Amarok/Exaile?

[orange2k]

Im using Amarok right now, but I wonder is Exaile any match for it, or even better?
What do you prefer and why?

[celsofaf]

No, Exaile can't be better. It lacks equalizers.

[prizrak]

I'm using Banshee and am very happy with it. I am not a big fan of putting KDE applications on Gnome actually.

[orange2k]

I'm using Banshee and am very happy with it. I am not a big fan of putting KDE applications on Gnome actually.

Well I did notice that it takes a lot of time to open Amarok, probably because of this...
How is Banshee? Can you listen to or rip shoutcast radio?

[FuturePilot]

I really like Exaile. It's still a young project, but I see a lot of potential with it. The fact that it uses plugins really makes it flexible with features.

[plun]

Exaile is a great player and this project seems to work hard.

http://www.exaile.org/downloads

SVN
http://syzygy42.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/exaile-svn/

Equalizer
http://syzygy42.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/gstreamer-equalizer/

:guitar:

[byen]

I have been a long time user of Exaile. Even today.. to play my songs I turn on Exaile without a second thought. But I do use Amarok. Primarily for my Ipod needs. I have not seen any other application that makes it so easy to sync,edit and upload your music onto your Ipod.
But again, for listening to music in my library... Exaile it is!

[John.Michael.Kane]

I have been a long time user of Exaile. Even today.. to play my songs I turn on Exaile without a second thought. But I do use Amarok. Primarily for my Ipod needs. I have not seen any other application that makes it so easy to sync,edit and upload your music onto your Ipod.
But again, for listening to music in my library... Exaile it is!

I use banshee to play my music, and it does ipod sync too. how good it does it is another question as i don't use a ipod.

You can read more here. http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page

[muguwmp67]

I'd use Exaile if I could, as amarok gives me kde errors from time to time. However, I have a huge (22,000 tracks) music library thats too slow without mySQL. If/When Exaile supports external databases, I'll switch.

[byen]

I use banshee to play my music, and it does ipod sync too. how good it does it is another question as i don't use a ipod.
You can read more here. http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page

I have tried banshee a long time ago. But back then it did not give me the ability to drag songs and drop it onto a playlist as I am playing the songs and had no Ipod support. I wonder why I have not tried it again for so long. I have been so comfortable with exaile that I did not think of alternatives. Thanks for the heads up mate. Will install it as soon as I go home. :D

[PartisanEntity]

Although I am a Gnome user I am a big fan of Amarok, I like the wiki and lyrics feature. It allows me to play streaming radio and manager my mp3 collection, plus it looks stylish.

[prizrak]

Well I did notice that it takes a lot of time to open Amarok, probably because of this...
How is Banshee? Can you listen to or rip shoutcast radio?
It seems pretty good so far. You can listen to shoutcast as any other MP3 player really but it's not like Winamp where shoutcast is right there in the interface, you do have the ability to add new radion stations. No clue about ripping the radio as I don't normally do that.

One weird issue I am having right now is it not refreshing the file list as songs are added/removed. I haven't looked into it extensively yet but I think it might be a bug.

[Erunno]

Aaron Seigo wrote: (http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-i-forget-why-i-pick-title.html)


* don't recreate what's already good; we have enough stuff that's missing. so when i hear of an app whose stated goal is making a gtk+ version of amarok (exaile) or a gtk+ version of kalzium (i forget the name of that one) it just about makes me puke.



counter example: i understand juk, amarok, banshee, etc, etc.. they each do things a bit differently and there's probably an element of "beacuse i wanted to". but i don't understand exaile, which is described as a gtk+ clone of amarok. seriously, go look at wikipedia (i can't get to the exaile website right now, but that was how i was initially introduced to it: as a gtk+ amarok)

now, i'm sure someone is going to jump up and say "but i like all my apps to look the same!" as a justification for blatant cloning. ok, that's cool. overrated and largely mitigated by universal theme engines (a sub-set, indeed, of all engines), but understandable. however, i don't think it validates the blinders i see on people's eyes and it certainly does not explain away non-gui reimplementations. remember, this blog started way back there about d-bus, which is decidedly non-gui.

