A GNU/Linux Audio Distro

Play, rip, compress, edit, synthesize and stream your music collection, all using Linux. No need to install anything on your hard disk, run everything off a CD. This is the live CD distribution of Agnula. Agnula bundles a plethora of applications that will let you play and heartily tinker your audio files. 

To start, you will need to download the CD ISO file of the live CD from http://download.agnula.org/

1.1/1.1.1/demudi-live-cd_1.1.1.iso

Next, burn the ISO on a CDR. For this, you can use Nero on Windows. On Linux, you can burn the ISO using cdrecord. For this, issue:

cdrecord -scanbus 

This will produce an output as: 1,0,0 100) 'HL-DT-ST' 'RW/DVD GCC-4241N' 'A100' Removable CD-ROM

1,1,0 101) *



1.2.0 102) *

Note down the device number (1,0,0 in this case) against your CD writer and then issue the following to burn the ISO.

cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=4 demudi-live-cd_1.1.1.iso

Substitute 1,0,0 with the device number that you noted down from the previous command. 

Next, boot from the Agnula CD and after a few minutes you will be welcomed by a polished desktop- call it your audio

workshop. 

Note: Many have been complaining about MP3 support being dropped in XMMS (the Winamp clone for Linux), which is bundled with PCQLinux and Fedora. But with Agnula you get a full-fledged XMMS which can play all your MP3s. Launch it through

K>Audio>Players>XMMS. 

Burn MP3 to audio CD



If you have a couple of favorite MP3s on your hard disk but your car music system can only play audio CDs, you can now burn an audio CD out of them. We assume the following typical setup. Your computer has Windows installed and the MP3s are lying in the directory c:\mp3s. You have a CD-ROM and a CD writer drive on the computer. Pop in the Agnula live CD into the drive and boot your computer off it. To burn the MP3 as an audio CD, we will use K3b-an intuitive graphical CD burner application. When Agnula uploads, right click on the icon labeled 'Hard Disk Partition ' and click on Mount.

Launch K3b by clicking on K>Audio>CD Utils> Burners>K3b. On K3b, click on File>New Project>New Audio CD Project. On the left pane, click on

Root>mnt>hda1.

You get a plethora of audio applications with Agnula desktop

This will show the directories and files on your Windows partition. Click on mp3s (the directory containing the MP3 files). Drag and drop the MP3 files onto the bottom frame. Pop in a CDR in the CD writer drive and click on the Burn button, located at the bottom right of K3b. 

K3b should be able to auto detect your CD writer drive and the burning should be smooth. But in case of any errors, specify the CD writer device through Settings> Configure K3b>Devices. 

Once the audio CD is ready, you can test play it on Agnula using KsCD (K>Audio>CD Utils>KsCD. If the audio tracks don't show up, click on 'Configure CD Player' on the player. Click on CD Player and for the CD-ROM device type in /dev/cdrom1. 

Rip from audio CDs



Ogg Vorbis format is similar to the MP3 format, the main difference being the former is non-proprietary and free. To rip a track on an audio CD into Ogg Vorbis format, pop in the audio CD in the second CD-ROM or writer drive. Click on K>Audio>CD Utils>Rippers> grip. This will launch an easy to use audio CD ripper named Grip. Grip can rip as well as encode/convert the ripped audio into MP3. No need to fire a separate application to encode. On Grip, click on Config>CD. For the CD-ROM device specify /dev/cdrom1. Click on Tracks. Then click on 'Scan Disc Contents' to see the audio tracks on the CD. Click on the desired track (you can click on the Play button to play the selected track). Click on the Rip tab and then click on the buttons Rip+Encode. The ripped Ogg Vorbis files will be in the directory mp3 under/ramdisk/home/knoppix. 

Stream your music



Streaming MP3s requires two pieces of software-one is the server and second is the client. The client feeds the server with the music file. Agnula has a graphical client called Muse. Using Muse with an audio streaming server such as Icecast, you can stream MP3s and Ogg Vorbis across the network. Download the Icecast RPM from http://icecast. org/download.php. Install it on PCQLinux using:

rpm -ivh icecast-2.1.0-1.i386.rpm

Login as non-root user and start Icecast as:

icecast -c /etc/icecast.xml

In Agnula, launch Muse by clicking on the K>Audio>Streaming>Muse. On Muse, click on 'Lets Stream' icon. For filename, click on Browse and select the file to stream. For host, enter the IP address of the Linux machine running Icecast. Specify 'hackme' for the password, which is the default password specified in /etc/icecast.xml configuration file. Now click on Connect. 

Launch Winamp or XMMS and specify the URL: http://:8000/ live. Here the Linux machine is the one running the Icecast server and /live is the mount point (default) specified in Muse. 

Besides the above mentioned applications of common use, Agnula bundles lots of synthesizers and sound editors. Audio enthusiasts can feel free to explore this Swiss army knife distribution. 

Shekhar Govindarajan



IT4Enterprise