Q. Who created abcde? Who develops it nowadays?
A. It was originally created by Robert Woodcook. He decided to give up
- maintaining it at some point in 2002 and Jesus Climent took over. In 2012,
- Colin Tuckley and Steve McIntyre joined in to help. During 2015-2016 Andrew
- Strong helped out. Currently Steve maintains abcde. Contact Steve with
- comments or suggestions at the following email address:
- Steve McIntyre <93sam@@debian.org>
+ maintaining it at some point in 2002 and Jesus Climent took
+ over. In 2012, Colin Tuckley and Steve McIntyre joined in to
+ help. During 2015-2016 Andrew Strong helped out. Currently Steve
+ maintains abcde. You can contact Steve directly with comments or
+ suggestions at the following email address: Steve McIntyre
+ <93sam@@debian.org>. Or (and maybe better!) try the abcde-users
+ mailing list: abcde-users@lists.einval.com
1. INSTALLATION
============
Q. How can I install abcde on my system?
-A. To get abcde you can use a pre-packaged version, available for Debian,
- FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and others.
- In case you want to install your own release, you need to download the
- source and install the complementary programs (abcde is just a frontend
- and its functionality is provided by other programs).
+A. To get abcde you can use a pre-packaged version, available for
+ Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and others.
+ In case you want to install your own release, you need to download
+ the source and install the complementary programs (abcde is just a
+ frontend and its functionality is provided by other programs).
abcde needs cd-discid. Grab it from:
http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
Q. I don't like CDDB/FreeDB. How can I use Musicbrainz instead?
A. Set CDDBMETHOD=musicbrainz and try it!
+Q. Some of my CDs are on FreeDB, but others are only on
+ Musicbrainz. It's painful having to switch!
+
+A. Since version 2.9, you can specify multiple lookup methods in
+ CDDBMETHOD, abcde will use all of them, and display all the results
+ for you to choose your favourite. This even includes CD-TEXT. To
+ enable all the options, use
+
+ CDDBMETHOD="musicbrainz,cddb,cdtext" in abcde.conf, or
+
+ "-Q musicbrainz,cddb,cdtext"
+
+ on the command line
4. abcde and Album Art
===================
from within an ~/.abcde.conf file. The technique works in 3 possible
ways:
- 1. If CDDBMETHOD is musicbrainz the album art is downloaded from
+ 1. If CDDBMETHOD includes musicbrainz the album art is downloaded from
coverartarchive by MBID (MusicBrainz Identifier)
2. If 1 fails, download is tried from amazon by ASIN (Amazon
Standard Identification Number)
You will need to install your distro's package of glyr, a music
related metadata search engine, and it is strongly advised that
- you use 'musicbrainz' for your cddb lookups. To access the more
+ you use 'musicbrainz' in your cddb lookups. To access the more
advanced features of getalbumart it is also strongly advised that
you install the ImageMagick package of your distro. getalbumart
will work without ImageMagick but functionality will be reduced.
Q. What if I want my album art embedded?
A. As of abcde 2.8.2 it is possible to have the album art automatically
embedded in the mp3 container using eyeD3, embedded in the flac container
- using metaflac, embedded in the m4a container using AtomicParsley and
- embedded in the wv container using wvtag.
+ using metaflac, embedded in the m4a container using AtomicParsley,
+ embedded in the wv container using wvtag and embedded into an ogg
+ container using vorbiscomment.
There are 3 different ways to accomplish this:
=======
Q. What formats can I encode my music to?
-A. As for version 2.2, abcde includes support for MP3, Ogg/Vorbis,
- Ogg/Speex, Flac and MPP/MP+(Musepack). Support for AAC will be added once
- an FLOSS encoder/decoder is working.
+A. As of version 2.8.2 abcde includes support for MP3, Ogg/Vorbis,
+ Ogg/Speex, Flac, MPP/MP+(Musepack), AAC, AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format),
+ Alac, WavPack, TTA (True Type Audio), APE (Monkey's Audio), Opus,
+ AC3 and MP2.
Q. I want the new *put the newest and coolest codec there* format to be
supported by abcde. Abcde is so cool but i want to encode also to this
If you are among those individuals, you might need to add support for MP3
encoding to your system:
- Debian : check http://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat to install lame in your
- system. Others prefer bladeenc. Check www.apt-get.org or google.
+ Debian : By default includes LAME support.
RedHat : search on rpmfind.net
FreeBSD: By default includes LAME support.
OpenBSD: Available by specifying you want to install the port with LAME
take a look at the lines below the one marked with "###USEPIPESSUPPORT###",
the required syntax is reasonably clear.
-6. MISC PROBLEMS
- =============
+6. MISC
+ ====
Q. What happened with normalize?
A. Normalize has changed its name under Debian, which is the GNU/Linux
- distribution for developing abcde (well, is The GNU/Linux Distribution
+ distribution for developing abcde (well, is the GNU/Linux Distribution
Steve uses, at the moment). Now it is called normalize-audio.
If you are using some other flavour of OS, you need to change the name
of the executable in your abcde.conf file.
A. Try using "-m" when creating the playlists, or setting DOSPLAYLIST as an
option in the config file.
+Q. What is the odd-looking progress indicator when ripping?
+A. cdparanoia is the default ripping program used by abcde on many
+ platforms, and it tries to give information about the ripping
+ quality as it runs. See the cdparanoia(1) man page for more
+ details, or look online at
+ https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#progbar
+
OBSOLETE
--------
Q. I set KEEPWAVS to "y" but abcde insists on erasing my directory, along