Re: [linux-minidisc] netmdcli sending an mp3

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

Hello Manuel,

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 09:21:06PM +0200, Manuel Molina Cuberos wrote:

> I've built all the utilities under Debian GNU Linux and now I can use
> netmdcli
> It seems to work.

You can also use the Ubuntu PPAs on Debian [1]. Just use the ones we
provide for Ubuntu Oneiric, they work fine on Wheezy.

> crystalpalace:~/linux-minidisc/netmdcli# ./netmdcli
> Net MD Walkman
> Raw title:
> Disc Title: <Untitled>
> 
> Track  0: UnPROT    LP2 - 04:19:47 - Hola
> 
> --Empty Groups--
> 
> 
> But when I listen, it sounds like garbage.

This is expected, NetMD Walkman do not support the playback of MP3
audio tracks and you will have to convert them. Generally, most if not
all NetMD Walkman support ATRAC-SP, ATRAC-3 (LP2 and LP4) and PCM as
input, the latter will be recoded by the Walkman into ATRAC-SP (I
don't know whether the NetMD Walman also encodes LP2 and LP4
on-the-fly, but I guess Michael knows).

As for netmdcli, the software currently does not check the format of
the input files and just always assumes ATRAC-3 LP2 which is why your
track listing above reads "LP2". So netmdcli needs to be fixed to
properly recognize the input format and send the proper parameters to
the NetMD Walkman. Since there are no known encoders for ATRAC-SP or
ATRAC-3 LP2/LP4, any non-ATRAC files will have to be sent to the NetMD
Walkman as PCM files where they are encoded as ATRAC-SP by the Walkman.

Fixing netmdcli in this regard is the next point on our TODO list. If
you know C, you can have a look at the code in netmdcli/netmdcli.c
yourself and play around with the code.

Adrian

[1] https://launchpad.net/~glaubitz/+archive/linux-minidisc