why do all linux music players suck?

[AndyP79]

I am getting feed up with music players in Linux. I have tried so many that I cna not list them herre. recently I have had issues with Banshee, which sarts out fine, but then it starts grey screening on me, and now Songbird, which was doing greeat, but now it won't even open. i tried deleting the files in usr/share/songbird and uninstalling it from Synap, and re-installing it, but now nothing. I am getting really tired of fighting with just wanting to listen to my music. any tips suggestions would be welcome, cause I am on the verge of freaking out.
thanks

[mosshorn]

It doesn't have everything, but I've liked Rhythmbox as far as a "I just want my music" Player. Songbird has definite potential, and I believe it does quite well for essentially being the closest thing to Amarok without being cluttered. I haven't tried Banshee. Personally I would just stay with rhythmbox in linux :)

[AcIDx0]

I use rhythmbox and like it. If all players grey out on you - it's not the players, it's something else, like gstreamer. And well, if you hate "linux" players, go with xmms2. Or heck, install winamp through wine. Whatever floats your boat.

[BenAshton24]

How about Guayadeque?

[ImperialXT]

I just use mplayer :P

[exodus_]

Xmms used to be my favourite, but now I use Audacious2.

[kelvin spratt]

Audacious Is a good player in the winnamp mould, I think you have a serious problem with your setup Songbird/Banshee are very good players.

[Irti]

well i have used banshee, songbird, exaile.. rythmbox....but i havent seen an equalizer in any of them.... the quality of music is pretty ok..but still having an equalizer would be nice...

[exodus_]

well i have used banshee, songbird, exaile.. rythmbox....but i havent seen an equalizer in any of them.... the quality of music is pretty ok..but still having an equalizer would be nice...

Audacious2 includes an equaliser I don't know how well it works since I use the equaliser on my stereo receiver ;)

[Irti]

see..that's exactly the reason i still have problems with ubuntu..dont get me wrong i love this distro...its a million times better than windows or mac for what it stands for...but i like using rythmbox as it helps me manage my music.. (i have 210 gb of music)..and it would be nice if rythmbox had an equalizer..i mean windows media player has one..so does itunes..and winamp..and every other music player you would get on windows or mac..so why are we left out????

[ElSlunko]

Music players...players ... of ... music. What's wrong with rhythmbox. It gets the job done.

[aeiah]

I am getting feed up with music players in Linux. I have tried so many that I cna not list them herre. recently I have had issues with Banshee, which sarts out fine, but then it starts grey screening on me, and now Songbird, which was doing greeat, but now it won't even open. i tried deleting the files in usr/share/songbird and uninstalling it from Synap, and re-installing it, but now nothing. I am getting really tired of fighting with just wanting to listen to my music. any tips suggestions would be welcome, cause I am on the verge of freaking out.
thanks

according to your sig, you're using lucid alpha? and by the sounds of things, its the stability of your system that's causing you problems and not the features (or lack of features) that linux music players have. perhaps music players will perform better for you when your system is more stable.

[Gushter13]

I used to prefer Songbird, but somehow they forgot about *.deb install packages. Disappointed I turned to Audacious2, and I don't regret it! It has that old Winamp 2 look and feel. Feels really nostalgic.

[Linuxforall]

I use SMPLAYER and also find Rythmbox to be a very competent player and so is Banshee.

[Yellow Pasque]

I mainly use foobar2000 through WINE, because I like certain DSP plugins, namely 'Noise Sharpening' (foo_dsp_delta). The closest thing to that I've found in Linux is Audacious' 'Crystalizer' plugin.

