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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.

neves
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  • Well s-j is basically crap & you should use anything else, abcde, rubyripper, asunder, even rhythmbox is superior. If you really want it to work a little better in 14.04 then go here, grab the 3.12 .deb for your arch & install with dpkg, gdebi or software-center. You will not be able to adjust any parameters as it's not supported, you'll get vbr that averages out to 150 Kbps or so. But at least it will show the proper bitrate & even possibly the correct duration - http://packages.ubuntu.com/eo/utopic/sound-juicer – doug Feb 26 '15 at 04:26
  • @doug: All linux rippers are crap. rubyripper isn't supported anymore and fail if I have accented chars in my Id3 metadata. abcde and asunder can't submit music to MusicBrainz or FreeDB. I have a big collection of CDs that which metadata isn't in the repositories. – neves Feb 27 '15 at 15:53
  • Well then if sound-juicer gives you what you want use it. As mentioned 3.12 will work a bit better. I just tested 3.14 in trusty, no real diff from 3.12 As far as adjusting encoding parameters it's not possible in sound-juicer. A closer look shows you'll get vbr 4 & that's that. If inclined file an upstream bug to enable the remedial options as seen in Rb or banshee – doug Feb 27 '15 at 18:10

2 Answers2

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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.

JoKeR
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  • I've been using K3B, but it is very hard to edit the CD Metadata. I have a lot of Brazilian independent music, any a lot of them aren't in CDDB or in MusicBrainz. What I find, is usually incorrect. I want to be able to easily edit the metadata, AND to submit it back to a common repository. I can't do it with K3B. – neves Mar 04 '15 at 15:11
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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)