CD Ripper

[Frank Nicklin]

Ive been experimenting with various music servers for the Pi and have been using Mopidy although it does have limitations. I have also been using abcde to auto rip my CD collections to an attached USB drive. It collects Album art and track info from cddb and MusicBrainz.

Any thoughts on adding such a feature to Moode and suggestions on a suitable solution other than installing abcde on the Moode install.

[Tim Curtis]

Hi Frank,

Another developer has already created a nice integration recipe for CD ripping using ABCDE utility and CD playback. It's on the TODO list but not getting priority due to the effort required to get moOde 6 done for the new Pi-4B and Raspbian Buster OS.

-Tim

[TheOldPresbyope]

The RPi4B is the first model with a good-enough USB system (and RAM) for me to consider this a realistic use case. Be interested to see what comes of it.

[Tim Curtis]

The dev's recipe yields a working prototype via cmd line. Whats missing is metadata lookup when playing a CD directly. I'll send you the recipe in case you want to try it out :-)

[Frank Nicklin]

Thanks for the update guys really looking forwards to having a play with Moode.

Recipe would be great to try out.

[TheOldPresbyope]

Thanks for the update guys really looking forwards to having a play with Moode.

Recipe would be great to try out.

Just a little background to help manage expectations.

<tl,dr: the recipe works fine>

The recipe being discussed is in two parts: CD playback and CD ripping. 

The CD playback portion is minimally integrated into moOde in the sense that when a shell script to "add" the CD is executed, the current playlist is cleared, then the CD tracks are added (as cdda:///1, cdda:///2, etc; e.g., no metadata), after which the tracks may be played in the normal way. A separate shell script clears the playlist and ejects the CD. Nothing is done about cover art currently. This portion takes advantage of the fact that MPD already has a CD plugin available.

The CD ripping portion actually has nothing to do with moOde. It takes advantage of abcde and several other applications which should be available for almost any Linux repo to rip and encode (into both FLAC and MP3 files with the recipe developer's default settings). It searches the usual online database(s) to find metadata which it adds to each track in appropriate metadata tagging schemes. Nothing is done about cover art currently. The only point of integration with moOde is that the recipe currently stores ripped tracks in directories under /mnt/SDCARD/CDs so that MPD can find them during a Library database update.

All this works fine from the CLI but there's a lot of work yet to be done in figuring out now to integrate its configuration and operation into the moOde UI.

My personal bias is to rip on a separate host using fully featured apps like Exact Audio Copy, dbPowerAmp, and others where I already have a full panoply of options available and an established workflow. Also, the throughput is much higher on my x86 server. That said, the approach taken with the recipe may suit many users perfectly well once they have customized its workflow to their needs.

None of the above should be read as a criticism of the recipe. Its developer (not me) did a great job.

In tests with moOde 5.4beta2 on an RPi4B and an old Samsung external USB2.0 DVD writer, I just ripped a 60 min, 6-track classical CD into both FLAC and MP3 files in 22 min. Here's a screenshot of moOde's playback screen with all 12 files loaded into the playlist. I did this to see how the metadata turned out in the two encodings.



These tracks play without issue.

OTOH, I"m getting dropouts (silent pauses, really) when I try to play the CD directly. Not the recipe's fault. It works fine for the developer. I haven't tracked down the problem but it's likely the CD drive itself (less likely, an issue in Raspbian Buster).

Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

Hi Kent,

Interesting. There are obviously some big gaps in functionality so for the time being I'd put this on the shelf.

Getting cover art for ABCDE. :-0
http://www.andrews-corner.org/linux/abcd...umart.html

-Tim

[TheOldPresbyope]

Hi Kent,

Interesting. There are obviously some big gaps in functionality so for the time being I'd put this on the shelf.

Getting cover art for ABCDE. :-0
http://www.andrews-corner.org/linux/abcd...umart.html

-Tim

Thanks, Tim.

I was reading the andrews-corner abcde notes over the weekend and also grep'ping through the abcde bash script (I thought some of your php files were long but this script takes the prize at 5585 lines!).

For playback, modifying moOde's backend code to return "Track n" as the track title instead of "cdda:///n" and "CD player" or somesuch instead of "Unknown artist-Unknown album" would prettify the playlist display. What to do with the action choices in the ellipsis and under the volume roundel is an open question. A simple tweak for the cover art would be to display a modified version of the default moOde graphic with a CD symbol on it when a cdda track is selected. Actual cover art is doable but is a sticky issue for me because of the following problem.

My CD collection is lopsidedly classical. Even with full-service programs like Exact Audio Copy I would sometimes see incorrect identification of an album and hence wrong metadata results returned from the online databases. The second CD I ripped with abcde was misidentified. The script can be configured to query either CDDB or MusicBrainz. CDDB offered one result and it was incorrect. MusicBrainz offered two results, the first wrong and the second right, but the script plowed forward with the first one. The script can be modified to allow user intervention but then it's no longer automatic. 

In the same vein, even with programs like Exact Audio Copy I'm often offered incorrect cover art as the default choice even when the CD is correctly identified. With the script this can be handled with yet more user intervention, but nailing the correct cover art in direct playback seems an unsolvable problem, at least to me.

Recordings of jazz and other genres seem less prone to mis-identification.

The recipe dev and I are engaged in ongoing email correspondence.

Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

Good ideas for CD playback :-)

I could see adding that capability at some point.

[TheOldPresbyope]

Regarding the dropouts/pauses I was experiencing on direct CD playback.

More tests:

The interruptions occur both on an RPi4B and an RPi3B+ running moOde 5.4beta2 whether using an old Samsung SE208 DVD writer or a new LG GP65NB60 DVD writer.

They do not occur on an RPi3B+ running moOde 5.3.1 and either drive.

Conclusion: it's not the RPi4B, it's not the drive, it's something buggy in Raspbian Buster.

Regards,
Kent