[NTLUG:Discuss] Weird audio question

[Wayne Dahl]

Hi all.

OS - Kubuntu 8.04
HP DV1906US laptop
Amarok 1.4.9.1
KDE 3.5.10

I have a question about some rather weird behavior when playing some 
.flac audio files.  I have 2 albums in .flac format that won't play 
properly in Amarok or Noatun or mplayer...but play just fine, although 
with lowered volume in VLC.  The songs seem to start ok in Amarok, but 
then start skipping ahead like some of the songs are missing, and that 
is exactly what the time showin in Amarok sometimes seems to indicate.

For example, one of the songs is Yes's Roundabout, which is a rather 
large file reported by Dolphin as 74.0 Megs.  Just adding the flac file 
to the Amarok database, it exhibits the weird skipping behavior.  VLC 
plays the full song just fine, however, so I know it's actually all 
there.  Also, dolphin reports the 1,218 kbps.  Is it just that Amarok 
can't handle that bitrate?  In which case, I go to my next idea....

I thought maybe Amarok just couldn't handle such a large file, so I used 
soundkonverter to convert the file to .mp3 in 320 Kbps format, which 
I've never had any trouble with.  Soundkonverter created an MP3 file of 
5.6 Megs, which doesn't really seem feasable.  I would think it should 
be quite a bit larger.  The MP3 file plays the same as the flac.

So I got the idea to try burning the flac files to audio CD, then try 
ripping the files back to MP3.  K3B doesn't like the .flac format and 
wants them changed to .wav before it'll create the CD, so, back to 
soundkonverter.  It created .wav files ok, but instead of around 74 
Megs, it creates them as 27.1 Megs...obviously missing a lot of data, 
which would account for the skips.  Yet, each time I check the file in 
dolphin, it shows to be 74 Mb in size.  Here is what a terminal window 
shows for ls -al of the file part of the directory....

-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne   201727 2008-11-24 21:10 
fragile_1994_retail_cd-inside.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 77593577 2008-11-25 17:11 Yes - Fragile - 01 - 
Roundabout.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne     3000 2008-11-27 13:40 .Yes - Fragile - 01 - 
Roundabout.mood
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 10679081 2008-11-25 17:02 Yes - Fragile - 02 - 
Cans And Brahms.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne     3000 2008-11-27 13:40 .Yes - Fragile - 02 - 
Cans And Brahms.mood
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 14146200 2008-11-25 17:14 Yes - Fragile - 03 - 
We Have Heaven.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 71766511 2008-11-25 17:17 Yes - Fragile - 04 - 
South Side Of The Sky.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne  5280964 2008-11-25 15:59 Yes - Fragile - 05 - 
Five Per Cent For Nothing.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 29440552 2008-11-25 17:16 Yes - Fragile - 06 - 
Long Distance Runaround.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 21523306 2008-11-25 17:13 Yes - Fragile - 07 - 
The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus).flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 17796185 2008-11-25 17:08 Yes - Fragile - 08 - 
Mood For A Day.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne 92737856 2008-11-25 17:27 Yes - Fragile - 09 - 
Heart Of The Sunrise.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 wayne wayne     1218 2008-11-23 20:21 Yes Fragile.txt

So the file size looks to be correct.  It would appear to be an 
application failing.  Any ideas?

I didn't have xcdroast installed, so installed it and it's just sitting 
there scanning for devices (after being opened in a terminal window with 
sudo xcdroast), so it's been no help.  The terminal window isn't showing 
anything at all while xcdroast is scanning.

Thanks for any ideas.

-- 
Wayne Dahl
No electrons were abused in any way by any Microsoft product in the creation or sending of this email.
OS: Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on an HP DV9620US laptop