Archives For audio editor

Kid3, the free and open-source Qt app for editing audio tags, now is 20 years old!

It was January 12, 2003, exactly 20 years ago, when the first version 0.1 of Kid3 was released. And, it’s the first app that I used to edit music tags in Ubuntu when in 2008.

To celebrate it, the developer team announced the new 3.9.3 release, but with only following changes:

  • Add user action script to fix ID3v2 standard violations.
  • Accept letters in track numbers when setting tags from filename.
  • Embed lyrics: Use letras.com instead of lyrics.wikia.com.
  • Fix crash upon termination when qml and qmlview actions have been used
  • Abort when invalid keys are used for FLAC Vorbis comments.
  • Use of non-BMP Unicode characters with TagLib.
  • Fix error description when saving files fails.
  • Fix Discogs import.
  • Windows: Handling of common path in multiple command line arguments.

How to Install Kid3 via PPA in Ubuntu:

The software offers official binary packages available to download at the sourceforge page.

For all current Ubuntu releases (Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 22.10), there’s an official PPA repository contains the latest package.

1. First, open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ufleisch/kid3

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. For the old Ubuntu 18.04 and Linux Mint, you have to manually update the package cache by running command in terminal:

sudo apt update

3. Finally, either update Kid3 using Software Updater (Update Manager) if an old package installed on your system.

Or, run command in terminal to install the tag editor.

sudo apt install kid3-qt

Uninstall Kid3

To remove the PPA repository, either open ‘Software & Updates‘ and remove the source line under ‘Other Software’ tab:

Or, open terminal and run the command instead to remove the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ufleisch/kid3

To remove the audio tag editor, run command:

sudo apt remove kid3 kid3-qt kid3-core

That’s all. Enjoy!

DeaDBeeF audio player 1.8.8 was released as the 8th bugfix release for the 1.8 series.

The new release introduced some new features, including reading WAV RIFF tags, handling of Disc subtitle frames in ID3v2 and APE tags, and handling samplerates higher than 192KHz to pulseaudio.

New context menu options “Play Next” and “Play Later” are now available to choose your favorite song to play next, or set one-time play order for songs in play list. It will add marks at the beginning that indicates the sequence.

It also redesigned the plugin page in Preferences. Now each plugin has the configuration along with basic info and license in tabs.

Other changes in DeaDBeef 1.8.8 includes:

  • Non-modal preferences window
  • $rgb() title formatting function
  • Group title colorization support via title formatting
  • Plugin report and filtering in Plugin list
  • Focusable playlist tabs with keyboard navigation support
  • Sorting plugin list alphabetically
  • Improved album path handling, especially for Windows
  • Drag-and-drop on the main window
  • Using scroll wheel with seek bar
  • Delete from disk dialog will highlight the Delete button as destructive action
  • And some stability fixes.

How to Install DeaDBeeF 1.8.8 in Ubuntu:

The software offers official .deb package for 64-bit Ubuntu & Linux Mint systems.

Grab the package, ‘deadbeef-static_1.8.8-1_amd64.deb’, then install it by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/deadbeef-static*.deb

There’s also an Ubuntu PPA for DeaDBeeF, though it’s not updated at the moment of writing. And note that the PPA package conflicts to the official ‘deadbeef-static‘ package due to packaging issue. Remove the old package first if you’re going to install it from another source.

Remove DeaDBeeF:

To remove the music player, simply run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove deadbeef-static deadbeef

Audacity audio editor and recorder 3.0.3 was released a few days ago. Finally it adds official Linux binary via Appimage.

Audacity 3.0.3 comes with minor bug-fixes, and binary changes. For Windows users, now it provides 64-bit EXE and 32-bit plug-ins will not work on the release.

The release introduced automatic app update checking. According to the updated Privacy Notice, Audacity needs a network connection for update checking. And this shares your IP address, OS, and Audacity version. You can disable the feature in the Preferences.

And when an app error occurs, error report dialog will pop up asking you whether to send report.

For Linux users, Audacity now provides Appimage package. It’s a single executable that launches the software directly without installation required. Just right-click on file, add execute permission in “Properties” dialog, and finally run it.

How to Get Audacity 3.0.3:

For the official binary and source tarball, you can download it from the github release page:

It’s also available to install via the universal Flatpak package which runs in sandbox. And here’s how to guide for those new to flatpak.

About the Ubuntu PPA:

Audacity adds Conan package manager as the its new dependency library. It make me crazy again since it’s not available in Ubuntu repositories, and so far I can’t find any compile instruction.

So may be it’s time to abandon my personal PPA for Audacity package. :)

The Audacity audio editor 3.0.0 was release as a new major update a day ago.

Audacity 3.0.0 features .aup3 project format. The audio project was previously saved as large number of small data files, with an ‘.aup’ file to coordinate the lot. Now it saves project as the new all-in-one-file aup3 file format.

According to the Privacy Notice, Audacity may COLLECT personal data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities. And it dissuade those under 13 years old from using the App.

It is incompatible with the GPL license. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Working with the new .aup3 projects editing audio should be a little faster than before, however, finishing and closing a project at the end can be quite a lot slower.

You can open your older .aup projects in the new version, where they will be converted to the new .aup3 format.

Other changes in the Audacity 3.0.0 include:

  • Improved ‘Noise Gate’ effect
  • Add new analyzer ‘Label Sounds’ to label sounds and silences.
  • Import and export macros
  • New commands for using the last used tool or analyzer
  • Over 160 bug-fixes since version 2.4.2.

Download Audacity 3.0.0 for Linux:

No binary package for Ubuntu at the moment of writing, only the source tarball is available to download at the link:

Download Audacity Source

And you can follow this guide to build it on Linux.

Kid3 audio tag editor released version 3.8.2 a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 19.10.

Kid3 3.8.2 is a small but important release for those who have a lot of M4A files. The release fixes a crash that happens when frames are removed from M4A files. Additionally it brings new Catalan, Portuguese and Ukrainian translations.

How to Install Kid3 3.8.2 in Ubuntu:

The official Kid3 PPA has built the packages for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and, Ubuntu 19.10.

1. Open terminal either from application launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ufleisch/kid3

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.

2. If an old version was installed, upgrade Kid3 using Software Updater:

upgrade kid3 via software updater

or run commands one by one in terminal to install or upgrade to the latest tag editor:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install kid3-qt

You may replace kid3-qt with kid3 in the code for KDE integration, or with kid3-cli for the command-line interface

Uninstall

To remove the PPA repository, either open Software & Updates -> Other Software tab, or run command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ufleisch/kid3

To remove the audio tag editor, either use your system package manager or run command:

sudo apt remove --auto-remove kid3 kid3-*