Linux Audio Player: Which one? / Why? Options

[Vir Rocha]

I'm a sometime Linux user who's like to make the switch once and for all. I've done some browsing and came up with a long list of audio apps, (Rhytmbox, Banshee, Exaile, etc.) some more promising than others.

While trying to figure out which ones are worth the download, I decided to ask the readers of this forum this question: What Linux audio player do you use and why?

Feel free to mention any problems or compatibility issues you've came across as well.

-- Vir

[gkmeyer]

Amarok.

1) last.fm integration
2) stores collection and play stats in a database
3) uses xine as a backend, which at this point is much more stable and configurable that gstreamer
4) based on qt/kde which is way better than gnome imho
5) has a great vibrant and active community, very active development squad (10 active committers with author level status)
6) smart playlists
7) dcop control
8) script support for extending the functioanlity of the app
9) eye-candy
10) wikipedia integration
11) lyric fetching
12) tag editing is easy
13) libvisual integration (got to have ProjectM)
14) easy cover art management
15) integrated support for my ifp-799 (also supports mtp, ipod and generic vfat devices)
16) daap support
17) automatic scoring system which has given me insight into my musicla tastes
18) 5 star user rating system
19) cover art fetching
20) great podcast support

oh, and did I say it can run on gnome with just qt and kdelibs installed, no kde is necessary.

This post has been edited by gkmeyer: Oct 5 2006, 17:16

[cabbagerat]

Amarok.

I second this one.

If you don't like Amarok, then Quod Libet is an excellent choice, too. While it lacks many of Amarok's more advanced features, it's tag editing and library are very good indeed. You should give Quod Libet and Amarok a try and see which you like more.

[iGold]

MPD (Music Player Daemon)

- Gapless playback (and for LAME mp3 files).
- ReplayGain support (and for ID3v2 tagged MP3).
- MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC/MP4, Musepack, FLAC, Wav, MOD formats support.
- Small memory requirements (has no UI at all because of 'daemon' nature).
- Many frontends (from command-line to Gnome/KDE apps).
- Last.FM support throught 3rd paty program (like lastfmsubmitd).

[seanyseansean]

MPD (Music Player Daemon)

- Gapless playback (and for LAME mp3 files).
- ReplayGain support (and for ID3v2 tagged MP3).
- MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC/MP4, Musepack, FLAC, Wav, MOD formats support.
- Small memory requirements (has no UI at all because of 'daemon' nature).
- Many frontends (from command-line to Gnome/KDE apps).
- Last.FM support throught 3rd paty program (like lastfmsubmitd).

I second this, MPD is fantastic. Amarok is nice but it's no good if you're sat away from the PC like on a home theatre PC because it requires lots of mousing around. I can control MPD from my PDA, laptop or even a Windows PC.

If only MPD supported embedded cue sheets and selectable outputs / playlists at once i'd be a happy camper.

Funnily enough though no matter how nice the different clients for MPD are I always go back to using the command line ncmpc instead as it's sooooo fast. I even use it on my Windows laptop through putty.

[Vir Rocha]

Nice. Thanks guys. I'd never heard of either Quod Libet or MPD before this. Quod Libet is looking particularly nice since there is a rumor that it supports cue-sheets?

I guess my main problem is that as a Foobar lover I'm a bit dismayed by the iTunes-iness of all the newer players. I guess I'm just gonna have to suck it up and find one I like.

-- Vir

[gkmeyer]

I guess my main problem is that as a Foobar lover I'm a bit dismayed by the iTunes-iness of all the newer players. I guess I'm just gonna have to suck it up and find one I like.

foobar runs perfectly using wine on linux.

[VCSkier]

i have very little experience w/ wine, and little interest in it honestly. but i did give foobar2000 a shot via wine, and it ran. it wasn't very stable for me, and had quite a few quirks/bugs, but i've heard from people that know what they're doing w/ wine (like gkmeyer, apparently) that they can get fb2k running properly.

meh. its not for me. i'd rather change my ways alittle and use a native app.

edit: on a positive note, i think the continued maturation of gstreamer will bring us quite a few acceptable players. i really like the idea of gstreamer, and someday soon it will be a great thing, but its not quite ready yet. additionally, as i said somewhere else, i'm excited about watching the development of lamip. it still has a ways to go till its foobar2000 caliber, but from the looks of it, its certainly on the right track, and i'm hoping with the pending release of 1.0.0, it will be ready for regular use, for me at least.

This post has been edited by VCSkier: Oct 6 2006, 07:50

[iGold]

For me the main disadvantage of current GStreamer is an absence of gapless playback by design. You will hear a big gap even for Vorbis or lossless codecs and for any mp3 (and latest LAME encoded) it will be even more. Maybe later it will be added but I didnt' read anything about such TODO yet.

[Madman2003]

I use http://aqualung.sourceforge.net/, it suits my purposes, although it's not flawless (it has one or two bugs that affect me).

[frodoontop]

It's simple: if you're using Gnome, Quod Libet or Rhythmbox will do nicely. If you're using Kde, Amarok is beyond any doubt the very best. If I mix the programs with the other desktop environment, colours and 'feel' often disturbs me.

