Best All Around Audio Player

[Tumpster]

Hey there, I was trying XMMS for the longest time but I thought I'd throw this out to everyone that has an audio player and linux! What do you use that can control all you're music, hide to the desktop, allow you to futz with youre mp3 player and work flawlessly? Basically I'm looking for what everyone finds is the best all in one audio player in Ubuntu and thought I'd see what everyone uses! Thanks for the help!!!

[red_Marvin]

I use rythmbox and I'm happy with it, but I don't have an mp3 player, so I can't tell how well it works with that.

[Presto123]

My suggestion: Amarok. It's available in Add/Remove.

[FuturePilot]

I love Exaile (http://www.exaile.org/). It's a very nice GTK music player/organizer written in Python. It can be minimized to the notification area. It also has a lot of plugins to add extra functionality. From an iPod device driver to extra panel buttons and everything in between.

[julian67]

Audacious is a lot like xmms in appearance and use and has a lot more features (though it doesn't do video). It can hide away and be controlled from the system tray and has a 1st class set of plug-ins. It's also lightweight like xmms and will feel very familiar.

[PiggiePaul]

I'm still looking myself.

It's kinda looking like either you get something that works well, is functional, but looks VERY plain (Gnome?)

Or you get something which has had a lot of "Graphical work and styling" put into it, and looks the business, but is slow and cumbersome.

At the end of the day, I guess it's music, so the boring but functional ones win the day.

No?

Must admit, I'm now using Rhythmbox again.

My 1st thoughts when seeing it was, well, it works I guess, but it looks really dull. And as it's built in, it must just the default safe bet player, that's just does the job and offers no features.
But after trying to get used to Amarok (which does look nice, but Jebus is it slow at times) I'm trying Rhythmbox again, and you know what. It may look as dull as anything, but it's actually doing a fine job :)

[Tyke91]

I really like amarok, it can sort through your songs, add songs recursively from a file, sync with your ipod, and buy music through it's own *itunes-like* store. you can also run it from the system tray.

it won't do video and it's a little resource intensive, but i like it alot :)

[PiggiePaul]

I really like amarok, it can sort through your songs, add songs recursively from a file, sync with your ipod, and buy music through it's own *itunes-like* store. you can also run it from the system tray.

it won't do video and it's a little resource intensive, but i like it alot :)

What killed Amarok for me was:

I have a computer on the network with my music folder.
In this music folder are album folders.

One of these had 1000 tunes in it.

Amarok scans it, and you can play them.

Problem is, you closed Amarok down, and when you ran it again and clicked on the little "+" sign to open this folder again it had to scan all 1000 files again, and it took a good minute, and greyed out when it did this.

[tanman]

If you are looking for a light weight player try using Beep Media Player.
it is in add/remove

[Tumpster]

Well I've used Rythmbox and AMarock, liking both of em but liking amarock just a bit more so I think I'm gonna go with that and see how things go! :) Thanks for all the input, keep it coming!! :)

[voteforpedro36]

I use Quod Libet, it's fairly small, has a plugin that can put it in the sys tray, but I don't have an MP3 Player that I use, so I dunno bout that.

[maximilion]

I'm looking for something very stable and which uses very little resources.

All I need is a little boxthat sits in a corner of the screen, with a transport and a volume control.

Not happy with Amarok at all. Installed it because Vlc sometimes just closed down. Amarok is at least as unstable. Apart from crashing twice after starting it twice, when I emptied the playlist to play something else, it crashed trying to start "KMail"?

My mp3s are very well ordered. I need something with a folder browse window which will just, you know, play mp3 after mp3 without pause.

Any thoughts?

[merlinDwizzard]

vlc media player will play audio and video, although I don't know about taskbar management. It's pretty small and plays a number of different formats.

[maximilion]

As I wrote in the post, Vlc is unstable.

[SanskritFritz]

As I wrote in the post, Vlc is unstable.Rock solid here.

[savantelite]

Itunes... Sorry

Until linux can put my podcasts and music on my Ipod this is a nessesary evil.

Duel boot XP on a separate partition

I really like everything about Rythmbox on 8.04. (Except Ipod syncing)
It automatically finds coverart and LYRICS!
It is very clean too.

[cybergalvez]

I like the "Listen music player" best its in add/remove programs and realy easy to use

[PiggiePaul]

So, (if I may) backtrack to Amarok.

What am I doing wrong, as I guess it MUST be something I'm doing wrong as they would not have released a program that's doing what it appears to do for me.

Here's what happens:

I have my music folder on a remote drive (in itself should not make any difference as it's only loading the filename down into it's internal database one, then it will pull the 1 file down for playing) I guess.

Anyway, in this example, I have (on the remote machine) a folder called music.

In the Music folder I have 3 other folders. Call them A, B and C

In folders A and B are 20 tracks. In folder C is 1000 tracks.

So, I load Amarok, it see's the folders.

In the left hand column I see A, B and C

I click on A and it shows the MP3's within.
I do the same on B and the same happens.

I then do the same on C, then Amarok freezes for a while, (about 1 min) whilst (I assume) it loads all the 1000 filenames into it's internal database.

Ok, fair enough.

Then I close down the folders, I then decide to open up C again, and AGAIN it freezes up for about 1 min (also greys out) before displaying the 1000 mp3 track names.

If I close Amarok down, and run it again, then open C folder, Again I have to wait the minute.

It's as if every single time I open up folder C it reads in all the tracknames.

