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I can't find a method to get sound from any music player I have on Ubuntu 12.04. Installing the program I downloaded the ISO, made the disc and loaded the program to one half of the hard disc.The other half is Windows XP. All my music programs and players work fine in XP, but those I loaded into Ubuntu won't work. Also. attempts to play an audio CD fails. Here's a specific: CD in the tray, VLC player appears on screen, tracks appear, track 1 selected, no sound. When volume increased, only static is heard. I cannot use the command system as yet so the fix must be done via GUI. Thanks. I found the fix among previous threads: a muted item on the sound card. I can now play an audio disc in VLC from the tray. So far so good.

I want to establish a library of music in Ubuntu, starting with ripping from my favorite discs,and then downloading from the internet as I have done in Windows XP. I have Brasero and Sound Juicer installed in the Software Centre, but can't figure out how to open either of them.

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  • I know you don't want to use the command line, but ... If you (install and) run alsamixer from the command line, it brings up a primitive (curses based) graphical display which lets you see and adjust all your audio inputs and outputs. Once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts the program uses, it's really quick and easy. I use it whenever my audio isn't working the way I want it to as one of the first steps in finding out what's wrong. It's also the only way I've found that I can adjust the balance between my speakers when they aren't placed ideally for where I'm listening from.
    – Joe
    Aug 3, 2014 at 0:20
  • The audio inputs and outputs shown in Software Centre, Sound and Video, all check out ok. GUI method I use is fine for my purposes here.Two Players work fine in Windows XP.
    – Luxmana
    Aug 9, 2014 at 20:10

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I use KDE, so it works a bit differently than what you have, but I sometimes have the same problems. Sometimes a program gets installed that doesn't place its entry in your menu system where you expect it to be (or, for manual installs, sometimes doesn't get added to the menus at all.)

Neither of these packages are installed by default on my system, so you may need to open your package manager and install them if they are not already installed. That should automatically add them to your menus as part of the install process.

The next thing to do is see if your start menu has any kind of search option and use that to find your application. The two apps you mention are established ones and should be in the menu in a category called something like Multimedia.

For your two applications, you shouldn't need to do this, but you can always edit your start menu and add entries for any application you want, even for something as simple as a shell script (which you may learn to write in the future). I do this all the time, but I can't give you the specifics because what I do in KDE won't match your desktop.

Hate to keep bringing up the command system, but regardless of what's going on in your menu system, if you open a terminal and just type

brasero &

OR

sound-juicer &

That's all you need to start it (gui and all) if it's installed correctly (and, if it isn't, you'll get some error messages that are invisible from the gui - which you can use to search the web for a solution or to post to a forum like this to get help for your specific issue.)

The "&" at the end of the command isn't strictly necessary, but it does free up the terminal so you can use it for something else without first closing brasero or whatever other program you are running.

As for music libraries, I would strongly recommend reading up on how the various music players like Amarok, Clementine, Rhythmbox manage your collections. Or, just try them out with a very small collection and make sure everything works as desired before adding a lot more material.

If you figure out a good way to organize all your music folders and all the id3 or other tags in your music files before you start building a large collection, it will save you a ton of time from having to reorganize or re-tag the collection later. I learned this one the hard way.

You should also check this out with regard to any standalone music players like mp3 players you may have. The ones I use primarily organize everything using the id3 tags and when those are messed up, you can end up with a bunch of tracks from multiple albums listed as by Unknown Artist playing in alphabetical order instead of in the original order.

One other note (IMHO): If possible, store your music (and, especially video) files somewhere other than in your root or home partition.

These things use a lot of storage and tend to keep growing as you add more content. If they get too big, they can fill up the partition they're stored on. If it's root, then Linux can run out of room and become non-functional. If it's home (and home isn't on the same partition as root), then your applications and some of the system programs may not have room to work and that's almost as bad.

I make my root and (separate) home partitions relatively small (around 30GB each) and take all the space that's left and make it a partition just for data. If that fills up, it fills up, but it doesn't stop anything else from working.

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  • Brasero and Rhythmbox icons do appear in the Launcher . I successfully ripped an audio CD with Sound Juicer,and all tracks appear in Rhythmbox and VLC. But when a track is selected in either player and Play button clicked, the progress bar moves and the time-elapsed clock activates, but no sound occurs.
    – Luxmana
    Aug 9, 2014 at 20:19
  • OK. Does anything else make sound on your computer (under Linux)? Do you hear a sound when the desktop manager starts? I know KDE plays one, so maybe your desktop does too. Can you play some audio/videos like those on YouTube in your browser? Usually, sound works as a whole. Either everything or nothing has sound - except for some players that have their own volume controls which can be muted. If I accidentally switch my sound profile to use HDMI output when HDMI isn't connected, then I have no sound. It may be something like that or having Mute selected somewhere.
    – Joe
    Aug 12, 2014 at 5:25
  • Just saw your comment under the question. If your overall audio is OK, then the most likely thing is that your volume is turned all the way down or muted somewhere for the apps that have the problem.
    – Joe
    Aug 12, 2014 at 5:33
  • Sound was absent from all apps I tried. However, after checking all inputs and outputs again for the third time and found them all in order, I decided to open Libre fm as a test and sound was present! Tried Rhythmbox and VLC Player and they were fine as well. So problen solved, but I cannot say what the problem was. Finger-trouble? Did I miss something checking the I/Os? I may never know.
    – Luxmana
    Aug 14, 2014 at 20:59
  • Glad it works! I really dislike that when it happens to me because I don't know if it will come back. Still, don't look a gift horse in the mouth! Sometimes, seemingly unrelated updates and upgrades will reinitialize things and make problems go away.
    – Joe
    Aug 16, 2014 at 5:58

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