Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [165]
Mixer programs for setting record and playback gain levels
Multimedia players for audio and video files and discs
CD and DVD burning tools for authoring audio and video discs
Speech tools, supporting speech recognition and synthesis
Image, sound, and video editing tools for creating and manipulating multimedia files
Recording tools for generating and manipulating sound files
Music composition tools for creating traditional music scores or music in MIDI or MP3 format
Internet telephone and conferencing tools for audio communication over computer networks
Browser plug-ins for displaying multimedia data within a web browser
Sound Mixers
Sound mixers allow one to modify the hardware gain levels and input devices for your sound card. Most sound mixers are similar. If you are running KDE or GNOME you'll generally get the best results using the mixer provided with your desktop, which typically will appear as a speaker icon on your desktop's panel. Command line mixer programs such as aumix can be useful for use in scripts or startup files to set audio gains to desired levels during login, or when you are not running a graphical desktop, such as a remote login.
Figure 9-1 shows a screenshot of KMix, the mixer provided by KDE.
Figure 9-1. KMix
Multimedia Players
Media players are the area with the greatest selection of applications and widest range of features and user interfaces. No one application meets everyone's needs—some aim to be lightweight and fast, whereas others strive to offer the most features. Even within the KDE desktop, for example, a half dozen different players are offered.
If you are running a desktop environment, such as KDE or GNOME, you likely already have at least one media player program. If so, it is recommended that you use this player, at least initially, since it should work correctly with the sound server used by these desktop environments and provide the best integration with the desktop.
When choosing a media player application, here are some of the features you can look for:
Support for different sound drivers (e.g., OSS and ALSA) or sound servers (KDE aRts and GNOME esd).
An attractive user interface. Many players are "skinnable," meaning that you can download and install alternative user interfaces.
Support for playlists, allowing you to define and save sequences of your favorite audio tracks.
Various audio effects, such as a graphical equalizer, stereo expansion, reverb, voice removal, and visual effects for representing the audio in graphical form.
Support for other file formats, such as audio CD, WAV, and video formats.
Here is a rundown of some of the popular media player applications:
Xmms
Xmms is one popular media player, with a default user interface similar to Winamp. You can download it from http://www.xmms.org if it is not included in your Linux distribution. A screenshot is shown in Figure 9-2.
Figure 9-2. Xmms
Xine
Xine is a full-featured audio and video media player that supports many file formats and streaming media protocols. The project is hosted at the following site: http://xine.sourceforge.net. A screenshot is shown in Figure 9-3.
Figure 9-3. Xine
MPlayer
MPlayer is another popular video player that supports a wide range of file formats, including the ability to load codecs from Windows DLLs. It supports output to many devices, using X11, as well as directly to video cards. The project's home page is http://www.mplayer.hu.
Due to legal issues, MPlayer is not shipped by most Linux distributions and so must be downloaded separately.
CD and DVD Burning Tools
If you are running KDE or GNOME, basic CD data and audio burning support is available within the file manager. If you want to go beyond this, or need more help to step you through the process, specialized applications are available.
Note that many of the graphical CD burning applications use command-line tools such as cdrecord and cdrdao to perform the actual CD audio track extraction, ISO image creation, and CD recording.