mpd: Advantages over other players as single user

motheaten · 2008-10-31 16:43:08

Hey everyone,

I installed Archlinux just two weeks ago and I really like it. As amarok2 is not final yet I am at the moment looking for some alternatives (absolutely don't like juk that comes with KDE4) and I've seen in this and other forums that many people are very excited about mpd. So I tried it out myself (but only installed the console client mpc though) and I wonder what the advantages are over other players that you can use, like amarok, without a daemon in the background?
I know that it is a special server-client structure, but since I am the only person using my computer (a laptop) I don't really think that using mpd would be so great for me, but I don't know if I am missing some important point.

For me as the only user of my computer the interface of the actual player and the features of that player count, and with that in mind, amarok is really great for me. Is there anything that I could be excited about, using some mpd-client together with mpd? mpd itself if I understood it correctly is simply supplying the database for the music, but I still need a player with the features I want, which may be inferior to the features I like in amarok.

I hope you understand my point of view, it is not some bashing on mpd, it must be really great if you have some music server running it and you can connect to it with other computers, but does it have any advantages over the normal players on a single user system?

skottish · 2008-10-31 16:51:23

Welcome to the forums.

I think for a lot of users players like Amarok are simply too much. For me, I just need a music player that plays music. I don't care about lyrics, last fm, audioscrobbling, album covers, et al. I use external tagging and I-Pod apps. I can get the interface that I want with minimal dependencies that way. I also don't use KDE or Gnome, and I can't see using Mono for a single non-essential app, so that starts to rule out a bunch of stuff.

I'm to the point now that even though I'm maintaining ario-svn in AUR, I may downsize to an app that simply exists to create and edit playlists, and use mpdule from E17 or even just mpc and buttons on my keyboard.

Last edited by skottish (2008-10-31 16:52:37)

g33k · 2008-10-31 17:13:34

I stick to MPD for these
* Minimalistic.
* Least dependancies. Most importantly not dependent on X-Windows. I fear those X-crashes
* Has a wide variety of clients. You can choose command line mpc, or a ncurses based console app (ncmpc) or a pygtk app (sonata) as you please. (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients)
* There are lots of plugins/hacks.

kclive18 · 2008-10-31 17:21:14

MPD + ncmpc++ is the sweet spot for me. Sonata is a great GUI-based client if you're not too fond of terminal stuff. I used to use ncmpc but ncmpc++ organizes your music by artist and album, making it really convenient to use; I tend to listen to entire albums rather than songs.

heleos · 2008-10-31 17:27:31

I use Sonata, Although I don't really need to... Most of the time I have my entire library loaded and just random. But the times that I want a specific song, Sonata is great at it. Gmpc is also a good player (and doesn't require many (if any) gnome libraries.

mentallaxative · 2008-10-31 17:29:29

With mpd, you can open your front-end like Sonata to load playlists and select songs, and then close it and still have mpd running in the background, playing your music. There's not a whole boatload of features, but then you cut your coat according to your cloth, and I don't have very much cloth to spare (cloth = ram).

Though I have to mention, one of the reasons why I might like using it is because it took so ***** long to set it up, and I am just trying to justify installing it in the first place.

heleos · 2008-10-31 17:34:49

MPD is very easy to set up... Follow the wiki and you should have it set up in a couple minutes.

I forgot to mention in my first post that some clients have a lot of the things Amarok has. Sonata has tag editing, lyrics and cover art

motheaten · 2008-10-31 18:27:43

So even when you close the client, the music keeps on playing while the daemon is running?

bangkok_manouel · 2008-10-31 18:29:38

motheaten wrote:

So even when you close the client, the music keeps on playing while the daemon is running?

even if you kill X

skottish · 2008-10-31 18:30:31

motheaten wrote:

So even when you close the client, the music keeps on playing while the daemon is running?

It depends on the client. Some clients like sonata or ario (from subversion) will allow the user to set it to stop mpd on close, while others won't. But generally speaking yes, you can close the client and mpd will happily keep running.

0x001A4 · 2008-10-31 18:37:49

That's the main reason I liked MPD so much while I was using it. I could shut down the computer while it was playing, then when I turn my computer back on, the music starts playing as soon as mpd starts.

The only reason I prefer amarok over mpd is because if I added a song to my filesystem I would have to update the database for mpd to find and play it. I like just browsing files and dragging them into a playlist, which you can't (or couldn't while I was using it) do with mpd.

motheaten · 2008-10-31 18:43:33

Hm, ok, that sounds very interesting for me, I guess I'll give it another shot then and try Sonata first. Thanks a bunch guys, I didn't really think to get so many good answers that fast, great stuff

heleos · 2008-10-31 18:54:01

0x001A4 wrote:

That's the main reason I liked MPD so much while I was using it. I could shut down the computer while it was playing, then when I turn my computer back on, the music starts playing as soon as mpd starts.
The only reason I prefer amarok over mpd is because if I added a song to my filesystem I would have to update the database for mpd to find and play it. I like just browsing files and dragging them into a playlist, which you can't (or couldn't while I was using it) do with mpd.