[sam.reader]

Most of the music formats are created based on platforms like Windows and Unix
So for this reason Linux and Ubuntu have always paid for not being compatible with decoding systems of Windows.
No one can explain the reason as to when it a ll began

[AndyP79]

OP here. I am using this on my stable release, not Lucid. Sorry, I should have clarified that. It is also on a 64bit machine. I am thinking that it might have something to do with it being 64?? Just a guess. I really like Songbird, until it crashes. I am using goobox I think it is called out of Synap to do the ripping, it is simple and quick. It doesn't add covers into the folders, so I add them manually. Then I have tried using Amarok, Songbird, Banshee, gmusicplayer, and a host of others. It seems that all will start out fine to begin with, and quickly they all grey out, won't launch, stop finding covers, won't read files or something. I have only added these using Synap, and I have tried setting up my desktop and programs and do the music last so as not to have to add anything else after, and still eventually they all crash. I don't need to many plug-ins, but having a cover art chooser of some sort is good, along with a matching theme. Maybe a few others..., but I am not adding programs manually as I don't know how. Ughhhhhhh....... I think I am going to try that guedaberyydualy whatever new one it is and see how that goes.

[Yellow Pasque]

So if you start the players from a terminal, do they give any specific error messages?

I am thinking that it might have something to do with it being 64??
LOL. I love when people do this. "I have no idea what the problem is, so it must be that I'm running 64-bit."

[AndyP79]

Actually, you got a good point about the 64bit thing, cause now that I think about I have issues on my 32bit also. Generally though, my 32bit does not give me as many problems with most things. I loaded aTunes and gudaydeeadea(whatever it's called) and gonna try them for a while and see how those work. I ain't giving up though. I am gonna keep hunting down something till it works. I will check out what happens when I run it from the terminal and post later, just on break from class at the moment.

[lykwydchykyn]

see..that's exactly the reason i still have problems with ubuntu..dont get me wrong i love this distro...its a million times better than windows or mac for what it stands for...but i like using rythmbox as it helps me manage my music.. (i have 210 gb of music)..and it would be nice if rythmbox had an equalizer..i mean windows media player has one..so does itunes..and winamp..and every other music player you would get on windows or mac..so why are we left out????

I just checked two media players I have, gmplayer and amarok, and they both have equalizers. They are surely not the only ones. You ought to shop around a bit before assuming that this doesn't exist on Ubuntu or Linux.

[SVEN1]

Plays Audio tracks and has a wonderful equalizer.
You will find it under TOOL--Extended Settings

[AndyP79]

Okay, I am going to reload everything tomorrow. I have now tried Amarok, aTunes, Guydeberry Rhythmbox, Banshee, Songbird, gmusicbrowser, exaile, and probably 3 or 4 others that I already forgot the name to. This is getting freakin stupid. 1 album in the folder, double loading it in the player, player not loading, crashing, rearranging songs out of order, not finding album art, shoddy buttons. Whatever.

Here is what I am going to do. Tommorrow(Thursday) I am going to do a fresh reload of my system. If anyone has any suggestions, let's try them. I need something seriously that works. I have a couple thousand songs ripped off my CDs, and I would like to finish ripping the rest and be able to listen to my music easily. I will only do a 1st time update, and not load any extra applications and focus only on the music player, maybe I can find out which program I am loading that is messing with everything. Process of elimination. It's all I got besides ya'll!!;)

[hxcobd]

If you can't find a linux audio player you like, you're doing something wrong. There are a TON, spanning a ton of user demographics.

My personal favorite is Decibel Audio Player. Lightweight, fast, clean, great file browser.

Songbird is awesome as well, as is Amarok. Another lesser-known one is Quod Libet.

[RiceMonster]

Amarok is the only one I'm fully satisfied. 1.4 and 2.2.2 are both good, though I actually prefer 2.

Rhythmbox is decent, and mpd is pretty good too.

[Rasa1111]

doh!

dude, get Ubuntu 9.10 and get with the program already.
DOH!

[waspbr]

I generally alternate between banshee and songbird,both are very good players

[oldsoundguy]

Amarok has an eq .. a decent one that DOES work.

[phillychease]

i just use rhythmbox. simple and clean.

[Madspyman]

Rhythmbox is my favorite music player period, cant wait till the music store is active.

[Khakilang]

Rhythm box works fine for me. But than again it depend on individual taste.

[darsu]

I feel for the OP. All I want from a media player is simplicity and usability. I used XMMS for years until they discontinued it. I couldn't stand XMMS2 and turned to Amarok. It was slow and clunky but I could find nothing better. Then I upgraded to 9.10 and discovered that Amarok has turned into an unusable nightmare. I gave up, and now I cd m/whatever_artist/whatever_album and type mplayer *. At least it's simple and loads quickly.

