I am SO SICK of Windows. Nor will I consider drinking the Macintosh koolaid. Why trade one evil corporation's proprietary shackles for those of another? Soon, therefore, I hope to be totally abandoning Windows once and for all for Ubuntu Linux.

I prefer to rip my CDs twice. Once using EAC/LAME, ripping to individual tracks with M3U playlists - these tracks are for automotive and portable use. And again for archiving and high quality home playback using EAC/FLAC, generating FLAC images with cue sheets. EAC installs in Linux by means of WINE, and it works great. My problem is, I cannot find a Linux media player that supports cue sheet playback.

I've tried Foobar2000 in Linux through WINE and it works - sort of. Sadly, Foobar2000 is unstable in that operating environment, prone to freezes and crashes with unacceptable frequency.

Does anyone know of a native Linux media player that supports cue sheet playback, either as a standard feature or with the help of a plug-in or extension? I can't claim to have tried them all, but I have tried the most popular ones, including Amarok, Songbird, RhythmBox, Listen, Totem, Quod Libet, Aqualung, Grip...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Me too. Still on XP but when everybody goes Vista, I will stick with Ubuntu. (The wife-only-uses windows symdrom). I have read somewhere that Amarok support cuesheets, but then again I am not sure and I don't know any player that does the cuesheet thing. I hate FB2k because it's really got a hold on us - once you discover its power is unlikely you are going to leave.

My solution would be keeping FB2k strictly to make file management operations under WINE. But NOT as a player for Linux. It is true that Linux doesn't have a FB2K killer yet, but I really hope this will change soon. So my hint is: do everything file-related stuff like cuesheets, converting and replaygain on FB2k, but use another play to actually play the organized files. For now!

Reports of reading cue sheets in amarok:
http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php/topic,7675.0.html

Does anyone know of a native Linux media player that supports cue sheet playback, either as a standard feature or with the help of a plug-in or extension?

1. Amarok >= 1.2.4

2. Audacious

3. xmms with the mp3cue plugin:

http://brianvictor.tripod.com/mp3cue.htm

Charles

I haven't found a linux player with decent cue sheet support, or if I did, I probably can't remember because it lacked some other important feature. As far as single-file rips go, for now, I prefer wrapping them into a .mka file with Matroska, converting the cue sheet into chapters (automatic with mkvmerge). It's far from perfect (no tagging, only chapter titles, and extra flags are lost), but mplayer plays them well, and allows for seeking to the next/previous "chapter" (track). If you like, you can also attach the log file and cue sheet to the mka file (and later losslessly extract them with mkvextract). Mplayer provides few features with that solution, but at least it's solid (try to make Audacious' cue sheet plugin work if you feel adventurous).

Me too. Still on XP but when everybody goes Vista, I will stick with Ubuntu. (The wife-only-uses windows symdrom). I have read somewhere that Amarok support cuesheets, but then again I am not sure and I don't know any player that does the cuesheet thing. I hate FB2k because it's really got a hold on us - once you discover its power is unlikely you are going to leave.

My solution would be keeping FB2k strictly to make file management operations under WINE. But NOT as a player for Linux. It is true that Linux doesn't have a FB2K killer yet, but I really hope this will change soon. So my hint is: do everything file-related stuff like cuesheets, converting and replaygain on FB2k, but use another play to actually play the organized files. For now!

Reports of reading cue sheets in amarok:
http://amarok.kde.org/forum/index.php/topic,7675.0.html

  Whoo HOO! I followed your link and discovered that it works! Amarok DOES support cue sheets! Unlike Foobar2000, it will NOT play directly from a cue sheet, however. If you try to do so, the program just sits there and does nothing, leading one to believe it doesn't support cue sheet playback. But, if the cue sheet is present in the same folder as the image, and is named EXACTLY like the flac image (with *.cue extension instead of *.flac, of course), when one plays the image file, the cue sheet contents are displayed below the album, and if one clicks on the cue sheet entries, the playback goes immediately to the proper place, exactly as it should!