++

[ceelo]

Funny enough, Amarok is faster than both Exaile and Banshee for me in GNOME. Banshee is especially slow when scrolling through my collection. Amarok might take longer to load, but it performs much faster than both for me. Not to mention takes up less memory.

[crimesaucer]

Banshee has always crashed in my xubuntu...I've tried BMP and Audacious and I didn't like the sound or the skins...(moo amp was pretty cool)...

So I have tried Exaile! and it sounds better then BMP and Audacious (that both had equalizers.)

I like the plug-ins, and the way it's worked so far...

[AndyCooll]

I'm a GNOME user and like Exaile. However it still doesn't match up to Amarok IMHO ...yet.

Firstly, I always seem to have problems recovering with the Cover Art feature, for instance I can't seem to get it to retrieve album covers from Amazon UK, and it also doesn't seem to skip covers it can't find unless done manually. And secondly, it doesn't seem to automatically retrieve your album playlists.

:cool:

[_narayan]

amaroK is da bomb on in gnome, kde or xfce :guitar:

[aum11]

Exaile! is playing right now, after having downloaded the latest 0.2.9 from http://www.exaile.org/downloads.

Shifted from the wonderful AmaroK simply due to the long load time on a gnome system. Exaile! is sooo much faster., It is also developing at a fast rate but is already excellent in my experience.

[guitarmaniac]

Exaile has NOTHING on Amarok

[nirelan]

Is there any way to put Amarok in the tool bar?

[steeleyuk]

I was a user of Banshee but decided to have a change to Exaile. Very good program and while it does lack a few features (playlist importing), they aren't showstoppers. Plus Exaile seems quicker than Banshee to me...

[Spike-X]

AmaroK is the best program for my needs that I've found so far. I tried Exaile, but I couldn't figure out how to edit tags (although AmaroK seems to have trouble with doing that and making it stick also).

I'm looking forward to Songbird being ready for everyday use. It looks like it's going to be the killer music app.

[Andrewie]

amaroK is da bomb on in gnome, kde or xfce :guitar:

and Windows and Mac OS X they already have amarok working in windows and os x, they just don't have a engine to play any of the media

[forcesofhabit]

I would use Amarok, but the way it arranges my library through my Creative Zen is really messed up and to fix it I have to edit every signle ID3 tag. Exaile! arranges it properly without having to change track IDs, etc.

[mirceade]

I'd use exhaile but it has a huge problem with my hardware: when the volume is maxed out (or near the maximum) it DISORTS the sound. So... no go. Banshee it is.

[chrx]

dont know if you can compare memory, but exaile usually use 20-30 mb while amarok using over 120 mb at startup.

edit: amarok use about the same memory in gnome enviroment, but in kde i get much higher number.

[b0ng0]

When I used Exaile I found it to be very similar to Amarok and in many respects almost as good. But it didn't add .wma files to my media library no matter what I tried so I just gave up on it.:(

[diskotek]

i prefer exaile (and also listen)... well they have many bugs but (exaie!) it's worth for speed, easy of use etc...

[Gargamella]

The fact is that these gnome players are good...I like Exaile, but Amarok has too many features and is heavily developed so it is always ahead...anyway I do use amarok and exaile, and a little of rythmbox.

[MCSE_Crossover]

Do either of them natively play video podcasts? I know that Amarok has the feature to "open with" and I can select Kaffeine to open it in an external player, but I am really looking for one that would be an all-inclusive media player like WMP or iTunes. I haven't found a media player on Linux yet that really does everything from one application. I definately love Amarok though. I think it's handling of music media, ipods, playlists and device syncing is far superior to any of the other apps. Plus, the magnatune features and radio streaming is awesome.