[chucky chuckaluck]

My favorite is cplay. It's a tui (terminal user interface) and is rabidly simple.

[Deadite81]

I'm with AndyP79 on the music player issue. Every one I've tried has been buggy.
Rhythmbox gives me errors because of itunes/wma files that gstreamer can't read instead of silently skipping them, which makes my computer bark at me and rhythmbox unusable for the first 30 seconds.
Bansee, which I so wish worked for me because it can organize videos too, seems to not work with wicd (I can't use network manager/ndiswrapper) or for that matter, with my WD 400GB external hdd at all.
Songbird is just way too much for my P4 @2.8Ghz if I actually want to do anything else.
Audacious crashes.
The list goes on and on.
I finally settled on Exaile, from the repos, NOT the launchpad devel one. The Exaile on launchpad freezes my whole sound system.
Exaile + the Pulseaudio LADSPA system-wide equalizer has been working pretty well for me for about a month. Unless I turn on system sounds. Then the speakers craclke and I get a million rate-limit suppressed errors....
Let me stop now, I could go on forever about this!

[Madspyman]

Rhythmbox gives me errors because of itunes/wma files that gstreamer can't read instead of silently skipping them, which makes my computer bark at me and rhythmbox unusable for the first 30 seconds.

I blame MS and Apple for this, DRM on music insults users intelligence.

[ccleanerfan]

Songbird is best for me.

[Deadite81]

I blame MS and Apple for this, DRM on music insults users intelligence.

I agree. I've since erased all iTunes albums (just a couple) for that very reason. I bought it and I can't use it how I see fit? Yea right! It's funny though, when I convert wmas to flac or mp3 I loose all the metadata! Picard nor EasyTAG seems to correct it. I just got MP3Diags but haven't tried it yet. Atleast apple's up front about it. Is this a Microsoft conspiracy?

[kid1000002000]

banshee has an equilizer and has been the best I can find.
But I sympathize. Linux could seriously use an upgrade in the music department. Its YEARS behind proprietary OS's right now functionality-wise.

[Rhapsody]

I've been using Amarok for a long time, from 1.3.9 (in early 2006 on Kubuntu Breezy) to 2.2.2 (up until recently on Debian Squeeze), but I found I simply could not love Amarok 2. To borrow a phrase from Anime News Network, it was like Amarok 1's deranged, ugly, stupid, in-bred cousin. Sort of like the original, but with everything that endeared me to it stripped out and replaced with bizarre ideas that I have trouble believing any sane person could like.

A rather sad end to a music player I once described with the term "There's a music player for everyone out there, and it's called Amarok".

So I finally decided, enough is enough, back to basics (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki). I'm liking it so far.

[a8jr]

im using amarok and all works fine...

what sucks is the pulseaudio, which seems cannot handle sounds for two different applications.

everytime someone nudges me on my pidgin, my music will stop... the amarok will report that my soundcard is not available...

i agree though that our music player (and audio driver) is far behind MS or Mac.

[Deadite81]

im using amarok and all works fine...

what sucks is the pulseaudio, which seems cannot handle sounds for two different applications.

everytime someone nudges me on my pidgin, my music will stop... the amarok will report that my soundcard is not available...

I have a similar problem. My audio doesn't stop (most of the time) but the speakers crackle and sound like they're gonna explode whenever a system sound is played. I can play youtube, totem, and exaile all at once and everythings cool. Until there's a system sound.When I use just alsa there are no issues, but I can only use one app at a time to play sound. After some digging, I see that it used to be possible to make system sounds use alsa and everything else use pulse (Ubuntu 9.04 and back), but this feature has apparently been stripped from Karmic. I've looked everywhere and cannot find a way to assign system sounds to alsa (or anything else BUT pulse). Oh well, I'll have to settle for music but no bleeps and bloops.

[Dayofswords]

Amarok 2.2.2.90 is pretty good.
you really shouldnt name your account after your email

[cartman640]

Came across this very problem myself, my normal music player is Foobar2000, and nothing I could find in Ubuntu came close. The best I found was MPD, since it's a daemon, you can pick and choose between frontends, both GUI and TUI and can even run them from different machines.

