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Since audio applications are fairly intuitive, we will only document items which we think are of interest to the reader and leave out the most evident ones. |
XMMS stands for X Multimedia System. With it you can play a variety of audio sources, such as regular music CDs, as well as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.
To launch XMMS[11], access the main menu and choose -> -> .
The upper part of the window is called the title bar. The buttons at the right-hand end of the title bar do the following:
Let's look at the different sliders. The one beneath the bit rate info is the volume slider. To its right is the left-right balance slider. The longest slider is used to browse through the current audio track, and is equivalent to the in-track rewind and forward functions.
To the left of the time display and the spectrum analyzer are 5 letters. Here are the letters and what they represent:
In order to play your audio tracks, simply click on the Play button. A window will pop up from which you can browse to the files or directories containing the files you want to listen to. Clicking on the Eject button does the same thing.
You can change the look of XMMS by altering its skin[12]. To do so, open the Preferences menu and select Skin Browser. You can also press Alt-S.
The Skin Browser selects the (none) skins by default. Clicking on one of the skins will give you a real-time look at it.
If you wish to add skins to your Skin Browser, you can do so by visiting sites such as the XMMS site or the Customize site.
Once you have found a skin you like on a web site, download it into the ~/.xmms/Skins directory. Open the Skins Browser and XMMS will be wearing that new skin.
Aumix is a very small yet useful application which allows you to control your sound card's mixer and volume.
As a matter of fact, you might not be able to hear any sound from XMMS or KsCD. Adjusting Aumix will usually solve that problem.
To launch the sound mixer application, select -> -> .
The File menu lets you access the basic functions which allow you to load or save mixer settings. The available menu items are:
The View menu allows you to choose which components will be shown in the Aumix window. For instance, if you never use a microphone, you may choose not to view that entry. Clicking in the check-box next to Mic in the View pull-down menu would add or delete the Mic choice from the list. The Mute menu lets you completely mute the sound.
[11] The xmms package must be installed. Please refer to Chapter 19, Package Management through Rpmdrake.
[12] The xmms-skins package must be installed. Please refer to Chapter 19, Package Management through Rpmdrake.