Make sure you use a distribution with mp3 out of the box, it will prevent a lot of trouble on your system. Another option is using exclusively vorbis and flac. They're supported on virtually every distribution as they're not patent encumbered.

This post has been edited by frodoontop: Oct 6 2006, 17:55

[Gow]

I just use foobar2000 for audio file conversion as I can just download the latest .exe of audio format x, y, or z than encode plus keep a archive of lossless image file with embedded cuesheet.

For actual playing of files on Nix, I am torn between Aqualung and MPD. The thing to do though is to try each suggested one out and see if it is to your liking.

[donnie]

MPD (Music Player Daemon)

- Gapless playback (and for LAME mp3 files).
- ReplayGain support (and for ID3v2 tagged MP3).
- MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC/MP4, Musepack, FLAC, Wav, MOD formats support.
- Small memory requirements (has no UI at all because of 'daemon' nature).
- Many frontends (from command-line to Gnome/KDE apps).
- Last.FM support throught 3rd paty program (like lastfmsubmitd).

I use MPD but I'm not getting gapless playback of LAME mp3s. Anything special you're doing?

I've tried most linux players and none compare to foobar. Amarok's nice but lacks customizability and LAME gapless playback, as does quod libet. Still, both of those are certainly useable.

I'd really like to set up aqualung but I'm rather new to linux and haven't managed so far

[Madman2003]

Although not having tried it (barely use mp3), aqualung (aqualung.sf.net) has recently added gapless (lame) mp3 support.

[iGold]

Gapless LAME mp3 playback was added only in version 0.12.0 (and ReplayGain support for mp3 with ID3v2 tags), see MPD ChangeLog

If mp3 has LAME tag with delay/padding info then mpd plays this file gapless for me.

This post has been edited by iGold: Oct 7 2006, 07:06

[CyberFoxx]

Personally, I switch between using Amarok and Audacious. Audacious seems to be a great fork off of XMMS. Hey, it even has GEP, PSF, Timidity, ALSA MIDI and SID input plugins. (I'm somewhat big into old-skool console music.) I still do use Foobar via Wine to do converting, tagging, etc. (When Wine decides not to break that is.)

[donnie]

Gapless LAME mp3 playback was added only in version 0.12.0 (and ReplayGain support for mp3 with ID3v2 tags), see MPD ChangeLog

If mp3 has LAME tag with delay/padding info then mpd plays this file gapless for me.

oh yeah, cheers. It seems that 0.12.0 isn't in the debian repositories yet. I guess I'll compile it when I have time.

[HotshotGG]

Amarok's nice but lacks customizability and LAME gapless playback, as does quod libet

It's not quite Foobar2000, but I was impressed with a lot of it's features and the fact that it supports CSS customization layouts. It has it's own ABX comperator too.

[VCSkier]

MPD (Music Player Daemon)

- Gapless playback (and for LAME mp3 files).
- ReplayGain support (and for ID3v2 tagged MP3).
- MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC/MP4, Musepack, FLAC, Wav, MOD formats support.
- Small memory requirements (has no UI at all because of 'daemon' nature).
- Many frontends (from command-line to Gnome/KDE apps).
- Last.FM support throught 3rd paty program (like lastfmsubmitd).

mpd sounds and looks really nice, and i'm interested it trying it out, but apparently i'm missing something very simple. i can't firgure out how to play local files with it. i'm not interested in playing files streamed over a network, that that appears to be what all the settings and commands are geared toward. is there a way to simply have a local library or database defined by, for instance, ~/music/ ?

[iGold]

is there a way to simply have a local library or database defined by, for instance, ~/music/ ?

Of course! Setup in your mpd config file (I'm using ~/.mpdconf, or it may be system wide in /etc/mpd.conf) the music_directory option:

CODE

music_directory "~/music"

There is mpdconf.example in mpd sources, try to use is as a template for your config.

[sebastian bustos]

sorry for this noob question but: how do you install foobar in ubuntu? I mean how do you get it to work using wine actually.

Sebastian

[iGold]

I have separate repositary for wine in my ubuntu, instruction how to add it you may read at wine download page. So I have latest packed wine anytime, this also may help sometimes. Install wine package using you favorite package manager (eg. Synaptic or aptitude in terminal).

Then associate /usr/bin/wine as default application for .exe files and just doubleclick to foobar installer. It will be installed in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/foobar2000 by default. To get converter working it's need to put lame.exe/oggenc.exe/wavpack.exe/<anyother.exe> in this dir. winecfg (command line tool) can help you configure your wine installation.

[echo]

I vote for aqualung too. It seems to be the most promising player of all in linux. It currently has most of the functionality I need and the developers are open to feature requests. It supports gapless playback and replaygain in vorbis, flac and mp3 with id3v2. I'm going to send them some example mp3s with replaygain info in apev2 tags, they said they will most probably add support for it if I do.

[budbrain]

I can't understand why mpd hasn't got support for wavpack O_o
It's like the only thing missing to be complete

[soundcheck]

Foobar2000 raised the bar so high that every linux audio app I try -- and I've tried most of them -- leaves me underwhelmed.

I'm currently using MPD w/ Pygmy and ncmpc clients for my properly tagged and sorted library. For stray files, fresh rips or downloads, and streams I like Audacious.