Ubuntu

scrambled sound when listening to internet radio

Asked by zm1

Since I upgraded the system from Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron the sound has been scrambled when listening to internet radio with firefox. The Rythmbox is installed on my PC.

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Philipp Edelmann
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Philipp Edelmann (tukss) said : 		#1

Is it only scrambled with Internet radio or also with other (local) music, like in Rhythmbox? Is it Flash based Internet Radio or does it use an embedded Totem player?

The first thing that comes to my mind is the introduction of Pulse Audio with Hardy. You could try to go to System/Preferences/Sound and check whether everything is set to Autodetect or Pulse Audio.

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zm1 (zm-poczta) said : 		#2

It is not scrambled with local music (mp3). Actually I do not know how to check whether it is Flash based Internet Radio or if it uses an embedded Totem player but here is the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml#top
I tried to make sure that everything is set to Autodetect or Pulse Audio in System/Preferences/Sound but it did not help.

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Philipp Edelmann (tukss) said : 		#3

Ok, I tried it and I have exactly the same problem. It looks like they embed a Realaudio stream, which is then played by Firefox via the Totem plugin. It seems to be a problem with gstreamer as gst-launch has the same problem. Maybe this is related to this http://thomb.livejournal.com/163283.html

Here is a workaround:
If you click “Listen using stand-alone Real Player” and open the link in mplayer, it works for me.
You could also try using totem-xine instead of the standard totem-gstreamer but that might introduce other regressions.

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zm1 (zm-poczta) said : 		#4

How to "click "Listen using stand-alone Real Player" and open the link in mplayer"?
I also installed totem-xine on my system but do not know how to apply it instead of the standard totem-gstreamer.

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Best Philipp Edelmann (tukss) said : 		#5

Once you have installed totem-xine you can run “sudo update-alternatives --config totem” and pick totem-xine there. After restarting Firefox it worked for me. Be aware that you might need the w32codecs package installed. The easiest way to get that is via the Medibuntu repository. Instructions can be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

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zm1 (zm-poczta) said : 		#6

Thanks Tux, that solved my question.