The odd thing is, there is NOTHING about this issue on the Amarok website, its FAQ's or its forum. I personally cannot think that anyone would want to archive CDs any other way but with FLAC+CUE. Some total purists with terabytes of hard drive to burn might prefer WAV+CUE, but in my opinion, image files of some type are the only way to go for an accurate archive. I must be in a minority. 

Thanks for your guidance!

Careful, it seems they still haven't resolved gapless playback issues. Also, last time I tried (a while ago), the end of the last song would get cut off (the beginning of the first track as well, IIRC).

Some total purists with terabytes of hard drive to burn might prefer WAV+CUE, but in my opinion, image files of some type are the only way to go for an  accurate archive. I must be in a minority.

Not accurate enough if:

1) Your drive does not do both lead-in and lead-out
2) You ripped a CD without correcting the offsets.
3) Last but not least, checked your CD against AccurateRip database.


Anyway I am glad you sorted this out

Not accurate enough if:

1) Your drive does not do both lead-in and lead-out
2) You ripped a CD without correcting the offsets.
3) Last but not least, checked your CD against AccurateRip database.

For the record (n00bs), all of which affect track ripping also.

Back on topic...

Some total purists with terabytes of hard drive to burn might prefer WAV+CUE, but in my opinion, image files of some type are the only way to go for an accurate archive. I must be in a minority. ermm.gif

Not accurate enough if:

1) Your drive does not do both lead-in and lead-out
2) You ripped a CD without correcting the offsets.
3) Last but not least, checked your CD against AccurateRip database.


Anyway I am glad you sorted this out

Question #1 ---- Yes
Question #2 ---- Yes
Question #3 ---- Yes, except when the CD I'm ripping is not in the database, which is quite often.

I've tried Foobar2000 in Linux through WINE and it works - sort of. Sadly, Foobar2000 is unstable in that operating environment, prone to freezes and crashes with unacceptable frequency.

When does it crash ? Using recent WINE it works very well these days as long as you're not using some plugins that could make it crash.

Not accurate enough if:

1) Your drive does not do both lead-in and lead-out
2) You ripped a CD without correcting the offsets.
3) Last but not least, checked your CD against AccurateRip database.

All three of these are bullshit (and as Synthetic Soul already suggested: offtopic)

EDIT: ...and the original comment that prompted this unsolicited idiocy,

I personally cannot think that anyone would want to archive CDs any other way but with FLAC+CUE. Some total purists with terabytes of hard drive to burn might prefer WAV+CUE, but in my opinion, image files of some type are the only way to go for an accurate archive.

is bullshit as well.

Does anyone know of a native Linux media player that supports cue sheet playback, either as a standard feature or with the help of a plug-in or extension?
1. Amarok >= 1.2.4

2. Audacious

3. xmms with the mp3cue plugin:

http://brianvictor.tripod.com/mp3cue.htm

Charles

I use linux as my primary OS and NONE of the above do a good job of .cue support period...

I've yet to get any version of Amarok to properly handle .cue files
Audacious works with the cue support plug-in, but kills gaps and doesn't handle titles well at all.
XMMS with that PITIFUL mp3cue plugin isn't worth the time of downloading and installing.

Now keep in mind, all of my .cue files are associated with a single .wav file. But Foobar2000 handles them flawlessly.

With .cue/Flac or mp3, my info could be totally irrelevant.

As always with linux, your mileage WILL vary.

Sorry to dig up the thread, but what's the current status of cue sheet support on *nix ?

I need to check if there have been any improvements with Audacious 2.x, but in 1.5 cuesheet support was buggy. For that reason, i still keep foobar 0.8.3 which works fine with wine.

Good news for the people migrating to Linux and in need of cue sheet support in music player  ! Sorry for a long post, but I feel that these are great news 

The developer of Guayadeque -- IMHO one of the finest Linux music player ever created -- is willing to implement this feature to his player. There is a very long thread on ubuntuforums.org dedicated to the testing of Guayadeque where He (Juan) in reply to a questions about a cue sheet support in Guayadeque said: "No at this moment." && "This feature is in my to-do list."