I'm not sure if it has an equaliser, because equalisers are terrible and should be disabled. Music should be listened to the way it was intended by the artist when it was recorded IMO.

[ctrlmd]

THE truth is all linux music players ugly but maybe banshee is the best between them

still no media player compared to wmp 12 , winamp, itunes

[audiomick]

My 2 cents:
I just discovered that Rhythmbox seems to work on my 64bit system quite well (even the transport buttons on the Logitech Keyboard, to my surprise...)
A have also looked at mplayer, and thought it was OK, and I believe VLC Music Player is supposed to be OK.
Having said that, playing music on the computer is rather less than secondarily important for me; that is not what the computer is there for in my mind. Nothing intended with that, it is simply a comment to show where I am coming from ;)

As far as the lack or not of an Equaliser goes: a thought as a sound engineer.
Equalisers principally try and compensate for deficiencies in the loudspeakers, but you can't use an equaliser to compensate for something that the speakers can't reproduce or that the recording doesn't contain. If you find you are regularly wishing you had an equaliser, I would suggest thinking about getting some speakers that sound good out of the box.

[Docaltmed]

Banshee has an equalizer, and virtually everything else I need. It's nothing but Banshee love here at chez docaltmed.

Like a lot of the posters here, I ran through the gamut. Banshee wasn't my fave until I added the PPA. Once I got the 1.6 beta, I was finally satisfied.

[bigbrovar]

OP obviously hasn't tried MPD. Its the awesomest Music management solution.

[brucemartin]

mpd + gmpc is the best music player currently available for linux. i absolutely love it.

[m4tic]

WMP 11 is still the best for me, can it be used on wine?

[Eisenwinter]

Xmms used to be my favourite, but now I use Audacious2.
I second this, and also want to add cmus, a great console player.

[exodus_]

I second this, and also want to add cmus, a great console player.

I checked that out, looks pretty neat!

[swoll1980]

well i have used banshee, songbird, exaile.. rythmbox....but i havent seen an equalizer in any of them.... the quality of music is pretty ok..but still having an equalizer would be nice...

EQ for Rhythmbox (http://www.deviantdark.altervista.org/?p=438) you have to restart the player every time you change the eq for the new settings to take effect. Other than that it works great.

[Dj Melik]

MPD and Ncmpcpp

[Yellow Pasque]

I've been using Amarok for a long time, from 1.3.9 (in early 2006 on Kubuntu Breezy) to 2.2.2 (up until recently on Debian Squeeze), but I found I simply could not love Amarok 2.

You can still use Amarok 1.4.x. I've seen threads on compiling it, PPA's for it, and also a fork project ('Pana').

[Lightstar]

rhythmbox works for me.

I do wish Winamp would make a linux version, it's the only music player i've used in windows for the past 10 years.

I like shiny visual effects :)

[Madspyman]

I do wish Winamp would make a linux version, it's the only music player i've used in windows for the past 10 years.

I like shiny visual effects :)

Didn't Winamp used to play an intro, "What the world needs is a Winamp, not another Linux."?

[hyperAura]

"Winamp, it really whips the llama's ***" that's the only intro i know from winamp..

[Lightstar]

Didn't Winamp used to play an intro, "What the world needs is a Winamp, not another Linux."?

Never heard of that, but I kinda agree, we have enough linux distros out there, most of the new ones aren't new, they're just modified version of another distribution :P

yeah the llama one is what I always heard, year after year. They're probably afraid to break their ritual now.

[bailout]

You can still use Amarok 1.4.x. I've seen threads on compiling it, PPA's for it, and also a fork project ('Pana').

There is also a project to port it to qt4, although it is at an early stage of development.

http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/

[koleoptero]

Why would you say that these players don't have an equaliser I can't understand. Songbird, banshee and amarok have a graphical equalizer. Audacious and other xmmslike players too. Decibel also has one, and Aqualung will even support ladspa plugins that can do hell more than just give you thumping bass and screeching treble.

Linux music playing programs don't suck.

[MaxIBoy]

I personally think VLC and Audacious are both great.

