Tuesday 28 November 2017

A useful configuration file for abcde

If you're here, you probably know what this is. I like using abcde ("a better CD encoder", apparently) to encode my CD collection for storage on my laptop/NAS, and playback on various devices and media players. I like to tag my music using Musicbrainz, so I changed that setting.

I thought about the formats that might be useful, for anyone wanting to archive their CD collection. FLAC is a given, I think, if your music is important to you, and you want to lose absolutely none of the detail within the recording. Opus is included, because it's open and it's awesome, basically but, for wide device support, I've included MP3 and AAC as well. With the FDK encoder, AAC clearly sounds better than MP3 at the same bit rate, at least to my ears, but MP3 is more widely supported, and at the time of writing has recently become patent-free.

It would be quite easy to delete the formats that are not needed, and edit the file in any other way you choose. You know where to store it but, if you don't, I'd suggest reading the documentation. Me, I just copied the sample configuration file when I first started to use abcde (as you can see from the comments in the file), and have simply kept editing it over the years, as my needs have changed.

# System defaults for abcde version 2.2.x
# Nothing in this file is uncommented by default.
#
# If you wish to override these system-wide settings, create your own
# .abcde.conf file in your home directory.

# CDDB options
# Choose whether you want to use CDDB or Musicbrainz. Default is CDDB
CDDBMETHOD=musicbrainz

# If you wish to use a different CDDB server, edit this line.
# If you just wanted to use a proxy server, just set your http_proxy
# environment variable - wget will use it correctly.
#CDDBURL="http://freedb.freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi"

# The CDDB protocol level.
# Right now 5 is latin1 output and 6 is UTF8 encoding.
#CDDBPROTO=6

# The CDDB protocol requires hello information, including a valid username
# and hostname. If you feel paranoid about giving away such info, edit this
# line - the format is username@hostname.
#HELLOINFO="`whoami`@`hostname`"

# This controls the email address CDDB changes are submitted to.
#CDDBSUBMIT=freedb-submit@freedb.org

# The following options control whether or not fetched CDDB entries
# are cached locally in $CDDBLOCALDIR
CDDBCOPYLOCAL="y"
CDDBLOCALDIR="$HOME/.cddb"
CDDBLOCALRECURSIVE="y"

# If NOSUBMIT is set to y, then abcde will never prompt asking if you
# wish to submit your edited cddb file.
#NOSUBMIT=n

# If NOCDDBQUERY is set to y, then abcde will never even try to access
# the CDDB server; running abcde will automatically drop you into a
# blank cddb file to edit at your leisure.  This is the same as the
# -n option.  NOCDDBQUERY=y implies NOSUBMIT=y.
#NOCDDBQUERY=n

# Select here if you want to use the locally stored CDDB entries.
# This is useful if you do a lot of editing to those CDDB entries.
# Also, other tools like Grip store CDDB entries under $HOME/.cddb,
# so they can be reused when ripping CDs.
CDDBUSELOCAL="y"

# List, separated with a comma, the fields we want the parsing function to
# output. Defaults to YEAR and GENRE, for a complete list of fields provided by
# CDDB.
# The fields are not case sensitive. Actually, "y,g" will work as fine as "Y,G"
# or "YEAR, GENRE"
#SHOWCDDBFIELDS=year,genre

# Specify the style of encoder to use here -
# oggenc, vorbize - for OGGENCODERSYNTAX
# lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, xingmp3enc, mp3enc - for MP3ENCODERSYNTAX
# flac - the only supported for FLACENCODERSYNTAX at the moment
# speexenc - the only encoder for SPEEXENCODERSYNTAX
# mppenc - encoder for MPPENCODERSYNTAX
# default is a valid option for oggenc, lame, flac, speexenc and mppenc.
# Currently this affects the default location of the binary, the variable
# to pick encoder command-line options from, and where the options are
# given.
MP3ENCODERSYNTAX=lame                     # Specify encoder for MP3
FLACENCODERSYNTAX=flac                    # Specify encoder for FLAC
AACENCODERSYNTAX=fdkaac                   # Specify encoder for AAC
OPUSENCODERSYNTAX=opusenc                 # Specify encoder for Opus

# Specify the syntax of the normalize binary here - so far only 'normalize'
# is supported.
#NORMALIZERSYNTAX=default

# CD reader program to use - currently recognized options are 'cdparanoia',
# 'icedax', 'cdda2wav', 'dagrab', 'cddafs' (Mac OS X only) and 'flac'.
CDROMREADERSYNTAX=cdparanoia

# CUE reader syntax for the CUE reader program to use.
# abcde supports 2 CUE modes: 'mkcue' and 'abcde.mkcue' so you can set the
# MKCUE variable accordingly. The 'abcde.mkcue' uses an internal
# implementation, without the need of an external program.
#CUEREADERSYNTAX=default