I have submitted a feature request for a cue sheet support to the "Guayadeque: Idea Torrent" on SourceForge.net. Although the registration on SourceFroge.net is required if you would mind you can vote for and your vote can seriously help to get cue sheet support implemented to the Guayadeque music player and in this form you can give a valueable feedback to the author .

Thank you, Peter

PS: If you take a close look to a Guayadeque project: IMHO foobar2000 for Linux is comming in Guayadeque form!

Does Guayadeque support gapless playback & Replaygain? It won't build on my system & I'd like to know before I try to resolve it.

you may also try qmmp

Guayadeque is still in beta. I can speak only about the latest revision from frequently updated svn which I am using and in which (quote from ubuntuforums) "the replaygain is enabled by default and is read only for now". As for the gapless playback (quote): Now in svn revision 967 if you set the Crossfade fade out time to 0 it will play in gapless mode." Crossfade is currently under development.

Thanks for a tip viktor.

... "the replaygain is enabled by default and is read only for now" ... "Now in svn revision 967 if you set the Crossfade fade out time to 0 it will play in gapless mode ..."

Thanks. That makes it interesting to me, & one to monitor. CUEs, gapless, & Replaygain are frequently missing features in players on any OS & rarely seem to get added at later stages of development.

Try DeadBeef. http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

For years I've been installing wine just to use foobar2000 because I did not like any audio player in linux until I've found deadbeef.
It plays cuesheets, replaygain, audio formats: mp3, ogg vorbis, flac, ape, wv, wav, m4a, mpc, cd audio, and others, there are no gnome neither kde dependencies, gapless, etc.

There are a few things that should be better explain. For example, cover art. You need to add a column, enter a title (for ex. cover) and select type: Album Art.

The ram footprint is really minimal. If you are looking for a linux audio player very similar to foobar2000, this is it.

I just started using deadbeef this weekend and I like it. I’m not sure why I have so many problems with various players dropping audio on my Linux box, but deadbeef is rock steady. It even played the .iso.wv file (with all the track info from the cuesheet) that I downloaded in response to this thread. Very nice!

Of course, it’s not really a complete foobar replacement because it doesn’t have all the database stuff or audio conversion capability, but it seems like a very robust, lightweight player.

Nice find! DeaDBeeF's list of features is looking good
It only needs to add support for more language text encodings.

I just started using deadbeef this weekend and I like it. I’m not sure why I have so many problems with various players dropping audio on my Linux box, but deadbeef is rock steady. It even played the .iso.wv file (with all the track info from the cuesheet) that I downloaded in response to this thread. Very nice!

Of course, it’s not really a complete foobar replacement because it doesn’t have all the database stuff or audio conversion capability, but it seems like a very robust, lightweight player.

It could be a latency issue with the linux kernel. Many distros are too conservative - they favor server 'fair' behaviour . I find recompiling the kernel for low-latency resolves stuttering audio.

The settings are under processor and features:

CONFIG_PREEMPT=y
CONFIG_HZ_1000=y

Reduce disk IO : get rid of atime

http://kerneltrap.org/node/14148

Ah, that makes sense. I have not ventured into rebuilding my kernel, but once I upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 I will start messing around with that.

Funny you mention atime. I was recently indirectly involved with writing a file system from scratch, and the idea of implementing atime was not even considered! Very nice to know that it can be compiled out (I can't imagine a scenario where its overhead would justify its utility).

Thanks for the tips!

Reduce disk IO : get rid of atime

While you are at it, change the i/o scheduler to deadline  (Or noop if using SSD or hardware raid).

PD: To get rid of atime, use the noatime option in /etc/fstab (remove default/relatime) for each disk. To use the deadline scheduler, issue echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler in a startup script, such as /etc/rc.local (repeat for each disk in addition to sda).