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neves
Asked: 2015-02-22 18:43:16 +0800 CST

How to configure SoundJuicer mysterious mp3 encoding settings?

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When I rip a CD to mp3 using Sound Juicer I get just broken mp3 files. I like to rip VBR files, they look fine, but the  reported bitrate is always 32kbit/s. See:

mp3check -a 01.\ Anita.mp3 
01. Anita.mp3:
anomaly: bitrate  32 kbit/s
anomaly: no crc

I expect that the reported were the average bit rate value. When I put these files in a mp3 player, the reported track duration time is always wrong. The player expects a hour long music file when it has just a couple of minutes.

It used to work fine, but it silently broke in an update some time ago. Unfortunately I can not find how to correctly configure it. My Ubuntu is version 14.04.1.

I’ve tried these approaches:

  1. Run gconf-editor, go to apps → sound-juicer, and put the value described here in the pipeline attribute. I’ve deleted this attribute now.
  2. I’ve tried to run the application gnome-audio-profiles-properties as described in this question.
  3. Tried to configure .psr files:
  4. Multiple other frustrated options that I don’t remember

Can someone please help me to escape from the Gnome mp3 configuration from Hell?

There is a bug open for easy configuration.

mp3

2 Answers

  1. I'd give you my advices on K3b it's still by far the best tool in Ubuntu of its kind for me and if you configure it right. You can rip and choose bitrate (vbr) and encode your files to any .ogg,.mp3,.flacetc. And the choice is after you of course.

    So, we need to install K3b:

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install k3b

    Now we'll need some additional packages to work with audio:

    sudo apt-get install libk3b6-extracodecs

sudo apt-get install kde-config-cddb

    And at last we'll need some more codecs to encode .mp3 and .flac:

    sudo apt-get install lame

sudo apt-get install flac

    Done. Now you'll get plenty enough options to rip (audio cd) with.

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  2. Best Answer

    Unfortunately the version of sound-juicer that you are using suffers from a bug in gstreamer which means that the xing header is not written to mp3 files. Without this header most software will report incorrect track lengths and bitrates. It is possible to use vbrfix to fix the files you have ripped. As others have pointed out there is a work around for this bug in later versions of sound-juicer.

    I'm currently working on a feature to allow users to change the encoding bitrate, this should be available in sound-juicer 3.18 which will be released in September. In the mean time you can follow progress on the bug which you linked to, or if you're feeling brave try compiling the wip/encoding-presets branch (Once the UI is done that will require GTK 3.12 which means Ubuntu 14.10 or later I think or you can try using jhbuild to build the necessary dependencies)

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