Audio quality of Rhythmbox is poor

[stchman]

I'm also not all that satisfied with the quality of rhythmbox. I have a 10 band equalizer plugin, but it almost sounds as if it makes it worse for certain songs (same sort of thing, scratchy, background noise almost), and without the EQ it just sounds flat. I have a dual boot with XP, and I use media monkey for music in XP, and it definitely sounds a lot better. As for switching to other media players in ubuntu, I've tried exaile, but it was way slower than rhythmbox is for the size of my library (16000+). I've heard good things about Amarok, and songbird, but I haven't been able to really find out if they can handle a large library well or not. Anyone know?

Sound quality on my system using Rhythmbox is excellent.

Where did you get the equalizer plugin for Rhythmbox?

[abhiroopb]

I have been using Songbird for the past few days (ver 1.0) and the sound quality is amazing! MUCH better than rhythmbox. It is VERY buggy, and slow, however, the most important aspect (sound quality) is great!

Wish it was part of the repos, and supported iPod album art, but other than that its perfect!

[orange smartie]

I too have noticed a scratchiness in the sound quality of Rythmbox.I improved my sound quality in the audio control panel by lowering the PCM setting and raising the master volume. Seems to work. Don't know why!

[TrombaMarina]

You are hearing distortion from the preamp volume being set too high for your sound card. There is a little speaker icon in the right-hand side of the Rhythmbox buttons bar that allows you to set the preamp volume. Set it at exactly 49% and leave it there. Control the overall volume with the system volume control instead (mapped to the keyboard volume controls by default). The sound quality should be exactly the same as iTunes when no EQ is used (just figured this out myself).

iTunes has EQ and an option to automatically raise the volume of quiet songs which can make them hard to compare. Rhythmbox can do that too (it's ReplayGain compliant), but you enable it from GConf (System -> Administration -> Services, click "Unlock", put a check next to "Audio Settings Management"). After that, you may want to keep your Rhythmbox volume around 12%. If you use EQ (where is that plug-in?) with Rhythmbox, be careful not to set any frequency too loud. You might want to only cut frequencies, not increase, to avoid overdriving the preamp.

I prefer Rhythmbox to Songbird because it uses less system resources and sounds great (once you get it adjusted).

All that said, I'm looking forward to the sound system updates in Karmic Koala. Also, a system-wide EQ would be better than an application specific one because I use EQ to compensate for shortcomings in my headphones, soundcard, and speakers (or maybe to tune it to the room). I never use it per-song.

[expxe]

You are hearing distortion from the preamp volume being set too high for your sound card. There is a little speaker icon in the right-hand side of the Rhythmbox buttons bar that allows you to set the preamp volume. Set it at exactly 49% and leave it there. Control the overall volume with the system volume control instead (mapped to the keyboard volume controls by default). The sound quality should be exactly the same as iTunes when no EQ is used (just figured this out myself).

iTunes has EQ and an option to automatically raise the volume of quiet songs which can make them hard to compare. Rhythmbox can do that too (it's ReplayGain compliant), but you enable it from GConf (System -> Administration -> Services, click "Unlock", put a check next to "Audio Settings Management"). After that, you may want to keep your Rhythmbox volume around 12%. If you use EQ (where is that plug-in?) with Rhythmbox, be careful not to set any frequency too loud. You might want to only cut frequencies, not increase, to avoid overdriving the preamp.

I prefer Rhythmbox to Songbird because it uses less system resources and sounds great (once you get it adjusted).

All that said, I'm looking forward to the sound system updates in Karmic Koala. Also, a system-wide EQ would be better than an application specific one because I use EQ to compensate for shortcomings in my headphones, soundcard, and speakers (or maybe to tune it to the room). I never use it per-song.

good advice

[MooPi]

Maybe it's time to go old school and try a console player like "cplay". I use it exclusively without issue but I rip all my songs and music directly from CD. and I know the quality is superb. Small footprint and easy to learn commands.

[brookie]

Any idea how to do this in Karmic?

ReplayGain[/URL] compliant), but you enable it from GConf (System -> Administration -> Services, click "Unlock", put a check next to "Audio Settings Management"). After that, you may want to keep your Rhythmbox volume around 12%. If you use EQ (where is that plug-in?) with Rhythmbox, be careful not to set any frequency too loud. You might want to only cut frequencies, not increase, to avoid overdriving the preamp.

[abhiroopb]

I use amarok which is amazing. Unfortunately, my speakers like to hiss at me constantly!..http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=925739

[SR_ELPIRATA]

Only times Ive had audio problems were when I moved to 9.10 with a clean install. To me Rhythmbox sounds excellent (its connected to my home theather system) and even playing 128kbs files sound very nice.

ELP

[arthur.afarias]

You are hearing distortion from the preamp volume being set too high for your sound card. There is a little speaker icon in the right-hand side of the Rhythmbox buttons bar that allows you to set the preamp volume. Set it at exactly 49% and leave it there. Control the overall volume with the system volume control instead (mapped to the keyboard volume controls by default). The sound quality should be exactly the same as iTunes when no EQ is used (just figured this out myself).

iTunes has EQ and an option to automatically raise the volume of quiet songs which can make them hard to compare. Rhythmbox can do that too (it's ReplayGain compliant), but you enable it from GConf (System -> Administration -> Services, click "Unlock", put a check next to "Audio Settings Management"). After that, you may want to keep your Rhythmbox volume around 12%. If you use EQ (where is that plug-in?) with Rhythmbox, be careful not to set any frequency too loud. You might want to only cut frequencies, not increase, to avoid overdriving the preamp.

I prefer Rhythmbox to Songbird because it uses less system resources and sounds great (once you get it adjusted).

All that said, I'm looking forward to the sound system updates in Karmic Koala. Also, a system-wide EQ would be better than an application specific one because I use EQ to compensate for shortcomings in my headphones, soundcard, and speakers (or maybe to tune it to the room). I never use it per-song.

Good advice! I just adjusted the rhithmbox sound volume for something close to 50% and everything worked perfectly.