But once it's done it once, this data should be held in it's internal database... No?

So perhaps I have something set wrong, as having 1000 tracks in a folder (for some people) is nothing.
And I can't believe the Amarok guys would let a program out that works like this.

So, it must be me :confused:

[SomeGuyDude]

Banshee is amazing.

It sounds great, and doesn't have Exaile's "turn on the EQ and volume drops" problem. It isn't slow and cluttered like amaroK (on GNOME, on KDE amaroK is golden and I would recommend it above the rest). Plus I love the desktop icon that looks like a CD jewel case.

[jackietreehorn]

Enjoy Beep music player or VLC for just playing audio files. Beep is very much like Winamp, which I like. Can't say I like amarok; I used it at first and it did a decent job-especially since I needed something that would work with my ipod. Got rid of it though, and now use Songbird for organizing my library and will wait to see how it works with the ipod.

Problems with my amarok and songbird (for me at least) is that they are very big/clunky programs, and sometimes I just want to listen to music, hence my affinity for VLC, beep, and mpd/ncmpc.

For any exaile users, how does it compare with other audio players in organizing files as well as working with the ipod?

[julian67]

I'm looking for something very stable and which uses very little resources.

All I need is a little boxthat sits in a corner of the screen, with a transport and a volume control.

.............

My mp3s are very well ordered. I need something with a folder browse window which will just, you know, play mp3 after mp3 without pause.

Any thoughts?

audacious does all of this from a tray icon with a right click context menu, or from the player gui (if you need/want a player gui on the desktop...you can choose), or by clicking .m3u playlists in your file manager (if it's your default audio player) or in Thunar from the file manager's context menu, loading or queuing individual tracks, playlists, whole directories, whichever you like with a right click. Everything works like xmms but more and better. It's light enough to be the default audio player on several very lightweight live distros. I believe it will be default audio player for the next version of antix.

[NJC]

I was using XMMS and have recently switched over to Audacious and quite like it. VLC is good too, although I couldn't configure it to open one instance of the program only.

[corney91]

Gmusicbrowser (http://squentin.free.fr/gmusicbrowser/gmusicbrowser.html) is pretty sweet.

[julian67]

Gmusicbrowser (http://squentin.free.fr/gmusicbrowser/gmusicbrowser.html) is pretty sweet.
It's a nice application (and I have it installed and use it) and very capable but it's hardly a lightweight one, more of a rhythmbox/itunes type music collection manager that also plays the music.

[bboyambrose]

dude rythmbox! trust me, but it depends on ur taste tho.

[PiggiePaul]

I'm kinda settling on Rhythmbox. Even though it looks boring and no effort has been put into the interface (Standard Gnome) but I guess, after all it''s just a music player, can do searches really quick, so at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

but, I'm finding it's sticking quite often whilst playing, for no apparent reason.

I may start a track, it plays for 30 seconds, then the sound stops for 15 seconds and suddely in un-sticks again.

I'm wondering if it's cos my music files are on a remote drive on the network, but there does not seem ant consistency.

sometimes, a big file will play perfect and other times a small file will stick, and there is no other network activity, and (after all) a whole mp3 will only take a second or two to pass across the network link.

Perhaps it will setlle down?

Anyone else had sticky problems with Rhythmbox?

[anticapitalista]

Why not use mpd and a front end to it, such as gmpc, sonata or a cli one such as ncmpc (ncurses)?

Otherwise I'd suggest audacious or sticking with xmms. I find xmms still produces the best sound on my box.

[iceportal]

My suggestion: Amarok. It's available in Add/Remove.

Agreed. I've used many media players, and Amarok is by far my favorite of the bunch. :D

[PiggiePaul]

Ok, not going to give up on Amarok yet, so I shall ask a single question:

In Amaroks setting, you tell it the folders it should look in (more than one if you like) for your music files.

And also tell it if you wish it to keep checking to see if any more files have been added to these folders.

But.........................................

It seems you can only browse the file structure of your local machine.

How do you tell it to use a folder on a remote machine's drive on your network?

[SanskritFritz]

Have not tried it, but looks good:
http://www.getdeb.net/app/Gimmix

[picpak]

BMPx looks like the one that has all the features I want, but there's one huge setback for me and that's it's playlist management. It can't import folders; only the songs in one folder at a time. Very tedious. Not to mention it's buggy as well.

So back to Exaile for me, although I do miss some of BMPx's features (namely last.fm radio).

[AndyCooll]

Itunes... Sorry

Until linux can put my podcasts and music on my Ipod this is a nessesary evil.

Duel boot XP on a separate partition

I really like everything about Rythmbox on 8.04. (Except Ipod syncing)
It automatically finds coverart and LYRICS!
It is very clean too.
Not sure what you're doing wrong, For as far as I'm aware there are plenty of users successfully syncing their iPods using Amarok or Rhythmbox (for instance).

Anyway, another vote here for Amarok. It's simple to use and packs in loads of features, I like Rhythmbox too, but for new users Amarok just can't be beat.

:cool:

[igknighted]

Banshee is amazing.

It sounds great, and doesn't have Exaile's "turn on the EQ and volume drops" problem. It isn't slow and cluttered like amaroK (on GNOME, on KDE amaroK is golden and I would recommend it above the rest). Plus I love the desktop icon that looks like a CD jewel case.

+1, I love banshee. Feature rich without being cluttered like Amarok.