Banshee

[JerecDrak2]

So after installing Natty, I have used Banshee for the first time. First impressions are that it's reasonably decent, but there are a few niggles. It's certainly chock full of features, but I find its performance sub-par. I like to have "random track" and "repeat all" modes activated and just go through my entire library. Sometimes it will take a couple of presses of "next" until I find something I want to listen to, and after hitting next 3 or so times Banshee takes ~1 second to register that the next button has been pressed. It's not the end of the world, but it irks me. Rhythmbox was constantly snappy, as is Winamp (which is what I use when I'm in Windows).

In addition, Banshee doesn't seem to keep a very big history of what's been played, so in the above scenario if I skip several tracks and then decide I want to go back I can't go further than 2 or 3 tracks. Does anyone know how to get around this?

What does everyone else think about our new default player? I quite like it, but these niggles are annoying enough that I've installed Rhythmbox again.

[jerenept]

I <3 Banshee.

I can't go back to anything else.

[Linux_junkie]

You can always replace Banshee with Rhythmbox!

[JerecDrak2]

You can always replace Banshee with Rhythmbox!
That's what I've done! I'm just interested in what everyone thinks of our new default musical overlord ;-)

[Throne777]

I've been using Banshee a few years now. It's a bit more sluggish than Rhythmbox, but it makes browsing through my albums (of which, I have a lot) much better (being able to see cover art is a big plus, especially if you can't quite remember what the album or band was called but you remember the cover art).

A little niggle for me is that Rhythmbox has a better play queue system than Banshee. I like that Rhythmbox auto-deletes the track off the play queue after you've finished listening to it, whereas Banshee keeps it there. Hardly devastating though.

[gnomeuser]

So after installing Natty, I have used Banshee for the first time. First impressions are that it's reasonably decent, but there are a few niggles. It's certainly chock full of features, but I find its performance sub-par. I like to have "random track" and "repeat all" modes activated and just go through my entire library. Sometimes it will take a couple of presses of "next" until I find something I want to listen to, and after hitting next 3 or so times Banshee takes ~1 second to register that the next button has been pressed. It's not the end of the world, but it irks me. Rhythmbox was constantly snappy, as is Winamp (which is what I use when I'm in Windows).


We realize that the performance has problematic areas, well identified cases can be examined and fixed, whereas "it is slow" cannot. So the narrower you can define slowness the better and the likelier that it will be addressed.

You are welcome, and encouraged, to file bugs. To make this easy I wrote a little ditty on the subject:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/04/banshee-suckth-the-big-one-or-how-to-correctly-file-a-bug-and-stop-worrying/



In addition, Banshee doesn't seem to keep a very big history of what's been played, so in the above scenario if I skip several tracks and then decide I want to go back I can't go further than 2 or 3 tracks. Does anyone know how to get around this?


Banshee keeps the last play date and time for each track in the database, there should be no reason why one could not rewind further. This sounds like a bug.



What does everyone else think about our new default player? I quite like it, but these niggles are annoying enough that I've installed Rhythmbox again.

I think Banshee is the best thing since sliced bread, but then again I am part of the Banshee community - slight bias might occur.

[aljazek]

...I like that Rhythmbox auto-deletes the track off the play queue after you've finished listening to it, whereas Banshee keeps it there. Hardly devastating though.

Yes, this is also the biggest problem with banshee for me too. Anyway, banshee is probably the second app (first one is dropbox) I download on fresh installed OS :-)

[Quadunit404]

In addition, Banshee doesn't seem to keep a very big history of what's been played, so in the above scenario if I skip several tracks and then decide I want to go back I can't go further than 2 or 3 tracks. Does anyone know how to get around this?

1. Add the Banshee daily builds PPA (I use this, and as of Banshee 1.9.x it includes all the community extensions)
2. Update Banshee to the latest daily build (this is for any bug fixes, btw, and if Banshee likes you as it does for me, you don't HAVE to worry about stability)
3. Install Zeitgeist Dataprovider.
4. Open up Edit > Preferences
5. Switch to the Extensions tab and enable Zeitgeist Dataprovider.
6. ???
7. You now have a log of all the media you recently played in Banshee in your Zeitgeist activity log.

imo using Zeitgeist to log played songs and videos is a better alternative to what comes with Banshee.

(If you couldn't tell from my signature, I'm an avid Banshee user :popcorn:)

[el_koraco]

Music players:
1. Amarok
2. Banshee
3. everything else

[JerecDrak2]

Well I re-installed Banshee again (I felt like I didn't try it out for long enough before) and after browsing round the settings I noticed that "Update File and Folder Names" was ticked. I don't remember selecting this, but I unticked it and the delay in track skipping is mostly gone, and playback history seems to be properly kept now. I'm guessing Banshee was renaming files which is why it refused to go back further than a couple of tracks before.

Time to find the inevitable "Unknown Artist" folder and sort things out...

[Shmantiv_Radio]

Music players:
1. Amarok
2. Banshee
3. everything else

Amarok sucks.

[el_koraco]

no, ******* sucks.

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

Amarok sucks.

Agreed. Last time I used Banshee I didn't like it. Whatever version is in 11.04 is superior to rhythmbox imo.

[graabein]

I liked Banshee for a while but I haven't tried it in a long time. I found Quod Libet and its album mode so there's no need for anything else. When I'm on Windows I use foobar2000. If they make a native version for GNU/Linux I'll certainly try it. Back on topic I doubt I'll give Banshee much of a chance. From what I saw installing Ubuntu on my sister's laptop it looks glossy, sluggish and its features could be more streamlined, so I'll stick with Quod Libet for the time being.

[NightwishFan]

I am going to give Banshee a good try because version 2.0 is in Debian Testing. (I was like yay when I saw. :) )

[marl30]

Banshee was one of my favorite media players in Ubuntu next to Audacious. Since switching to Kubuntu, I find that Amarok is more straightforward and does everything I want much better than Banshee did. What I mainly use Banshee for now is for radio streams and the karaoke plugin.