your distribution, but it is possible. Googling "rhythmbox ipod" certainly returns lots of results.

There are various ways to get the music out of those m4p files, but I'm not sure that DRM circumvention is something we're supposed to go into on this forum.
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post #3 of 5
3/28/11 at 9:17am

Since you have rhythmbox, I'll guess you're using Ubuntu.  In that case, changing music software could hardly be easier: just open the software centre and take your pick.  Banshee (Ubuntu is moving to this one for its next release) or Exaile are decent alternatives; with any of these players, ipod management should be plug and play.   Personally I don't believe in audible differences between players though.

 

If you are using Ubuntu, you have Pulseaudio integrated into your system, which some people frown upon.  It can be removed, but it's a bit of a hassle; try searching their forums for guides if you go down that route.

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post #4 of 5
3/29/11 at 4:22pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks for the recommendation, banshee fixes all of the issues i had with rhythmbox. Everything from here on has to do with the way ubuntu handles sound (that is, driving PCM or something to 110% and distorting your sound). I have grid art again, video support, and support for all of my ALAC and potentially .m4p.

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post #5 of 5
3/30/11 at 9:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ffdpmaggot View Post

Thanks for the recommendation, banshee fixes all of the issues i had with rhythmbox. Everything from here on has to do with the way ubuntu handles sound (that is, driving PCM or something to 110% and distorting your sound). I have grid art again, video support, and support for all of my ALAC and potentially .m4p.


If you want to understand Ubuntu and audio, you will have to study ALSA, or maybe OSS. Rhythmbox and many others use PulseAudio which is based on Gstreamer and there are a lot of sidetracks involved with the data flow. Just find a player (mpd, deadbeef, decibel, etc.) that allows output configuration directly to ALSA. Then set up ALSA using ".asoundrc" or whatever is necessary to bypass mixers and sample rate conversion.

 

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