[wolfen69]

I'd use Exaile if I could, as amarok gives me kde errors from time to time. However, I have a huge (22,000 tracks) music library thats too slow without mySQL. If/When Exaile supports external databases, I'll switch.

amarok handles my 32,000 song collection just fine. :D

[ceelo]

On the topic of memory consumption (according to gnome-system-monitor):

Starting Exaile with an empty collection/playlist: 18.9 MB
Starting Amarok with a collection/playlist of 2469 tracks: 12.5 MB

Starting Exaile with a collection/playlist of 2469 tracks: 28.5 MB

[SunnyRabbiera]

I perfer Amarok as its better when concerning formats.
It can handle some microsoft sound formats like wma, no gnome music app can take it.

[Lord Illidan]

Hmm, I've just tried Exaile 0.2.10 and I can tell you already, that it's looking really good. It's very close to Amarok in functionality, with the added bonus that it's Gnome.

Also, it looks quite good. The icons are tangoish, which looks great in GNOME.

Added to that is that in AWN, it can display infomation about what it's playing, such as album art and time remaining.

It has a bit more to do, but it seems solid, and all though it is python, it seems to have speeded up. It's certainly faster than Banshee, and so far seems as fast as Amarok.

Music sounds the same, but I am not an audiophile. The equalizer didn't work, said it needed gstreamer-plugins-bad, but then I never bother with the equalizer.

Regarding the album art, it is very similar to Amarok's and with some searching I could find the artwork. If that fails you can assign one from a directory.

Lyrics are gotten from lyricwiki.org. I don't think I can configure it to use more search engines, that sucks imho..also the fact I can't edit what's there. Same for tablature.

However, it's a great player.

[diskotek]

i installed exaile again on my laptop after few months. the good thing is there are much more plug-ins now. i'm pretty happy for that. and exaile is faster in my laptop than "listen". well i don't have so much files on my laptop so that's a good choice for me. amarok is very nice but uses so much resources and have many features that i don't need.

[reacocard]

For anyone wanting to use Exaile's equalizer in Feisty, there are patched gstreamer debs in my repo here: http://syzygy42.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/gstreamer-equalizer/
Just add the repo as per the instructions on the page, then do 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade' to get the new stuff. Restart Exaile, and the equalizer will work. Gutsy's gstreamer should already (or will soon) support the equalizer.

If anyone has ideas for improving Exaile, or has found a bug, please file a ticket on Exaile's trac (http://www.exaile.org/trac), or inform a developer (synic, sjohannes, or reacocard) about it in #exaile on freenode.

I think Exaile is better, but as you can see, I'm an Exaile dev, so I'm a little biased. :D

[deepclutch]

I perfer Amarok as its better when concerning formats.
It can handle some microsoft sound formats like wma, no gnome music app can take it.
Most GNOME apps can play .wma or .wmv for that matter.my rhythmbox,exaile,mesk or listen all plays proprietory formats better than in kde.ur comment is ignorance in bliss.

it is gstreamer plugins and w32codecs which are responsible for playability.I sincerely hopes if you ever use Gnome and Ubuntu,do read:
http://ubuntuguide.org
:-|

[happy-and-lost]

I'm on Exaile at the moment, but only because the current Gusty Rhythmbox package makes the music crackle. I'll probably stick with it once I've figured out how to make the sound the same volume as the rest of the system, rather than about 20% lower all the time.

[reacocard]

I'm on Exaile at the moment, but only because the current Gusty Rhythmbox package makes the music crackle. I'll probably stick with it once I've figured out how to make the sound the same volume as the rest of the system, rather than about 20% lower all the time.

It's the stupid equalizer, there's a bug in it somewhere. Easiest workaround is to just drag all the sliders in the equalizer to the top.

[mytwobears]

I prefer Amarok, I find it to be more intuitive than Exaile in importing and handling my 300+ album library. For example, after importing all my albums into exaile, I was faced with 1-2 weeks of work or more just to organize them back into artists and album folders in the library. When Exaile imported them they were scattered all over as single tracks throughout the library, that was daunting work and totally unacceptable.