# Specify the program to convert a CUE sheet back to a CD disc ID for CDDB queries.
# Select between '/path/to/cue2discid' (provided as an example) or
# 'abcde.cue2discid', implemented internaly.
#CUE2DISCID=abcde.cue2discid

# Keep the wav files after encoding. Set it to "y" and remove "clean" from
# the list of default actions, since we purge the temp directory as default.
#KEEPWAVS=n

# Track padding: force abcde to pad tracks using 0, so every song uses a two
# digit entry. If set to "y", even a single song encoding outputs a file like
# 01.my_song.ext
PADTRACKS=y

# Define if you want abcde to be non-interactive.
# Keep in mind that there is no way to deactivate it right now in the command
# line, so setting this option makes abcde to be always non-interactive.
#INTERACTIVE=n

# Specify 'nice'ness of the encoder, the CD reader and the distmp3 proc.
# This is a relative 'nice'ness (that is, if the parent process is at a
# nice level of 12, and the ENCNICE is set to 3, then the encoder will
# run with an absolute nice value of 15. Note also, that setting these
# to be empty will result in some default niceness increase (4 in tcsh
# and 10 using the bsdutils' nice).
#ENCNICE=10
#READNICE=10
#DISTMP3NICE=10

# Paths of programs to use
LAME=lame                                 # Path to MP3 encoder
FLAC=flac                                 # Path to FLAC encoder
FDKAAC=fdkaac                             # Path to the AAC encoder
OPUSENC=opusenc                           # Path to Opus encoder

#ID3=id3
#ID3V2=id3v2
#CDPARANOIA=cdparanoia
#CDDA2WAV=icedax
#CDDAFS=cp
#CDDISCID=cd-discid
#CDDBTOOL=cddb-tool
#EJECT=eject
#MD5SUM=md5sum
#DISTMP3=distmp3
#VORBISCOMMENT=vorbiscomment
#METAFLAC=metaflac
#NORMALIZE=normalize-audio
#CDSPEED=eject
#VORBISGAIN=vorbisgain
#MKCUE=mkcue
#MKTOC=cdrdao
#DIFF=diff

# Options to call programs with:

# If HTTPGET is modified, the HTTPGETOPTS options should also be defined
# accordingly. If HTTPGET is changed, the default options will be set,
# if HTTPGETOPTS is empty or not defined.
#HTTPGET=wget
# for fetch (FreeBSD): HTTPGETOPTS="-q -o -"
# for wget: HTTPGETOPTS="-q -nv -O -"
# for curl (MacOSX): HTTPGETOPTS="-f -s"
#HTTPGETOPTS="-q -O -"

LAMEOPTS='--cbr -q0 -b256 --strictly-enforce-ISO --add-id3v2 --clipdetect'                                         # Options for MP3
FLACOPTS="-f --best --qlp-coeff-precision-search"   # Options for FLAC
FDKAACENCOPTS='-b256'                               # Options for fdkaac
OPUSENCOPTS="--vbr --bitrate 128"                   # Options for Opus

CDPARANOIAOPTS="-z"
#NORMALIZEOPTS=

# Actions to take
# Comma-separated list of one or more of the following:
#  cddb,cue,read,normalize,encode,tag,move,playlist,clean,default
#   encode implies read
#   normalize implies read
#   tag implies cddb,read,encode
#   move implies cddb,read,encode,tag
#   playlist implies cddb
# An action can be added to the "default" action by specifying it along with
# "default", without having to repeat the default ones:
# ACTIONS=default,playlist
# The default action list (referenced as "default") is defined in the following
# comment:
ACTIONS=cddb,read,encode,tag,move,clean

# CD device you want to read from
# It can be defined as a singletrack flac file, but since it might change from
# file to file it makes little sense to define it here.
CDROM=/dev/sr1
# If we are using the IDE bus, we need CDPARANOIACDROMBUS defined as "d"
# If we are using the ide-scsi emulation layer, we need to define a "g"
#CDPARANOIACDROMBUS="d"

# If you'd like to make a default location that overrides the current
# directory for putting mp3's, uncomment this.
OUTPUTDIR="$HOME/Music/"

# Or if you'd just like to put the temporary .wav files somewhere else
# you can specify that here
WAVOUTPUTDIR="/tmp/"

# OUTPUTTYPE can be either "ogg", "mp3", "flac" or "spx", or a combination
# of them separated with ",": "ogg,mp3".
OUTPUTTYPE="mp3,flac,m4a,opus"  # Encode to 4 formats!

