2

My Rhythmbox won't play (or even list) some of my .wav files. The ones I tried are taken from more recent CDs (one was from 2013). A screen message was displayed saying I need a "demuxer" to play those files but it was unable to find software for this. Is there a way to fix this or another Ubuntu audio player which can play .wav files from all CDs?

Here are the errors:

"Unable to play file. Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) demuxer is required to play the file, but is not installed. (Cancel/Find In Ubuntu Software)"

and:

"Unable to Find Requested Software"

The .wav files are on my PC hard drive but are directly from original retail purchased CDs. The pattern seems to be files taken from CDs I purchased in about the last four years, regardless of the original release date of the music. E.g. I can play the track "Broken Leg" by Bluejuice, which was released in 2009, but not the track "Survivor", by Destiny's Child, which was released in 2001 but which I purchased in 2019.

Allan
  • 593
  • Can you please post the exact error message? Thanks! – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 03:37
  • Did you try going to Edit > Preferences > Music Change 'Format settings' to 'Custom Settings' ? People have suggested that using a different format like FLAC or changing the "quality" setting fixes the error. Also, using a format like FLAC is lossless like wav but allows tags so should not throw an error. – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 03:47
  • Also, are these burned CDs or are they professionally produced from a record company? – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 03:47
  • The displayed messages were "Unable to play file. Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) demuxer is required to play the file, but is not installed. (Cancel/Find In Ubuntu Software)" and "Unable to Find Requested Software". – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:10
  • The .wav files are on my PC hard drive but are directly from original retail purchased CDs. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:13
  • The pattern seems to be files taken from CDs I purchased in about the last four years, regardless of the original release date of the music. E.g. I can play the track "Broken Leg" by Bluejuice, which was released in 2009, but not the track "Survivor", by Destiny's Child, which was released in 2001 but which I purchased in 2019. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:18
  • Do you have: ubuntu-restricted-extras installed? Run the following command to check: dpkg -l | grep ubuntu-restricted-extras If this command does not list ubuntu-restricted-extras let me know. Thanks! – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 05:22
  • I got "dpkg: error: unknown option -1" I can't see "Edit" anywhere in the Rhythmbox menus. I know other file formats are available but I thought I'd see if there is a simple fix for me to be able to play them in the format they are all in. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:33
  • That is an l not a 1. Just copy and paste the command dpkg -l | grep ubuntu-restricted-extras – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 05:36
  • Also, edit is at the top window menu. – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 05:36
  • Okay. I did try to copy/paste but it wouldn't do it for some reason. The "l" (that's a lower-case L?) in the terminal looks different to the one in your comment, i.e. different font? I just tried it with the "l" and got nothing - just a new prompt followed by blank space. Okay I see the "Edit" now but there is no "Preferences" in the drop-down menu for that. BTW I'm totally new to Linux (as in literally yesterday). Hang on, Edit has gone again. Where did it go? I can't figure this out. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:50
  • That's okay. The window menu appears when you hover your mouse over the menu area. Because the command returned nothing, it is not installed. I will answer this question below. – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 05:52
  • I got Edit back by clicking on one of the top menu options. This is confusing. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:52
  • 1
    Thanks for your help. This is a bit advanced for me. I've only been using computers for about 40 years now, since I was age 10. It may need a bit of getting used to. – Allan Oct 20 '19 at 05:57
  • That's cool. Just copy and paste the commands so you don't have to type so much. Eventually the commands will become more familiar and then you'll understand them. – mchid Oct 20 '19 at 06:35

2 Answers2

1

Rhythmbox uses gstreamer to play music. The ASF demuxer is provided by the gstreamer "ugly" plugins.

First, run the following commands to enable the universe and multiverse repositories:

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository multiverse

Next, run the following commands to install the ASF demuxer and the restricted extras package:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
mchid
  • 43,546
  • 8
  • 97
  • 150
1

The .wav files are on my PC hard drive but are directly from original retail purchased CDs. The pattern seems to be files taken from CDs I purchased in about the last four years, regardless of the original release date of the music. E.g. I can play the track "Broken Leg" by Bluejuice, which was released in 2009, but not the track "Survivor", by Destiny's Child, which was released in 2001 but which I purchased in 2019.

It's not WAV files. It's ASF files. That's a lossy Microsoft format for music.

The CD probably containted two parts: One audio part, and one data-part with a lossy version of the music stored for playback. This also fits with the fact that it applies to some CD's, but not all.

When it's a pure Music CD, you actually copy the PCM audio when you drag it from the CD to your disk. When it's a data and music CD, you only copy the datafiles.

I would look into ripping the CD in a proper way so that you get the actual PCM data from all CD's, not the inferior lossy files, that may be encumbered by DRM.

vidarlo
  • 22,691