The New Banshee Rocks!

[Docaltmed]

I just updated to the new Banshee, ver 1.6 beta 4, and I have to say hats off to the developers. In the past couple of years I've been bouncing around among all of the music management apps -- Amarok, Songbird, Rhythmbox, Exaile and previous versions of Banshee -- all of them are good, all have their strong points, but none of them quite filled the bill for me.

Until now. This release does it all. It recognizes and manages my iPod, no sweat. Podcasts? check. Audiobooks? check. Links to online music stores? check.

I'll stop, but there's more. If you are, like I was, still looking for that iTunes killer, check out the new Banshee. For me, this one does it all.

Congratulations again to the devs.

[Uncle Spellbinder]

Where did you get 1.6 b4? Checking the PPA's all I see are unstable or daily build PPA repos. And they have versions 1.5.3 or 1.5.4.

[Simian Man]

I love Banshee, but haven't been able to use it for my iPod due to two killer bugs for the cover art. One made the art take up huge amounts of space (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555329), and the other made it so it didn't even show up (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=564185).

According to one of those reports, those issues should be fixed in some code base, but I was curious if anyone knows if that is included in this beta? Gnomeuser perhaps?? :)

[SuperSonic4]

Any native last fm support?

edit: never mind. Mono is 51mb

[Megrimn]

WOW... it even works with the playback keys on my keyboard; I haven't found a media player that does that yet! I have found an alternative to Amarok! HALLELUJAH!

[Uncle Spellbinder]

Where did you get 1.6 b4? Checking the PPA's all I see are unstable or daily build PPA repos. And they have versions 1.5.3 or 1.5.4.

Ahhhh. Nevermind. The 1.5 versions are actually 1.6 betas (http://banshee-project.org/2010/01/27/banshee-1-5-3-released/). I did not know that. So I've been using the beta all along then. OK.

Still no ability to watch more than one folder. A total and complete showstopper for me.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Ooooh, there's a library watcher extension! (Disabled by default). And it'll save ratings / playcounts to files. I hate losing that stuff when I switch music players.

Now the only thing Banshee needs to do so it can replace Rhythmbox for me is to connect its built in volume control knob to its PulseAudio stream, like Rhythmbox and Totem do.

[Zoot7]

Banshee is by a long shot my favourite audio player for Linux. It's the only player I've found that has an equalizer IMO that's as good as some of the mainstream players for Windows like Winamp.

[mamamia88]

does it autorefresh podcast feeds after sleep? i've been looking for a media player that does that

[Pablo Pablovski]

Any native last fm support?

edit: never mind. Mono is 51mb

Yes, but I've found it doesn't work - it looks for authorisation to access your LastFM account to enable scrobbling etc., then opens your browser so you can do that, but doesn't seem to see the authorisation - so it simply asks again.

64bit, 9.10.

Cracking app, though - nearly as good as Amarok....:p

[SuperSonic4]

Yes, but I've found it doesn't work - it looks for authorisation to access your LastFM account to enable scrobbling etc., then opens your browser so you can do that, but doesn't seem to see the authorisation - so it simply asks again.

64bit, 9.10.

Cracking app, though - nearly as good as Amarok....:p

I'll stick with amarok then.

[23dornot23d]

Great App thanks for showing it on here ...... is it easy to get radio stations imported from
streamtuner ?

Ok easy ish ........ manually get properties from within Streamtuner and add them in one by one

[Docaltmed]

Ahhhh. Nevermind. The 1.5 versions are actually 1.6 betas (http://banshee-project.org/2010/01/27/banshee-1-5-3-released/). I did not know that. So I've been using the beta all along then. OK.

Still no ability to watch more than one folder. A total and complete showstopper for me.

Bummer. But couldn't you use symlinks to accomplish that?

[infestor]

it sux on my machine...dead slow

[Uncle Spellbinder]

Bummer. But couldn't you use symlinks to accomplish that?

Probably. But I've been using Exaile, which I believe is a better all around audio player than Banshee. And it supports watching multiple folders.

Also found Guayadeque Music Player (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guayadeque/) to be an extremely promising app.

As much as I like Banshee, the issues with only one folder for your library and scrobbling problems, both Exaile and Guayadeque have proven to be better. At least for my needs.

[Oasu4g]

Any way I can get my album art to sync to my Creative Zen?

[cguy]

it sux on my machine...dead slow

Same here, but I use it anyway.
If Rhythmbox supported multiple queuing of the same file, I'd drop Banshee in a second.

[anonbeat]

Same here, but I use it anyway.
If Rhythmbox supported multiple queuing of the same file, I'd drop Banshee in a second.

Not sure about Rhythmbox but Guayadeque can do it

[pwnst*r]

I just updated to the new Banshee, ver 1.6 beta 4, and I have to say hats off to the developers. In the past couple of years I've been bouncing around among all of the music management apps -- Amarok, Songbird, Rhythmbox, Exaile and previous versions of Banshee -- all of them are good, all have their strong points, but none of them quite filled the bill for me.

Until now. This release does it all. It recognizes and manages my iPod, no sweat. Podcasts? check. Audiobooks? check. Links to online music stores? check.

I'll stop, but there's more. If you are, like I was, still looking for that iTunes killer, check out the new Banshee. For me, this one does it all.

Congratulations again to the devs.

Not an iTunes killer, sorry.

[MacJack]

Well, I like VLC, only screwed up on me once.

Somewhere knocking about is a media player comparison list.

[picpak]

Before I was using Banshee just because Amarok 1.4 was getting too old and outdated, but the newest release has now made it my favourite music app. Library watcher? Shoutcast? Wikipedia? Last.fm? Lyrics? iPod support? CoverFlow? Videos? CD ripping? What can't it do?

Actually, there's one thing it can't do, that only makes it 99% perfect for me, that only Amarok could do, and that's organize my files by artist's initial. Once it can do that, I've officially sealed the deal. I hear a lot of talk about Guayadeque; can that one do it?

[armageddon08]

Anybody knows how do I get Jamendo or Magnatune or any other online music store/service integration in banshee ?

[gnomeuser]

Ahhhh. Nevermind. The 1.5 versions are actually 1.6 betas (http://banshee-project.org/2010/01/27/banshee-1-5-3-released/). I did not know that. So I've been using the beta all along then. OK.

Still no ability to watch more than one folder. A total and complete showstopper for me.

We admit the folder watching is still in an early state, it only watches folders defined by your media library (typically music, podcasts, video and audiobook). It even depends on mono features which aren't in the Lucid mono (as 2.6.x is required). The feature in question was backported so there might be bugs as well (in fact there is sure to be, all code has bugs).

This is only a 1.6 beta release, give us a bit of time and the glory of the final 1.6 release should be much better.

[Swarms]

Loving the OSX support! :)

[eumetaxas]

It really rocks. Better than listen and rythmbox!