But that's besides the point, because your question is not answerable. It's like if I asked you, "have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

[lykwydchykyn]

As far as the lack or not of an Equaliser goes: a thought as a sound engineer.
Equalisers principally try and compensate for deficiencies in the loudspeakers, but you can't use an equaliser to compensate for something that the speakers can't reproduce or that the recording doesn't contain. If you find you are regularly wishing you had an equaliser, I would suggest thinking about getting some speakers that sound good out of the box.
I know where you're coming from, but let's be realistic. You're not going to have decent speakers on every device you own, especially not a laptop. Some of those cheapo laptop speakers or earbuds need a bit of backing off in the treble range; and a little boost in the 200-400 Hz range sometimes at least lets you hear the kick and bass on a system with no actual low end.

Even five-star restaurants have salt and pepper on the table.



Why would you say that these players don't have an equaliser I can't understand. Songbird, banshee and amarok have a graphical equalizer. Audacious and other xmmslike players too. Decibel also has one, and Aqualung will even support ladspa plugins that can do hell more than just give you thumping bass and screeching treble.

Linux music playing programs don't suck.
Darn right. Unfortunately we see this a lot:

"Linux doesn't have ________"

Translation:
"The default install of Ubuntu doesn't have ________, nor did the first program I tried from the repositories."

Not trying to pick on anyone, but before you go around spreading the notion that "linux doesn't have", please make sure you've explored all the options.

BTW you forgot VLC; it also has an EQ, and a spatializer (whatever that's for).

[audiomick]

BTW you forgot VLC; it also has an EQ, and a spatializer (whatever that's for).
A spatializer does nasty things to the phase of the signal to make the stereo image appear wider. Probably wont be very satisfying on headphones, but might make laptop speakers sound "bigger".

[lykwydchykyn]

A spatializer does nasty things to the phase of the signal to make the stereo image appear wider. Probably wont be very satisfying on headphones, but might make laptop speakers sound "bigger".

Ah, one o' dems.

I figured it was something like that.

[macjak]

I totally agree! I have been banging my head against the wall trying anything musical with linux. Right now I just want to play the radio using rythmbox and cant get anywhere. I used apt-get to install gstreamer but still nothing. i've posted and gotten no help. The itunes/windows media players are both miles ahead of linux.

[OGpmpdog]

I totally agree! I have been banging my head against the wall trying anything musical with linux. Right now I just want to play the radio using rythmbox and cant get anywhere. I used apt-get to install gstreamer but still nothing. i've posted and gotten no help. The itunes/windows media players are both miles ahead of linux.

Uhhhhh..have you checked your internet connection?
Have you TRIED to do anything to learn Rhythmbox, beyond pressing play?
Rhythmbox enables an internet radio station search, which will give you access to HUNDREDS of stations.
Yeah, in terms of Digital Restriction Moosedookie, Itunes and WMP have set the standard, and brainwashed you into believing this is better than freeware...:confused:
Sigh....:razz:

[audiomick]

Yeah, in terms of Digital Restriction Moosedookie....
So that is what DRM means. I had been wondering....;)

[Zoot7]

Banshee is the only one I've been totally satisfied with.
I used to like Amarok, and Exaile but the removal of the equalizer in both was enough to put me off both.

VLC is also more than adequate as an audio player, and definitely doesn't suck IMO.

[sydbat]

Haven't read through the whole thread, but I to add my useless input...

I have found the gmusicbrowser (based on a variety of back ends like gstreamer and mplayer) pretty good for listening to music. Nothing fancy. Although I find the using gstreamer uses LOTS of resources, while mplayer uses almost none.;)

[peace.gangsta]

I agree with OP on this.I got fed up of Amarok and rhythbox is too decent.I then tried songbird. It was good. Came with nice themes. Album art fetcher.Lyrics manager.Then I got hang of the cover flow and then Snap.The cover flow plugin wasted the player. It started hanging. The cover flows wont flow freely.Player stopped fetching album arts on its own. Last.fm plugin stopped working and everything went haywire.I tried shifting back to Amarok but it gives me headache. The rest of the players do not manage music as good as Songbird.Till now the best and most stable player I have ever worked with is still indisputably itunes(Although I would like someone to advice me a player that can compete with it.).It successfully managed about 500Gigs of music with cover arts without a fail for months.

