Music-related Software
The following software was written to help you rip, tag and play classical music more effectively on Linux and (with some restrictions!) macOS or Windows 10. There are also some utilities that will help you make sure your digital music files maintain their internal integrity and accuracy, and allow you to convert between different audio formats (for example, FLAC to MP3). In the table below, I list each piece of software, it's function and it's release history: check back here frequently to make sure you're using the latest version of any of them. Not all old software versions are available for all software and so I only list the old versions I've managed to keep hold of: I'm better at keeping version history these days, but it's a new thing for me! Rows in the table highlighted in red represent discontinued/abandoned software and you should no longer download or use them: they each have newer, maintained equivalents which should be used instead.
Click the 'Links to Software Manuals' in the below table to go to each product's information page, where manuals, guides and/or FAQs can be found for each.
| Links to Software Manuals | Function | Latest Release | Release Date |
Previous Releases |
| Giocoso | A randomising FLAC classical music player | 2.00 | 22nd July 2022 |
See archives |
| Niente |
A FLAC Integrity Tester |
2.01 |
9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Classical CD Ripper (ccdr) | An accurate, command-line Audio CD ripper | 3.09 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Classical CD Tagger (ccdt) | A utility to tag audio files with metadata | 3.16 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Composition - At - Once (cao) | A utility to merge per-track FLACs into 'super-FLACs' | 1.14 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Absolutely Baching Tag Cleaner (atc) | Cleans FLAC tags to leave behind only 'core' tags | 1.10 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Universal Audio Converter (auac) | Converts audio files from one codec to another | 2.10 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Volume Maximiser Utility (maxv) | Maximises the absolute volume level in a folder of FLACs | 1.09 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Set Performer Utility (set-performer) | One-off batch generation of PERFORMER tags | 1.03 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| Auto-Ellipsis Script (aes) | Strips ".." or "..." from file names, replaced with "…" | 1.02 | 9th March 2022 |
See archives |
| MAXV Bulk Reporter (maxvrprt) |
Scans large numbers of files to see which are possible candidates for a MAXV volume boost (but doesn't actually boost the volume) |
1.00 |
4th June 2021 |
INSTALLATION
To download and install of any of these scripts, you issue the following commands:
cd
wget https://absolutelybaching.com/abc_installer
bash abc_installer --program-name
So, to install AUAC, the third command there would be bash abc_installer --auac. For the Giocoso music player, it would be bash abc_installer --giocoso and so on. In each case, the 'program-name' bit is whatever appears in brackets in the first column of the table above. If you want all the software in one hit, just use bash abc_installer --all: that will fetch and install all available scripts in one go. In all cases, the installer will prompt you for your sudo password: it needs root privileges to be able to install the programs into the /usr/bin folder. You can re-run the installer program at any time to fetch the latest version of any program and have it replace an earlier version.
UPGRADES/UPDATES
All recent versions of each software package can now be invoked with the --checkver run-time parameter. This will trigger a check for newer versions of that specific software package. If a newer version is found, you will be given the opportunity to fetch and install it (though you can refuse, if you prefer). Upgrading, like installing in the first place, requires the provision of a root password at one point, in order to copy the files into /usr/bin correctly. Obviously, you need to have versions of the packages that know how to handle 'checkver' requests: getting to that point may first require re-installation of a package using the 'Installation' procedure described above. Once you have a version that has 'checkver' functionality, however, you can keep that specific package up-to-date by running it with the --checkver parameter occasionally thereafter.
UNINSTALLING
Uninstalling any of the software packages is done simply by deleting the relevant script out of the /usr/bin folder (or the /usr/local/bin equivalent on platforms such as macOS). Doing that requires root (or sudo) privileges. The script names are the program names in all lower-case, and there may be a number of extensions. Thus, to uninstall Giocoso (for example), you'd issue the command:
sudo rm /usr/bin/giocoso.*
The trailing asterisk in that command ensures the program script itself, together with any symbolic links to it, are removed from your system.
Some Techniques and Tips
- Making music previews
- Getting your PC to email you when running scheduled jobs
- Build a Virtual Machine running Arch+Gnome (or KDE)
- How to rip an SACD to high resolution FLACs
- Getting a decent screensaver running on Linux
- Cleaning PDFs of metadata