In this tutorial I will first introduce you to Aqualung and then I will show you how this unique tool can help to organize your music.

Features

Aqualung offers a number of unique features:

• Audio CDs can be played back and ripped with on-the-fly conversion to WAV, FLAC, or OGG, or MP3.
• Subscribing to RSS and Atom audio podcasts is supported (with automatic download.)
• Almost all sample-based, uncompressed formats (e.g. WAV, AIFF, AU etc.) are supported.
• OSS, ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, sndio driver support.
• Exporting to external formats from Playlist and Music Store.
• Gap-free playback.
• Convert sample rates.
• Tabbed playlists.
• Comment support.
• Control running instance from command line.
• RVA (relative volume adjustment) control.

As you can see, there are features that make Aqualung more in line with serious listeners than your average player. But even though Aqualung has a bevy of features, don’t expect it to have the interface of, say, a Songbird, or an iTunes. Instead of such a UI, Aqualung keeps everything on the simple side. It’s easy to use, and quick to navigate.

Installation

Aqualung can be found in just about any Linux package management system. You can fire up Synaptic, search for “aqualung” (no quotes), and have the application installed in no time.

Managing your music

Now comes the fun part. Aqualung can do the standard playlist just fine. But what Aqualung also does is Music Stores. A Music store is a database of music you have assigned a title. The philosophy behind the Music Store is that it allows you to have more than one music library from which you can listen to music or create playlists. Think of the Music Stores as Master Playlists. So let’s say you have more then one user that uses one machine. Each user can have a Music Store from which to populate play lists and so on. So how do you create a music store? Simple. Let’s walk through the process.

Music stores

Figure 1

Aqualung works with two windows: The main window and the Music Store window (See Figure 1). If you right click on a blank spot in the Music Store window a menu will appear. From that new menu select Create Empty Store. When you do this, a new window will open where you configure your new store (see Figure 2).

Figure2

The information you need to fill out for your new store is:

• Visible Name: The name you want to give your new store.
• Filename: This store will create an xml file and you have to set the location where this file will be stored.
• Comments: Any comments you wish to add to the store.

Once you have filled out this information, click OK and your store will appear in the Music Store window. Now you have to add music to your new store. To do this right click the store listing and you will notice a number of possibilities. You can:

• Add the store to a playlist.
• Build/Update store from file system.
• Add new artists to store.

and more.  Since there are no files in this music store it might be best to select Build/Update store from file system. When you select this entry a new window will open offering you two choices:

• Directory driven: Follows directory structure. Artists are added on an album basis.
• Independent: Recursive search from the root directory. Artists are added on file basis.

The best choice is Directory Driven. Using this will ensure a better organized store. This, of course, helps to have a fairly well organized file system. If your file system is organized in the iTunes fashion (where all files are randomly named and placed in directories like F00, F01, F02, etc) you might as well go with the second option.

Figure 3

The difference between the two is better understood by looking at the sample shown in Figure 3. In Figure 3 you can see the top portion is a Music Store that was created using the Directory driven choice, whereas the bottom portion was created using the Independent choice.

Now, how do you use this? Simple You can go through any of the music stores and add music to a play list by either double clicking the song or right clicking the song and selecting add to play list.

You can also have multiple play lists open at once. To do this follow these steps:

1. Go to the main window.
2. Right click on an empty spot.
3. Select New Tab.

You now two tabs open where you can have two playlists.

Final thoughts

This tutorial really only scratches the surface of what you can do with Aqualung. In later articles we will deal with some of the other features that help to make this application unique in a world of same ol’ same ol’.

Explorer and Burn supports the two image formats iso and img which can also be burned directly by selecting them in Windows Explorer. The program requires the Image Mastering API v2.0 can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Imapi 2.0 is included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 which means that only Windows XP users have to download the additional component.

Explore and Burn will display a wizard with a few DVD burning options that include specifying a disk burning speed and name. The disk can be finalized in the same menu. The program supports all major CD and DVD disk types and can burn single-session and multi-session discs with ISO-9660, Joliet and UDF file systems.

Explore And Burn is a hassle free DVD burning software that should be sufficient for many disk burning purposes. A few additional options would make it even more useful. This includes recognizing DVD video folders or the ability to burn audio disks by selecting audio files. Explore And Burn can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

ImgBurn was recently updated to version 2.5 and the developer has published a huge list of changes, fixes and additions to that version. The program stays the same at its core which means it is still the lightweight DVD burning software that can be installed or used as a (unofficial) portable version instead.

Below are some of the more important changes introduced in this version of ImgBurn:

• An ‘Advanced’ input mode to build mode where you have total control over the layout of the disc and can add new folders, change names etc. (i.e. you’re no longer limited to burning an existing folder structure on your hard disc as-is)
• ImgBurn now adds itself to the context menu’s ‘Open With’ submenu for files it’s associated with.
• Support for burning CCD files.
• Support for building images using the ‘MODE2/FORM1/2352′ data type. (previously it only supported ‘MODE1/2048′)
• A check to ensure all the DVD Video files in a sequence are present. (i.e. it’ll prompt if VTS_XX_1.VOB and VTS_XX_3.VOB are present but VTS_XX_2.VOB isn’t)
• Detection of attempts to build Vista style OS installation discs (via the ‘sources\install.wim’ file) and the relevant prompting for conflicting settings, failing to make it bootable etc (same as an ‘I386′ install disc).

The new version of the DVD burning software can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. It has a size of only 2 Megabytes, comes with many language translation files (e.g. German, Chinese, Russian, French and Spanish) and is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

ImgBurn via Download Squad

To burn a disk image a software is needed that is capable of doing so. One of the best free disk burning applications is ImgBurn. ImgBurn is fast, lightweight and supports many of the more popular disk image formats including ISO, BIN and IMG among others. It is also compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of all Windows operating systems since the release of (and including) Windows 95.

It furthermore is capable of burning disk images to CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD DVD. In other words: ImgBurn should cover the needs of 99.9% of all users.

One of the useful features of ImgBurn is its context menu integration. A option to burn the disk image will automatically appear if a user right-clicks a supported disk image file.

The selected disk image will be loaded directly into the disk burning software program with the option to burn it immediately if a blank disk has been inserted into the disk writing drive.

All that is left to do is to click on the icon in the lower left of the window that is opening automatically. This will start the disk burning process. Users can optionally change the write speed settings and amount of copies in the left side or activate test mode or verification. That’s all there is to it to burn a disk image.

We had an ask the readers article just a short while ago about the best free burning software that might be of interest as well.