[K.Mandla]

I do wish Winamp would make a linux version, it's the only music player i've used in windows for the past 10 years.

http://omploader.org/tM3Fvdg (http://omploader.org/vM3Fvdg)

Audacious, a Winamp skin and Arch Linux with IceWM. Any questions? ;)

[lykwydchykyn]

http://omploader.org/tM3Fvdg (http://omploader.org/vM3Fvdg)

Audacious, a Winamp skin and Arch Linux with IceWM. Any questions? ;)

Yeah. What's putting icons on the desktop, and what happens when you click 'My Computer'?

[Uncle Spellbinder]

I'll just say that I disagree with the title of the thread as a whole. "All Linux music players suck". What in incredible blanket statement based on one person's opinion.

Until recently, I've used 2 excellent music players. Exaile and Listen. Both are fantastic players, in my opinion. I've since moved on to Guayadeque Music Player. Another fine player in the testing stages that shows great promise. I've been using it as my primary player for several weeks and submitting bug reports and suggestions in the test thread.

There are some players in Linux that I just do not care for, but to say they all suck is just plain ludicrous.

[RiceMonster]

I used to like Amarok, and Exaile but the removal of the equalizer in both was enough to put me off both.

Amarok has an Equalizer again, but you'll need the newest version of phonon for it to work (it's included with KDE 4.4 and Qt 4.6).

[BbUiDgZ]

whats wrong with VLC?

[estyles]

If I have one principal that I live by it is: Never trust the opinion of anyone that thinks iTunes is a good music player. Bloatiest, most worthless piece of software I've ever seen.

I like several Linux music players personally. Amarok, Exaille, even Rythmbox isn't bad. Unfortunately, for all the good things about them, I still haven't found one with all the features I want. Specifically: replay gain, equalizer (which can save equalizer settings for specific songs), and the ability to tag songs with the rating I put in. Seriously, having to re-rate everything if I switch to a new player, or rename my songs to .oga instead of .ogg (or vice-versa - I forget, but my Droid only recognizes one of the two extensions), or otherwise lose the database is bananas. Still, even though I think iTunes has those features, it lacks so much more...

[Swarms]

As stated before, Banshee does have an equalizer and is probably the music player of all mentioned in this thread, that has the most rapid development speed. 1.6 RC will be out this Wednesday.

[K.Mandla]

Yeah. What's putting icons on the desktop, and what happens when you click 'My Computer'?
iDesk (http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=idesk) runs the desktop icons. Opening "My Computer" goes to the root directory with Xfe (http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=xfe), and opening "My Documents" opens the home directory in Xfe. :D

[2hot6ft2]

If you don't like any of the linux music players. Create a better one. Or help to improve the ones that are available. It's open source so what's stopping you? Buy a windows one and run it in wine.
:-({|=

[dragos240]

I disagree.

[Post Monkeh]

If you don't like any of the linux music players. Create a better one. Or help to improve the ones that are available. It's open source so what's stopping you? Buy a windows one and run it in wine.
:-({|=

not everyone is a programmer

[samh785]

I use rhythmbox and like it. If all players grey out on you - it's not the players, it's something else, like gstreamer. And well, if you hate "linux" players, go with xmms2. Or heck, install winamp through wine. Whatever floats your boat.
exactly this.

[MaxIBoy]

I wouldn't be surprised if the OP was using some machine with very little RAM and an underpowered CPU. (*cough* netbook *cough*) If that's the case, I'd recommend installing VLC-nox. It doesn't have any graphical interface at all, but its still just as powerful as VLC is. Just open a console and run "nvlc." Hit "h" at any time to display a list of keyboard shortcuts. Hit "h" again to hide it.

[dragos240]

moc doesn't suck.

[kaivalagi]

OP obviously hasn't tried MPD. Its the awesomest Music management solution.

