MP3s sound crap via kde progs, good via xmms

Smoothhound · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Sep 2003 Posts: 149

Hi Folks,

When I play MP3s via any KDE apps (I assume using arts) they sound bad, not terrible - but the quality sounds really low (sort of muffled, a little bit echoy). However when I play the same files via XMMS they sound great.

To further confuse things, ogg files sound great on both!

Before anyone says "just use XMMS" :wink:

I would really like to use JuK as my player. I don't even know where to start to see if I can sort this out.

Any pointers much appreciated,

Cheers

krdp · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 7:36 pm Post subject:

Are you using ALSA?? Try using that if you aren't it *might* solve most of your problems or it *might* make new ones

For more info go here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml and do a search on these forums.

Smoothhound · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Sep 2003 Posts: 149

Yes I am indeed using ALSA already, I have a Soundblaster 5.1. I installed ALSA and everything "Just Worked" until I tried to play MP3s via aRTs

firephoto · Posted: Wed May 05, 2004 3:21 am Post subject:

Any luck getting this resolved? I've aquired this problem after upgrading QT and re-emerging kde after a gcc-3.4 test. It's definatly kde/arts/music related. Only certain mp3 files have this noise chatter garbled watery sound. I've changed the priorities of things, deleted the relevant config files in my home directory for kmix, arts, knotify and nothing changed.

I'm playing my music with juk but I tried noatun and it was the same except I had the equalizer and artssynth stuff there to change the way it sounded bad.

Anyone else notice these problems?

Smoothhound · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Sep 2003 Posts: 149

I never did fix it, I just learned to love XMMS

It seems the general consensus is that nothing explicit is broken and that arts just plain sucks.

Woody · Guru Joined: 30 Nov 2002 Posts: 592 Location: Milwaukee

Check to see that arts is running at 48Khz, not 44.1

firephoto · Posted: Wed May 05, 2004 4:32 pm Post subject:

It seems the bad sound comes from mp3s encoded with a vbr. Killed artsd and am testing the offending song files in xmms and they sound fine but I notice the bit rate is variable. What kde package contains the decoder libraries or what other package does it depend on for the mpeg decoding?

*edit
Ok I mp32ogg'd one of the vbr files and the resulting ogg which is the same size and vbr sounds good with juk. I also ran xmms thru the arts pluggin and the vbr mp3's played fine so it's something to do with kde sound apps decoding the mp3.
edit*

FormerSlacker · Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 7:06 pm Post subject:

Check out this thread:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=171962