I sometimes feel like information technology is just exactly like this.

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There’s loads of great (open source) software out there but connecting it together to streamline it and thence make it really effective is the killer.

One of the problems with information technology is the rate at which the subject matter changes. This captures it nicely!

A list of valves in a valve radio I’m repairing at the moment.

ECC85

R.F. Double Triode intended for use as R.F. or I.F. amplifier and self oscillating mixer.

ECH81

Triode / Heptode for various purposes in F.M., A.M. and T.V. receivers.

EF89

Pentode with variable mutual conductance for use as an R.F. or I.F. amplifier.

EABC80

Triple Diode / Triode for F.M. or F.M./A.M. broadcast receivers and for video and audio signal detection in T.V. receivers.

EC92

Triode intended for use as an oscillator, mixer or amplifier in F.M. and television receivers.

EL84

Output Pentode rated for 12W anode dissipation, primarily intended for use in A.C. mains operated equipment.

EM80

Tuning indicator for A.M. receivers.

I ripped a CD to mp3 files and tried to play them using Universal Media Streamer to my Yummyha CRX-N560D stereo, but it kept coming up with “unknown format” on the stereo display.  Oddly, other mp3 files were just fine.

Solution?  My stereo only plays mp3 with a bitrate of up to 256kb/s and these files were ripped at 320kb/s.  So how to change that?  Convert them using avconv and liblame to reduce the sampling frequency. Noice!

First install the Linux libav tools thus..

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

Now convert. This command resamples the songs, e.g. song-name.mp3 to song-name-out.mp3 at 256k and then moves song-name-out.mp3 to song-name.mp3 thus overwriting the original.

for f in ./*.mp3; do avconv -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 256k "${f%.*}-out.mp3" && mv "${f%.*}-out.mp3" "${f%.*}.mp3"; done

The finished result is that all the files are there but now sampled at 256kb/s and play perfectly on my stereo. Sweet.