MPD and Ncmpcpp

mpd + gmpc is the best music player currently available for linux. i absolutely love it.
mpd + sonata + mpdcron (for conky coverart and lyrics retrieval)

Seriously try MPD and choice from quite a few front end apps for it. Anything from Ncmpcpp/MPC for the console to Sonata/GMPC/Ario for X - clients can be read about here: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients

[AndyP79]

I wouldn't be surprised if the OP was using some machine with very little RAM and an underpowered CPU. (*cough* netbook *cough*) If that's the case, I'd recommend installing VLC-nox. It doesn't have any graphical interface at all, but its still just as powerful as VLC is. Just open a console and run "nvlc." Hit "h" at any time to display a list of keyboard shortcuts. Hit "h" again to hide it.

actually, i am doing this on a year old compaq 15" laptop. 64bit AMD Sempron, Nvidia GC, 2GB Ram and 500GB hard drive. I don't think it is underpowered. It is more powerful then my last computer, i know that much.

I have many issues with the various players, bad ripping ability, no cover art, looks like old windows type application, and need a damn degree in aeronautics to run it! Won't keep compilation artist albums together, creates 2 of each song, crashes, destroys other items on my computer, have to compile from source, not for gnome, too many plugins needed to be decent and then slows down, stops opening.... damn, how bout a player that just works? Is there one out there in Linux land that I don't have to finagle to work, all the nice GUI ones on here that everyone has suggested, I have tried now, they all still suck. All the other ones are crazy terminal looking items and have no usefull stock plugins with out reprogramming it to launch a space shuttle.

My problem is that programs like these, it seems like it is forgotten that not all of us are "computer people". I love the whole aspect of what Linux stands for, and I have learnt alot, but hell, I was not even a windows guy before I started using Linux. I just want simple easy to install and configure applications that look like they are at least somewhat modern. I try to push Linux on as many of my friends that listen, and music is a killer for a lot of them. They love the looks and ability to make it look like their own, but the need for a "computer geek" ability to make certain items work is a turn off.

[Yellow Pasque]

Okay, so if we're going to blow off steam about audio players, I'll vent.
What the he!! is with ratings? Why do I need to rate my music? Either I like the song enough to keep it, or I send it to the great bit-bucket in the sky; that's the only rating that matters. And why can't anyone duplicate the foobar2000 noise sharpening plugin? That is the only DSP-style plugin that I like (doesn't overdrive the speakers like a lot of other DSP/equalizer solutions.

I'm keeping my eye on Guayadeque because the developer is awesome and I think he's got a good thing going.

[ishijoe]

Hey everybody,
i have fallen in love of foobar2000 on windows though i didn't use most of its feature.On ubuntu,i have now fallen in love with cmus command line player.For sure, there isn't equaliser ,dsp and such things and as i don't use these things, cmus does provide some very nice features that have kept me from installing any other music players.And lately, i have notice that i haven't even configure rhythmbox.

[rotwang888]

They suck for the same reason windows and mac players suck. We have it much better than mac users, and foobar2000 is the only reason to prefer windows for playing music (although someone who is not a "computer guy" would be put off by the complexity of configuring it and tracking down all the components). But this thread is pointless. If those players are crashing or freezing up, you have a problem with your system. I've run them all on an old, slow laptop with no issues. You need to open a support thread to find out what the problem is.

[nothingspecial]

I`ll just quietly mention guayadeque again.

Large libraries

Low cpu

Feature Full

Try it.

[Impreza]

:D I use VLC on Mac & Linux,

[caglar sekmen]

yeap .. you can see your playlist too with it ..

[MichealH]

I am getting feed up with music players in Linux. I have tried so many that I cna not list them herre. recently I have had issues with Banshee, which sarts out fine, but then it starts grey screening on me, and now Songbird, which was doing greeat, but now it won't even open. i tried deleting the files in usr/share/songbird and uninstalling it from Synap, and re-installing it, but now nothing. I am getting really tired of fighting with just wanting to listen to my music. any tips suggestions would be welcome, cause I am on the verge of freaking out.
thanks

Sorry no offence but you are all stereotyping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype) music players, Not all music players are bad, They just have their strenghs and weaknesses Its like me, I will be different from you, We have different genetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics)and that Is what makes Armok, Rhythmbox,Banchee,VLC them.