Amarok displaced maybe 10 or so tracks, which were easily edited and organized in their proper order. Amarok's GUI is customizable and offers a nice selection of eye candy themes to personalize your player. The cover manager works flawlessly. I do wish it supported playing monkey's audio files. I use BMP player for those music files and I also wished it could edit M4a files.

I did like the feature in exaile where it displayed the album cover art on the desktop while the album was playing, wish Amarok would incorporate that feature, I also love the idea of the streamripper plugin and using a plugin framework.

I will likely try Exaile again, but I will give it some time to advance further in its development.

[Medieval_Creations]

I have installed and tried both, and am still an Amarok user. It's been in development longer and is no longer in it's infancy. I am looking to replace it because it does take quite a while to load. I think Exaile will eventually replace Amarok on my PC, but not quite yet, there is still some functionality that I require like ipod and external db support (mysql).

[andrewsomething]

Added to that is that in AWN, it can display infomation about what it's playing, such as album art and time remaining.


I'm really excited about Exaile, it's on the way to becoming my main app for music. But just so you know, Amarok will do the same thing. You can get the script here. (http://awn.wetpaint.com/page/Amarok+Script?t=anon)

[Thyme]

I've just installed exaile 0.2.10 after using 0.2.9 for a couple of months. I think exaile is brilliant because on my machine its fast and seems well thought out and written.

Ever since using exaile I've always been impressed with how the new features are implemented and seldom run into bugs, only one now which is the equaliser requiring gstreamer from cvs repo. Although this isn't actually a bug, I don't think that most people will have the cvs version and therefore maybe another method of introducing this feature could have been used.

Exaile definitely satisfies my needs and I'm always impressed with the updates.

[deepclutch]

likes gtk+ apps.esp in audio-rhythmbox.

[reacocard]

I've just installed exaile 0.2.10 after using 0.2.9 for a couple of months. I think exaile is brilliant because on my machine its fast and seems well thought out and written.

Ever since using exaile I've always been impressed with how the new features are implemented and seldom run into bugs, only one now which is the equaliser requiring gstreamer from cvs repo. Although this isn't actually a bug, I don't think that most people will have the cvs version and therefore maybe another method of introducing this feature could have been used.

Exaile definitely satisfies my needs and I'm always impressed with the updates.

Gutsy will support the equalizer ootb, and for us Feisty users, I've created a repo with updated gstreamer stuff that supports the equalizer: http://syzygy42.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/gstreamer-equalizer/

Enjoy!

[mav3rick]

funy enought , both EXAILE and BANSHEE are way faster and more reliable than AMAROK on FEISTY KDE....screw amarok

[happysmileman]

funy enought , both EXAILE and BANSHEE are way faster and more reliable than AMAROK on FEISTY KDE....screw amarok

Erm, post numbers and don't use caps if you don't want to look like a lying(or exaggerating) fanboy.
If you posted that it takes 4.3 seconds longer for Amarok to do something then I'd be inclined to actually believe you. If you just post "Program X is faster than Program Y" without any real evidence I don't find it relevant to this conversation.

I'm not claiming I'm not a KDE fanboy, but I'd generally try to post some numbers and at least look un-biased :P

Also don't just post "Screw amarok", it's going to p**s off a lot of people who do use it, and just randomly insulting something without an explanation is pointless, I'll try my best to defend KDE in an argument but I've never felt the need to insult GNOME because I don't like it

[GFree678]

I really, really like Exaile now. It's grown to the level of stability and functionality I'm looking for, plus it uses GTK libs so I don't have to resort to KDE ones.

[igknighted]

Are there any decent Xine based media players for gnome? I prefer Xine to Gstreamer, but I could live without the QT based amarok if there was a GTK alternative.

[wersdaluv]

As for me, I think that Amarok is the best media player that exists today.

Since I am on GNOME most often these days, I usse Banshee most often because I find it better than Rhythmbox. I prefer Banshee's interface and look and feel over other GNOME players. I do not use Exaile because I do not like the look and feel and I have not found a way to make GNOME music player shortcuts to work with it.

[FuturePilot]

I've switched to Exaile. I compiled it on my Dapper box and I'm loving it.

