I loved Amarok. I am not very impressed with Amarok 2. I was just watching my OSD and saw that one of my Billy Joel songs was tagged with information from Great Big Sea. The title was right. The album and artist were wrong. The artist displayed is one artist too low on the drop down menu for the artist tag. What gives? How did half of my music collection change tags?

Next, this is a beef I've had for a while, assuming it would be fixed in the next revision. I have an Audigy 2 sound card, I run Ubuntu Jaunty. When I first boot up, Amarok opens and starts playing music in 2.0. I shut down Amarok, and open it again, and it plays in 5.1. Why is this, how do I fix it so it always plays in 5.1? I haven't seen editable settings anywhere.

Thanks.

First of all, what Amarok version are you talking about? We only just released Amarok 2.2, and I can't reproduce any tagging error here.

Then, sound problems are most likely not an Amarok problem, but rather related to either phonon, xine, gstreamer or pulseaudio. Amarok doesn't handle sound itself, it lets phonon do this, using either the xine or the gstreamer backend. Since you don't give any information about it I only can guess here.

So please, if you want us to help you, specify the exact version of Amarok, the distribution version, KDE version and sound engine you are using.

Hey, thanks for being willing to help!

I am running Amarok 2.0.2, build date April 17, 2009 with KDE 4.2.2 on Ubuntu 9.04 with the latest updates. I checked some other posts and I have phonon, xine, and gstreamer installed. I don't know how to figure out which sound engine I'm using, though. I use the ALSA mixer to control all of my settings, which I believe runs with xine.

Right, now we can make it easier:

you first of all should upgrade your Amarok version, 2.1.1 is available in the jaunty-backports repository since quite some time, and Amarok 2.2.0 has just been released and will be available in the upcoming Kubuntu 9.10. Your version, Amarok 2.0.2 is pretty old and outdated, and there were a number of bugs which are solved in either 2.1.1 or the newest version.

As for the sound engine, you can access it through the system settings menu in KDE -> Multimedia. There you can see your sound cards, and the backend can be set in the "Backend" tab. We strongly recommend to use the xine backend, as the gstreamer seems to have more bugs. You will also need the libxine1-ffmpeg package to be able to play mp3 files with the xine backend.

Alright. I will upgrade my Amarok. That sounds like it will fix plenty of problems.

I am running a GNOME desktop environment, so I am not certain how to find my Multimedia settings.

Thanks again for your help.

You would need to install kdebase-runtime to have the systemsettings modules around.

Thanks guys! Ubuntu may get the boot just because the KDE forum is so helpful by comparison! I upgraded to 2.2 with this website's directions: http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/250/insta ... o-do-steps. Then I set the default output card to my Audigy 2. It works beautifully. I see you added a few features back that I missed, like the amazing tray icon with the play/pause notification AND the blue/grayed out part indicating how much of the song is left. 2.2 gets my vote, Thanks again!

Johnius wrote:Thanks guys! Ubuntu may get the boot just because the KDE forum is so helpful by comparison! I upgraded to 2.2 with this website's directions: http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/250/insta ... o-do-steps. Then I set the default output card to my Audigy 2. It works beautifully. I see you added a few features back that I missed, like the amazing tray icon with the play/pause notification AND the blue/grayed out part indicating how much of the song is left. 2.2 gets my vote, Thanks again!

Great, that's good to hear. Have fun

I'm still having trouble with it starting in 5.1. I've reset the default card to every one that supports 5.1, have xine as the engine, then I restart the computer, and no 5.1 until I close Amarok and open it again. Does anyone know why?

Switched to Kubuntu. Checked some settings. Messed with the mixer. Queued Handel's "Hallelujah." Rebooted. Basked in the glory of 5.1 audio starting itself with the computer.

* Aside * Still experiencing some problems with the tags: Fiddler on the Roof tagged with Jimi Hendrix...

Well, that tagging problem should be easy to solve by a complete rescan, providing you talk about Amarok 2.2 of course.

Great! Yeah, I'm up to Amarok 2.2. I had the nightly builds running before I switched to Kubuntu, now just straight 2.2.0 on KDE 4.3.2. Thanks for the tip.

I'm having some issues with the OSD, too, not anything big, but it doesn't refresh when the songs transition. When I force the switch, skip, last track, pause/play, the OSD works just fine.

The OSD issue should be fixed in 2.2.1.

Awesome. It's probably the only glitch in the greatest music player ever, so it's not a bother. Not to mention the support for it is phenomenal.