[PC_load_letter]

well i have used banshee, songbird, exaile.. rythmbox....but i havent seen an equalizer in any of them.... the quality of music is pretty ok..but still having an equalizer would be nice...

Exaile has long had an eq. but in the upgrade from 0.3.0.1 to 0.3.0.2, the eq plugin didn't make it in time so they deferred it to the next version 0.3.1b. I'm using the latter version and I tell you, Exaile is now an awesome player.

@ the OP:
Whenever I see a post like this, the 1st thing that comes to my mind is PulseAudio. I might be a little biased against it, but I never keep it installed, and never ran into any problems (that I couldn't care less about anyway) by doing so.

[Slug71]

I heard the new Banshee coming out is bada$$.

[Slug71]

Exaile has long had an eq. but in the upgrade from 0.3.0.1 to 0.3.0.2, the eq plugin didn't make it in time so they deferred it to the next version 0.3.1b. I'm using the latter version and I tell you, Exaile is now an awesome player.

@ the OP:
Whenever I see a post like this, the 1st thing that comes to my mind is PulseAudio. I might be a little biased against it, but I never keep it installed, and never ran into any problems (that I couldn't care less about anyway) by doing so.

PulseAudio is much better in Lucid.

[AndyP79]

What's up with Pulse Audio? I heard about problems with it, but don't really understand. Is this something that I can change to something else? Will it make things run better? At the moment I seem to have Rythmbox working at the moment with about 8GB of music. I have another 26GB that I need to sort through, but will do it slowley one album at a time instead of just transfering it.

[PC_load_letter]

PulseAudio is much better in Lucid.

Well, i'm keeping an open mind, but in the case of my desktop it has been a futile endeavor. I have an M-Audio 2496 card, and PA refuses to make a beep on that card. Remove PA, and good old ALSA works like a charm, go figure!

[GMU_DodgyHodgy]

I heard the new Banshee coming out is bada$$.

And it has an equalizer too no?

I like Banshee alot and hope development on it continues -- the fact it can play videos as well as music is just fantastic.

[MasterNetra]

I am getting feed up with music players in Linux. I have tried so many that I cna not list them herre. recently I have had issues with Banshee, which sarts out fine, but then it starts grey screening on me, and now Songbird, which was doing greeat, but now it won't even open. i tried deleting the files in usr/share/songbird and uninstalling it from Synap, and re-installing it, but now nothing. I am getting really tired of fighting with just wanting to listen to my music. any tips suggestions would be welcome, cause I am on the verge of freaking out.
thanks

It is unfortunate that your having issues with the players. I personally haven't had any real issues with Amarok or Rhythmbox. Also have you tried Moovida? Its a Media Player but seems decent enough. Any who each computer is different so the results will vary between them. On a side note did you use the "Upgrade" option to upgrade your system at any point. Those tend to be buggy for many people, which case a fresh install solves the problem. (Just remember to backup everything you wish to keep)

[Tikkyca]

It doesn't suck i use one that comes with ubuntu,you just need to install some plug-ins if you wan't all formats to acctualy work.

[chris4585]

I use what I like, Quod Libet is simply the best for *me*.

[icyzer]

No Songbird users here?

[hippietilley]

I'm a big fan of Amarok and Rhythmbox for music. I would use vlc exclusively but id doesn't organize files.

[Pifilatakanemu]

Try guayadeque, it's really fast even with huge amounts of music.

I was frustrated about Music Players too, befor I found Guayadeque and Quod Libet, which is my #2.

[ikt]

Try guayadeque, it's really fast even with huge amounts of music.

I was frustrated about Music Players too, befor I found Guayadeque and Quod Libet, which is my #2.


vertical volume bar = :/

songbird + vlc for me at the moment.

Songbird just has some major issues that I hope get sorted soon. (like podcast support)

[Midnight Star]

I'm using the "stock" Rhythmbox, and it's been great! I can listen to not only my local music files, but tons of online stuff (for free I might add!), and I can also connect to my fully loaded music server without a hitch. The interface is simple and clean. Is the sound just not working properly in general?