From e8ec5ccd960fd53ffdb876ac44ed89ddcbc54d98 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: curben <2809763-curben@users.noreply.gitlab.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 22:24:09 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] post: add rhythmbox-aac

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 source/_posts/rhythmbox-aac.md | 43 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 source/_posts/rhythmbox-aac.md

diff --git a/source/_posts/rhythmbox-aac.md b/source/_posts/rhythmbox-aac.md
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+---
+title: Play AAC-encoded music in Rhythmbox
+excerpt: Don't bother gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad, use gstreamer1.0-libav instead
+date: 2019-09-26
+tags:
+- media
+---
+
+Recently I just switched from Foobar2000 (which requires Wine to run in Linux) to Rhythmbox. The first issue I encountered was it didn't add AAC-encoded songs when I set it to scan library. A quick search for solution resulted in installation of `gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad`. While it did resolve the issue, but it also installed many packages:
+
+```
+libgupnp-igd-1.0-4
+libopenal1
+libnice10
+libsrtp2-1
+libvo-aacenc0
+libofa0
+libusrsctp1
+libsrt1
+libwildmidi2
+libopenal-data
+libfluidsynth1
+libmplex2-2.1-0
+libmpeg2encpp-2.1-0
+libsoundtouch1
+libmjpegutils-2.1-0
+libvo-amrwbenc0
+libspandsp2
+libmodplug1
+libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0
+```
+
+Guest what, most are not even related to decoding AAC. In searching for leaner solution, I purged them and tried install `libvo-aacenc0` only. But now Rhythmbox couldn't play AAC, at the same time it suggested installing `gstreamer1.0-libav` or `gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad`. So, I proceed to install `gstreamer1.0-libav` and AAC can be played once again. Rhythmbox still can play it even after I purged `libvo-aacenc0`, so it's not needed after all.
+
+To make sure not only Rhythmbox can play AAC, but also recognise it during library scan, I also reset the library by removing "~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml". No issue on that.
+
+One thing still puzzling me is that `gstreamer1.0-libav` is not actually an AAC decoder itself, (my understanding is that) it acts as a bridge between gstreamer and libav/ffmpeg to enable apps that utilize the former to encode/decode using the later, without additional code changes. The actual decoder I believe is in one of the following packages:
+
+- libavcodec58
+- libavformat58
+- libfaad2
+
+In my case, the above packages are already installed beforehand, perhaps shipped by default in Ubuntu (maybe not the libfaad2). So if Rhythmbox still can't play AAC after installing `gstreamer1.0-libav`, just make sure those packages are there.