Is rhythmbox this useless??

[WipeOut]

I noticed that the default media player has been changed to Rhythmbox.. 
So far its proving to be really useless..

Firstly it would not run and crapped out all the time.. So I looked 
through the archives and it looked like the way to go was to get the 
freshrpms version, so I installed that and all its deps and the mp3 codec..

Now it runs.. Great!!..

Only problem is that it is now playing the tracks to fast which makes 
the sound really bad as you can imagine..

Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..

Later..

[Marius Andreiana]

yes :)

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 21:16, WipeOut wrote:
> Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
> just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..

why is xmms bad? I find it easy to use (keyboard shortcuts so you can
play music as desired with monitor turned off), simple and fast.
I've closed rhythmbox after I added my music folder to "library" and it
was still scanning it minutes later. xmms does an excellent job at
search with "j" key.

[WipeOut]

Marius Andreiana wrote:
> yes :)
>
> On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 21:16, WipeOut wrote:
> > Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
> > just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..
>
> why is xmms bad? I find it easy to use (keyboard shortcuts so you can
> play music as desired with monitor turned off), simple and fast.
> I've closed rhythmbox after I added my music folder to "library" and it
> was still scanning it minutes later. xmms does an excellent job at
> search with "j" key.

So back to xmms it is then.. :)

Later..

[James Drabb]

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 15:43, WipeOut wrote:
> Marius Andreiana wrote:
> > yes :)
> >
> > On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 21:16, WipeOut wrote:
> > > Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
> > > just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..
> >
> > why is xmms bad? I find it easy to use (keyboard shortcuts so you can
> > play music as desired with monitor turned off), simple and fast.
> > I've closed rhythmbox after I added my music folder to "library" and it
> > was still scanning it minutes later. xmms does an excellent job at
> > search with "j" key.
>
> So back to xmms it is then.. :)
>
> Later..

Have you tried the GTK+2.x version of xmms?  I personally think the
newer xmms is really nice.  I liked the interface for rhythmbox, though
I have had too many issues with it as well.  There is about a 2-3 second
lag when it tries to switch songs in my playlist and the CPU spikes, I
guess this is really a problem of gstreamer and not rhythmbox.

Jim Drabb

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 21:43, WipeOut wrote:
> So back to xmms it is then.. :)

I find XMMS completely useless when having a really huge music archive.
Try loading all your ripped CD's into XMMS... In my case, it's more than
2000 files totalling 2GB. With so much files, I need to organize them by
album, genre or artist, which is what Juk allows me to do.

[Marius Andreiana]

On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 00:09, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
> I find XMMS completely useless when having a really huge music archive.
> Try loading all your ripped CD's into XMMS... In my case, it's more than
> 2000 files totalling 2GB

I have 4500 songs totaling 21 gb, but I keep them properly named
(artist-track), so I can always jump to any of them (I disabled xmms
pre-read of tags).

I made a script which renames MP3 files from current name to
artist-track taken from mp3 tag, let me know if you need it

[Andre Costa]

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 08:36:26 +0200
Marius Andreiana  wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 00:09, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
> > I find XMMS completely useless when having a really huge music
> > archive. Try loading all your ripped CD's into XMMS... In my case,
> > it's more than 2000 files totalling 2GB
>
> I have 4500 songs totaling 21 gb, but I keep them properly named
> (artist-track), so I can always jump to any of them (I disabled xmms
> pre-read of tags).
>
> I made a script which renames MP3 files from current name to
> artist-track taken from mp3 tag, let me know if you need it

You could also use easytag for this (and more): easytag.sourceforge.net

Best,

Andre

[Jim Cornette]

WipeOut wrote:
> Marius Andreiana wrote:
> > yes :)
> >
> > On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 21:16, WipeOut wrote:
> > > Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
> > > just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..
> >
> > why is xmms bad? I find it easy to use (keyboard shortcuts so you can
> > play music as desired with monitor turned off), simple and fast.
> > I've closed rhythmbox after I added my music folder to "library" and it
> > was still scanning it minutes later. xmms does an excellent job at
> > search with "j" key.
>
> So back to xmms it is then.. :)
>
> Later..

Note for people that upgrade to FC2. It might be good to backup your 
.xmms directory to disk before doing an upgrade. It is currently broken 
for rawhide (development). It works if you install the directory from a 
working installation.

Also to note. You might have to switch the sound devices to alsa on FC2 
from this directory.

bug filed:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=112864

-----------------

Rhythmbox works pretty decent from rawhide. I didn't load the mp3 
support rpm. Oggs play fine though.

Jim

[Andre Costa]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:16:37 +0000
WipeOut  wrote:
> I noticed that the default media player has been changed to
> Rhythmbox.. So far its proving to be really useless..
>
> Firstly it would not run and crapped out all the time.. So I looked 
> through the archives and it looked like the way to go was to get the 
> freshrpms version, so I installed that and all its deps and the mp3
> codec..
>
> Now it runs.. Great!!..
>
> Only problem is that it is now playing the tracks to fast which makes 
> the sound really bad as you can imagine..
>
> Is there a solution to getting it to work properly or is it easier to 
> just switch back to xmms that to have to fight with this new one..
>
> Later..