[reacocard]

As for me, I think that Amarok is the best media player that exists today.

Since I am on GNOME most often these days, I usse Banshee most often because I find it better than Rhythmbox. I prefer Banshee's interface and look and feel over other GNOME players. I do not use Exaile because I do not like the look and feel and I have not found a way to make GNOME music player shortcuts to work with it.

Not as far as I know, they all seem to use gstreamer.

That said, if someone wants to develop a Xine backend for Exaile we would be more than happy to accept the patch....

[igknighted]

Not as far as I know, they all seem to use gstreamer.

That said, if someone wants to develop a Xine backend for Exaile we would be more than happy to accept the patch....

I'll look into this. I use Gnome on my Fedora desktop, and would really like to use Xine (mainly due to familiarity). Do you work on Exaile?

[Freddy]

Can Exaile handle m3u files? I tested Exaile a couple of weeks back (before a reinstall) but it seemed to me that it couldn't. If it do handle m3u's then how can I enable it?

[bash]

I love Exaile for its feature variety. I think neither Listen nor Banschee have nearly as many features as Exaile. But I still don't use Exaile.

Just for the plain reason that I (Watch out personal opinion coming) find the look of it absolutly hideous. Its just plain ugly in my view. I would prefer it way more if the big window area on the right would be for my music library and the small area on the left for the current playing and the playlist. Thats why I used Listen and now Banshee.

[reacocard]

I'll look into this. I use Gnome on my Fedora desktop, and would really like to use Xine (mainly due to familiarity). Do you work on Exaile?

Yes, I'm one of the developers. Stop by #exaile on Freenode sometime and talk to me, synic or sjohannes if you need help (or you can use the exaile-devel mailing list, but hardly anyone does)

[fuscia]

Exaile has NOTHING on Amarok

i just realized exaile has a streamripper plugin (what about amarok? any word on 'amaripper'?).

[afonic]

I was an old time amarok user but Exaile covers my needs now. It handles my massive collection pretty nice and its very fast.

Tbh amarok has loads of extra features but I didn't really use them anyway.

[sp0onman]

i prefer amarok over exaile, but i use gnome which makes it a little slow to load up, but that doesnt bother me, once its loaded it doesnt skip a beat(literally haha....funny)

[xat_]

Exaile has NOTHING on Amarok

I'm sure OP appreciates your highly objective approach on the matter. :roll:

Exaile could easily be as feature complete if it had a user base as big as Amarok's making scripts for it. Both apps have the major strength of being extendable, so all it takes is a clever scripter to implement whatever he or she feels might be missing.

Amarok is very solid, but at this point I'd say so is Exaile.

Last I checked Exaile was still stale on cue sheet support. Hope that gets covered soon if not already!

[starcraft.man]

I've been using Exaile on my Gutsy test partition and I am impressed with the new version. When I resintall this Thursday I'm moving to using Exaile exclusively, no more banshee for me.

[frigaut]

Both are good. But as was said, amarok takes a long time loading on a gnome system, plus it needs loads of kde deamons, which I dislike. Hence I switched mostly to exaile. It's not fully as loaded and flexible than amarok yet, but it's getting there fast. btw, loading time for me is about 2-3 seconds for exaile and about 30sec for amarok.

[RAV TUX]

I just installed AmaroK in the e17 environment while I am sure it is wonderful I have yet to become familiar with it.

For now I am enjoying the simplicity of the XMMS player.

[Quake]

I have to say that I prefer amarok.

Amarok-Xine uses only 2% off the CPU while Exaile or any other Gnome players uses from 10% to 12%... which is a lot since I notice a speed decrease when I use firefox.

The only problem I have with Amarok running in Gnome is that It takes a HELL long time to load!

But until Gnome players doesn't use 10% or 12% of the cpu to play a simple mp3, I'll stay with Amarok.

(And yes, I have this problem since Ubuntu 6.10, clean install)

[RAV TUX]

I have to say that I prefer amarok.