# Output filename format - change this to reflect your inner desire to
# organize things differently than everyone else :)
# You have the following variables at your disposal:
# OUTPUT, GENRE, ALBUMFILE, ARTISTFILE, TRACKFILE, and TRACKNUM.
# Make sure to single-quote this variable. abcde will automatically create
# the directory portion of this filename.
# NOTICE: OUTPUTTYPE has been deprecated in the OUTPUTFORMAT string.
# Since multiple-output was integrated we always append the file type
# to the files. Remove it from your user defined string if you are getting
# files like ".ogg.ogg".
OUTPUTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${TRACKFILE}'

# Like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs.
VAOUTPUTFORMAT='Various Artists/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKFILE}'

# Like OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT but for the ONEFILE rips.
#ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT=$OUTPUTFORMAT
#VAONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT=$VAOUTPUTFORMAT

# Define how many encoders to run at once. This makes for huge speedups
# on SMP systems. Defaults to 1. Equivalent to -j.
#MAXPROCS=2

# Support for systems with low disk space:
# n:    Default parallelization (read entire CD in while encoding)
# y:    No parallelization (rip, encode, rip, encode...)
LOWDISK=n

# If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which preserves relative
# volume differences between tracks of an album.
#BATCHNORM=n

# Enables nogap encoding when using the 'lame' encoder.
#NOGAP=y

# Set the playlist file location format. Uses the same variables and format
# as OUTPUTFORMAT. If the playlist is specified to be in a subdirectory, it
# will be created for you and the playlist will reference files from that
# subdirectory.
#PLAYLISTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}.${OUTPUT}.m3u'
# If you want to prefix every filename in a playlist with an arbitrary
# string (such as 'http://you/yourstuff/'), use this option
#PLAYLISTDATAPREFIX=''

#Like PLAYLIST{FORMAT,DATAPREFIX} but for Various Artists discs:
#VAPLAYLISTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}.${OUTPUT}.m3u'
#VAPLAYLISTDATAPREFIX=''

#This will give the playlist CR-LF line-endings, if set to "y".
#(some hardware players insist on CR-LF line-endings)
#DOSPLAYLIST=n

# Custom filename munging:
# By default, abcde will do the following to CDDB data to get a useful
# filename:
# * Translate colons to a space and a dash for Windows compatibility
# * Eat control characters, single quotes, and question marks
# * Translate spaces and forward slashes to underscores
# To change that, redefine the mungefilename function.
# mungefilename receives the CDDB data (artist, track, title, whatever)
# as $1 and outputs it on stdout.
mungefilename ()
{
    echo "$@" | sed s,:,\ -,g | tr \ / __ | tr '#*%' '___' | tr -d \'\"\?\[:cntrl:\]
}

# Custom genre munging:
# By default we just transform uppercase to lowercase. Not much of a fancy
# function, with not much use, but one can disable it or just turn the first
# Uppercase.
#mungegenre ()
#{
#    echo $CDGENRE | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]"
#}


# Custom pre-read function
# By default it does nothing.
# You can set some things to get abcde function in better ways:
# * Close the CD tray using eject -t (if available in eject and supported by
#   your CD device.
# * Set the CD speed. You can also use the built-in options, but you can also
#   set it here. In Debian, eject -x and cdset -x do the job.
# KEEP IN MIND that executables included in pre_read must be in your $PATH or
# you have to define them with full /path/to/binary
# Uncomment and substitute the ":" with your commands.
#pre_read ()
#{
#:
#}

# Custom post-read function
# By default it does nothing.
# You can set some things to get abcde function in better ways:
# * Store a copy of the CD TOC.
# KEEP IN MIND that executables included in post_read must be in your $PATH or
# you have to define them with full /path/to/binary
# Uncomment and substitute the ":" with your commands.
#post_read ()
#{
#:
#}

# post_encode
# By default it does nothing.
# You can set some things to get abcde function in better ways:
# * Move the resulting directory over the network
# * Compare results with a previously made run, for tests
# KEEP IN MIND that executables included in post_encode must be in your $PATH or
# you have to define them with full /path/to/binary
# Uncomment and substitute the ":" with your commands.
#post_encode ()
#{
#:
#}

# If you'd like to have abcde eject the cdrom after all the tracks have been
# read, uncomment the following line.
EJECTCD=y

# To encode on the remote machines foo, bar, baz, quux, and qiix, as well as
# on the local machine (requires distmp3 to be installed on local machine and
# distmp3host to be installed and running on all remote machines - see README)
#REMOTEHOSTS=foo,bar,baz,quux,qiix

# Set to 1,2, etc. to obtain some information about actions happening in the background
# Useful if you have a slow network or CDDB servers seem unresponsive.
#EXTRAVERBOSE=0