When I was trying to configure/use rhythmbox a while ago, I faced the
same probl. I was using ALSA driver (set via gstreamer-properties), and
I learned on IRC that ALSA support on rhythmbox still needs lots of
improvement, and I've been told to use OSS for the 'default sink'
option, and this indeed fixed the playback speed, maybe this could work
for you too.

However, now that I configured ALSA to do sound-mixing, rhythmbox
complains that /dev/dsp device is in use if I use OSS, and can't open a
valid PCM device if I try ALSA. So, I fell back to xmms, too.

Best,

Andre

BTW: It took me a while to configure ALSA to do sound mixing, and the
nice folks at FedoraNEWS.ORG were kind enough to host a brief
description of the road I took, you can find it at
http://fedoranews.org/contributors/andre_costa/alsa
(lots of other good stuff there, very nice site to get FC going IMHO)

[Joe Klemmer]

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 16:18, Andre Costa wrote:
> When I was trying to configure/use rhythmbox a while ago, I faced the
> same probl. I was using ALSA driver (set via gstreamer-properties), and
> I learned on IRC that ALSA support on rhythmbox still needs lots of
> improvement, and I've been told to use OSS for the 'default sink'
> option, and this indeed fixed the playback speed, maybe this could work
> for you too.

Where do you set any of these kind of options?  I am using OSS and
there's nothing in the rhythmbox preferences to do much of anything.

[Andre Costa]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:50:44 -0500
Joe Klemmer  wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 16:18, Andre Costa wrote:
> > When I was trying to configure/use rhythmbox a while ago, I faced
> > the same probl. I was using ALSA driver (set via
> > gstreamer-properties), and I learned on IRC that ALSA support on
> > rhythmbox still needs lots of improvement, and I've been told to use
> > OSS for the 'default sink' option, and this indeed fixed the
> > playback speed, maybe this could work for you too.
>
> Where do you set any of these kind of options?  I am using OSS
>    and
> there's nothing in the rhythmbox preferences to do much of anything.

Hi Joe,

you don't set rhythmbox preferences directly, you set GStreamer
properties instead via gstreamer-properties; rhythmbox runs on top of
GStreamer.

Best,

Andre

[Joe Klemmer]

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 20:35, Andre Costa wrote:
> you don't set rhythmbox preferences directly, you set GStreamer
> properties instead via gstreamer-properties; rhythmbox runs on top of
> GStreamer.

Ah, ok.  I set it to OSS and the test beeeeeeeeeep comes out fine.  But
it still doesn't play any of the radio stations.  I haven't tried to
play a CD yes, though.

[Andre Costa]

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 12:29:46 -0500
Joe Klemmer  wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 20:35, Andre Costa wrote:
> > you don't set rhythmbox preferences directly, you set GStreamer
> > properties instead via gstreamer-properties; rhythmbox runs on top
> > of GStreamer.
>
> Ah, ok.  I set it to OSS and the test beeeeeeeeeep comes out
>    fine.  But
> it still doesn't play any of the radio stations.  I haven't tried to
> play a CD yes, though.

Never tried the radio stations myself, so I really can't comment on
that. Try playing any mp3/ogg file (or a cd, as you suggested) to see
what comes out of it.

Best,

Andre

[Bob Arendt]

Joe Klemmer wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 20:35, Andre Costa wrote:
>    Ah, ok.  I set it to OSS and the test beeeeeeeeeep comes out fine.  But
> it still doesn't play any of the radio stations.  I haven't tried to
> play a CD yes, though.

I've used it with some radio stations successfully.  Had to use
ethereal to trace one of them - the problem station sending a "MOVED"
message that rhythmbox didn't understand.  Entered the new address
and it came right up.  I was rhythmbox URL's with .m3u and .pls
extentions.

I'm running rhythmbox against the 2.6.1-61 development kernel.  But
I still have to select "OSS" style playback.  Oddly, rhythmbox
didn't work when Alsa was selected.

-Bob Arendt

I think it's OSS

[J.B. Nicholson-Owens]

WipeOut wrote:
> Only problem is that it is now playing the tracks to fast which makes 
> the sound really bad as you can imagine..

Same problem here, but I think it's the OSS sound driver.  ogg123 has the
same problem with OSS (sometimes OSS can't even play the streams I picked),
but when I switch to ESD (the Enlightenment Sound Daemon), the same Ogg
Vorbis files and streams play correctly.  Therefore, I suspect OSS not the
sound hardware.

XMMS works well for me because I had already set that to use ESD.  When I
set it to OSS, XMMS fails in the same way Rhythmbox did.

On different sound hardware, OSS might work better but on an Intel 82801DB
AC'97 (i810_audio driver), some things simply don't work on OSS.