Amarok-Xine uses only 2% off the CPU while Exaile or any other Gnome players uses from 10% to 12%... which is a lot since I notice a speed decrease when I use firefox.

The only problem I have with Amarok running in Gnome is that It takes a HELL long time to load!

But until Gnome players doesn't use 10% or 12% of the cpu to play a simple mp3, I'll stay with Amarok.

(And yes, I have this problem since Ubuntu 6.10, clean install)

AmaroK is fast as hell in Debian Lenny!

[a12ctic]

I have to say that I prefer amarok.

Amarok-Xine uses only 2% off the CPU while Exaile or any other Gnome players uses from 10% to 12%... which is a lot since I notice a speed decrease when I use firefox.

The only problem I have with Amarok running in Gnome is that It takes a HELL long time to load!

But until Gnome players doesn't use 10% or 12% of the cpu to play a simple mp3, I'll stay with Amarok.

(And yes, I have this problem since Ubuntu 6.10, clean install)

hmmm rhythmbox is using 0% while playing songs and dealing with my 7000 song library.

[mr_boo1711]

Although I am a Gnome user I am a big fan of Amarok, I like the wiki and lyrics feature. It allows me to play streaming radio and manager my mp3 collection, plus it looks stylish.

I love Amarok also. I've been trying a few different ones out, and to be honest its all about looks for me. Album art, quirky features (Lyrics etc) and a well-managed mp3 collection are vital - and it seems to tick all the boxes!

I dont want to change the subject too much here, but I'm having a problem mapping the shortcuts for my play/pause, skip etc buttons on my DiNovo Edge keyboard... anyone who uses the same combination of hardware/software got any ideas? It accepts them under 'Amarok Global Shortcuts', but not under 'Amarok Shortcuts' (which I believe are the ones used to change tracks, and play/stop etc). :(

[[Incidently - Rythmbox was fine with it when I mapped the keys for it. :confused: ]]

[Quake]

hmmm rhythmbox is using 0% while playing songs and dealing with my 7000 song library.

Weird... What's your system?
I have an athlon X+ 1800+, 1GB ram (I'll upgrade soon)

[xat_]

Exaile uses ~1% here. I'm slightly surprised that there'd be a huge difference at all; maybe reacocard can comment on this: Don't most players use the same backend (GStreamer) for outputting music?

[Quake]

Here's the processor usage in exaile, perhaps I should report this problem in the other forum.

[BarfBag]

I haven't heard anybody mention Rythmbox! I love it! It's soooo simple.

[reacocard]

Exaile uses ~1% here. I'm slightly surprised that there'd be a huge difference at all; maybe reacocard can comment on this: Don't most players use the same backend (GStreamer) for outputting music?

There are actually two backends available, Xine and Gstreamer. Most GTK/Gnome players use gstreamer, while Amarok uses Xine. These backends will perform differently on different file types and qualities.

[happy-and-lost]

I'm too impatient to wait for these big programs to load. I like the fact that Rhythmbox is ready to go about 1 second after I click on the launcher :)

Exaile/Banshee do have some killer features which RB is lacking (i.e. advanced playlist queuing, stop after current track etc), but not enough to be worth the 5 second loading time :p

[Depressed Man]

Load Rhythmbox and Exaile at the same time, use Rhythmbox until Exaile is up and running?

Dunno, both take a while to load for me. But that's because all my music is on an NTFS partition so it reads it from there. I just use Rhythmbox when Exaile crashes on me.

[Medieval_Creations]

I use Amarok to transfer over songs to my iPod and occasionally to listen to music.

I still prefer the old stand by, MPlayer. GUI's are kool and all, but I still prefer appz that I can run from the command line w/out X.

[Gharchkhor]

1. Amarok has better plugins
2. Amarok can use MySQL and that's a life saver when you have a +20,000 song library
3. Even the latest stable version of Exaile does crash on my system...

I support and will switch to a really stable Exaile with support for MySQL and plugins as good as those of Amarok's. because i want to have a pureeee Gnome system and don't like any KDE unpurity in it, but currently i don't have a choice beside Amarok...