Sonota has an option to update database on startup

skottish · 2008-10-31 18:58:49

heleos wrote:

0x001A4 wrote:
That's the main reason I liked MPD so much while I was using it. I could shut down the computer while it was playing, then when I turn my computer back on, the music starts playing as soon as mpd starts.
The only reason I prefer amarok over mpd is because if I added a song to my filesystem I would have to update the database for mpd to find and play it. I like just browsing files and dragging them into a playlist, which you can't (or couldn't while I was using it) do with mpd.
Sonota has an option to update database on startup

So does ario-svn. In fact, all of the cool features of sonata that aren't typical in mpd clients I asked the developer of ario to implement. He did.

heleos · 2008-10-31 19:29:13

skottish wrote:

So does ario-svn. In fact, all of the cool features of sonata that aren't typical in mpd clients I asked the developer of ario to implement. He did.

Maybe i'll have to check ario out

iphitus · 2008-11-01 00:16:34

mpd just doesn't skip. Last week, X-Plane was busy consuming all of my ram, swap and CPU, yet mpd didn't skip once. The system had locked up so badly I couldn't even SSH, but still not a skip. It's probably has a lot to do with the fact my mpd is running as root.

The frontends for mpd are excellent too. Sonata (whose developer is stonecrest, an Arch user), ncmpc, and the always convenient mpc.

James

hack.augusto · 2008-11-01 00:38:49

0x001A4 wrote:

That's the main reason I liked MPD so much while I was using it. I could shut down the computer while it was playing, then when I turn my computer back on, the music starts playing as soon as mpd starts.
The only reason I prefer amarok over mpd is because if I added a song to my filesystem I would have to update the database for mpd to find and play it. I like just browsing files and dragging them into a playlist, which you can't (or couldn't while I was using it) do with mpd.

music on console(moc) plays music straight from hd, give it a try it's like mpd without a database

Ruckus · 2008-11-01 03:57:37

MPD is just so versatile. I used to run it on my server with it playing music throughout my entire house, and you could control it via a web interface (I used pitchfork, but it seems like the project died since then). After that server died (old p3 500mhz), I put it on my main desktop and use it to stream music to my TV, and also i set it up to stream music to Icecast which I tunnel over SSH to work to play music while I'm at work.

GMPC/Sonata are great GUI based clients. I tried ario, but it seemed a little lacking in features, I did not try the SVN version however (Laziness).

Also, What I love about it is that it doesnt depend on X. I restart my computer, it starts playing music before I ever even log in.

DonVla · 2008-11-01 04:07:28

gmusicbrowser is a really light-weight alternative to amarok (or other jukebox apps).

Last edited by DonVla (2008-11-01 04:09:19)

xd-0 · 2008-11-01 07:26:36

Willl probably be repeating lots of what have been said. But that is what you get asking about music players and most of all mpd

+ Runs even though X is killed. Can't live without it.
+ Multiple frontends. Once again, freedom of choise. And meanwhile you change, mpd wont give a dam. It just keeps on playing.
+ Since it looks for your music under one folder, it forces you to keep your music organised.
+ Lots of other options

- Can't play music thats not in your musiclibrary.
- Can be tricky to set up. And there are different ways of doing it.

Nezmer · 2008-11-01 10:48:46

xd-0 wrote:

+ Since it looks for your music under one folder, it forces you to keep your music organised.

Not really .
You just have to symlink everything to one folder (useful If you store your files in different partitions) .

GERGE · 2008-11-01 11:24:44

I use Consonance for listening, it is best light program to browse in a 10k+ song library. Amarok is the best in this aspect, everyone would agree this, but it is very hungry on resources. I use mpd in a Openbox pipeline when I don't any specific song to listen, or I use with Sonata when I now exactly what I want to listen. But for browsing Consonance works best for me (every song in my library is tagged with albums, artists and names).

fuscia · 2008-11-01 14:38:25

i used to be a big fan of mpd and ncmpc, but i found cplay and mpg123 even simpler to use and, if i want them to run while i switch in and out of x, i can just run them in screen.

whargoul · 2008-11-01 16:20:59

Uhm, I might be hated by this - but because it reminds me of Foobar2000.

peets · 2008-11-01 19:45:48

I listen to a lot of streams from dogmazic.net and jamendo.com. Anyone can upload their music there, so there are quite a few bad songs. Once in a while I hear a really good song that I'd like to download.

wget `mpc | head -n 1`

And that's tied to one of my multimedia keys, as well as play, pause, forward, back... thanks to the ease of use of mpc.

(I'm actually working on a fancier script that downloads a higher quality version of the song, but I still get the song info hassle-free from a single call to mpc)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-31 16:43:08

mpd: Advantages over other players as single user

#2 2008-10-31 16:51:23

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#3 2008-10-31 17:13:34

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