Bug 104029

Summary: poor quality MP3 playback, with pops
Product: akodelib Reporter: Luke Plant <L.Plant.98>
Component: generalAssignee: Allan Sandfeld <kde>
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME    
Severity: normal CC: wheeler
Priority: NOR    
Version: 1.0 (KDE 3.3)   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian testing   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description Luke Plant 2005-04-16 18:53:06 UTC 
Version:           2.2 (using KDE KDE 3.4.0)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:                Linux

When playing MP3 files with Juk, the playback quality is poor, with slight crackles in the foreground, and low 'pops' in the background, quite noticeable within about 3-10 seconds of starting a track.

When I play the same files using XMMS, using either  MPEG Player 1/2/3  (libmpg123) or MAD MPEG Decoder (libxmmsmad), and using either the ALSA output plugin for XMMS or the aRts output plugin, the quality is fine, which tells me this is not an arts issue.  Also playback in Kaffeine is fine (there might be some quality issues compared to XMMS, but if so they are much more subtle, my ears aren't good enough).

Processing power is very unlikely to be an issue - I have a new system with an 1800 AMD Athlon 64, and CPU usage while playing an MP3 is minimal ( < 1% for XMMS, %3 for Juk).

I have tried a range of MP3s, including self-recorded and others that are probably from completely different encoders, with the same results.  Playback of Ogg Vorbis files seems to be fine (although it might not be a fair test as they are mainly higher quality files (160 kbps)).
Comment 1 Scott Wheeler 2005-04-17 19:27:44 UTC 
Make sure that you have aKode installed.  There were some issues with the Debian packages a while back not requiring it.  There is a default that's used if it's not available, but it barely works.

Moving this over to aKode assuming you do have it installed...  (aKode is the thing that handles decoding for aRts)
Comment 2 Luke Plant 2005-04-18 10:26:31 UTC 
Yes, I do have akode installed.  Sorry for filing against the wrong thing.
Comment 3 Luke Plant 2005-04-30 17:47:58 UTC 
Further investigation:  I had akode installed, but debian requires the package akode-mpeg aswell for MP3 playback.  The problem above was with the 'arts' backend, and playing with the 'akode' backend didn't actaully work when I tried it.

Having installed akode-mpeg the quality is now good.