A good audio player

low · 2008-01-14 03:57:33

songbird

Leigh · 2008-01-14 06:45:45

I'm also a moc fan. It's nothing fancy being a cli app, but that depends on your point of view. With over 150 gigs of music in a ton of sub directories and always wanting to listen to something different, it's just perfect for me.

zenlord · 2008-01-14 09:54:16

Listen is a good musicplayer which fits into gnome very well.

QuodLibet is also considered to be good.

Zl.

xd-0 · 2008-01-14 10:21:17

Musicplayers is something of an achilleas heal (hope the spelling ws correct). Quod-Libet is a good musicplayer. For winamp lookalike then theres audacious.
For cli I prefer moc. If you like to run a server app with clients connected to it from different computers, then nothing beats mpd+sonata.

11010010110 · 2008-01-14 12:03:46

Noatun - Its like winamp

shlomomofo · 2008-01-14 15:10:04

Anyone have any more info on getting Aqualung for Arch? As far as I can tell, it is not available through pacman....

patroclo7 · 2008-01-14 16:19:06

Aqualung is the AUR. If you want to use niche-alternative apps, I strongly suggest that you learn to use the AUR. Almost everything which pacman does not show you is in the AUR, and it is very simple to use the AUR. Look in the wiki for any kind of documentation on the AUR.

wyvern · 2008-01-14 22:10:23

schivmeister wrote:

Why haven't I mentioned Aqualung? It's the default music player whenever JACK is running, and it's been so transparent that I almost always forget it's an amazing music player where audio quality is everything

Thanks for that tip-off - never heard of it till now. Installed and loving it ^_^

schivmeister · 2008-01-15 16:32:32

finferflu wrote:

What do you mean? What's the difference between Aqualung and MPD + client? I'm quite interested in audio quality.

wyvern wrote:

Thanks for that tip-off - never heard of it till now. Installed and loving it ^_^

I do feel/hear a significant increase in clarity, though it may just be due to JACK. Never tried MPD so I can't really tell, but from common sense, there shouldn't be much difference in terms of audio "quality", at least one would have to really listen closely to compare. After all, CLI would have the least interference, hence least chances of degrading anything. But for a GUI (though it looks kinda ugly with the more popular GTK+ styles with blings), this Aqualung is really a winner Most beneficial for me is its ability to play some 24-32 bit WAV formats.

There are some cool things here like using LADSPA plug-ins, but those are just fun factor. The important ones are DSP settings; sample rate conversion type (even w/ a C2D 3.4GHz and M-Audio Delta the best is really not an option), and playback RVA. It basically fits well in a monitoring scenario. A nice quote:

Dude, if you feel like gaining information about the spectral content of the music that's playing, you simply got to listen to it. No 20-bar "spectrum analyzer" will give you information of that density and accuracy. The human ear is one of the most sensitive instruments ever made, outperforming any ordinary measurement technology. Besides that, the author believes that music is for listening, not for viewing. If you want idiotic flashing lights that have no real connection to the sound but perhaps look nice to some people (that being the only acceptable excuse for their existance), go find some other program.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-01-15 16:38:05)

shlomomofo · 2008-01-15 22:41:47

so i managed to get aqualung installed (my first experience with aur ... sweet!). it seems very promising wrt playback, as i am looking for something to replace the playback capabilities of foobar2000 under windows. seems to me like a good thing that it uses the native libraries for encoding/decoding different formats. however, some minor/major quibbles wrt usability...

1. no option to "add to playlist and play now". i've found this simple feature to be missing on every (i think) linux music player i've tried so far (exaile. most have only "append to playlist" and/or "add to queue" options for playing albums. that being said, i've only tried gui players. sonata/mpd is the closest to having this basic function, with the option to replace the playlist contents, though it still requires switching to a new tab and some extra clicks to get it playing. this seems like it should be possible with aqualung, as there is a cli switch (-L) to start playing at once. (side note: it might be cool to have a "play in aqualung" script that would show up in the context menu when right clicking on directories... any hints on adding a script to the xfce4 directory context menu?)

2. no auto-updating of database. maybe i just missed this. also, no ability to combine multiple roots into one store. again, maybe i missed the option.

3. no custom handling of "various artist" albums in the media stores. also a common hangup of audio players, windows and linux alike. this may be possible in aqualung using the regexp options, but i haven't tried yet. i tag all va albums with "album artist" - this tag is arbitrary and could be easily changed by me. in fact, i wish there was support for "custom" tags in general... foobar2000 really has this wrapped up with it's scripting capabilities.

4. no ability to turn off replay-gain attenuation. i could just remove all rg info i guess, but that seems drastic. perhaps disabling rva in the settings also does the trick.

bionnaki · 2008-01-15 22:51:06

aqualung looks like an xmms clone...I dont get whats so good about it.

MrWeatherbee · 2008-01-15 23:39:25

shlomomofo wrote:

so i managed to get aqualung installed (my first experience with aur ... sweet!). it seems very promising wrt playback, as i am looking for something to replace the playback capabilities of foobar2000 under windows. seems to me like a good thing that it uses the native libraries for encoding/decoding different formats. however, some minor/major quibbles wrt usability...
1. no option to "add to playlist and play now". i've found this simple feature to be missing on every (i think) linux music player i've tried so far (exaile. most have only "append to playlist" and/or "add to queue" options for playing albums. that being said, i've only tried gui players. sonata/mpd is the closest to having this basic function, with the option to replace the playlist contents, though it still requires switching to a new tab and some extra clicks to get it playing. this seems like it should be possible with aqualung, as there is a cli switch (-L) to start playing at once. (side note: it might be cool to have a "play in aqualung" script that would show up in the context menu when right clicking on directories... any hints on adding a script to the xfce4 directory context menu?)
2. no auto-updating of database. maybe i just missed this. also, no ability to combine multiple roots into one store. again, maybe i missed the option.
3. no custom handling of "various artist" albums in the media stores. also a common hangup of audio players, windows and linux alike. this may be possible in aqualung using the regexp options, but i haven't tried yet. i tag all va albums with "album artist" - this tag is arbitrary and could be easily changed by me. in fact, i wish there was support for "custom" tags in general... foobar2000 really has this wrapped up with it's scripting capabilities.
4. no ability to turn off replay-gain attenuation. i could just remove all rg info i guess, but that seems drastic. perhaps disabling rva in the settings also does the trick.

I've been following this thread since you opened it, but I resisted responding with, "Why not just run Foobar2000?"

But I can resist no longer. Why not just run Foobar2000? Your wants, desires, and needs seem to be uncompromising as mine were when looking for a good Linux player, so if you want 'something like' Foobar2000 (which there really isn't in Linux), use Foobar2000.

shlomomofo · 2008-01-16 02:20:51

MrWeatherbee wrote:

I've been following this thread since you opened it, but I resisted responding with, "Why not just run Foobar2000?"
But I can resist no longer. Why not just run Foobar2000? Your wants, desires, and needs seem to be uncompromising as mine were when looking for a good Linux player, so if you want 'something like' Foobar2000 (which there really isn't in Linux), use Foobar2000.

hah! trust me, it was running through my mind as i was writing that post. would i just use wine? i have a very low-powered via epia pc... is there a big performance hit? part of the reason i left vista is that it was no good on the mini-itx system i have built for my stereo. is the sound system smoothly integrated? i'll hit the wiki in the meantime....

i would rather run something built for linux... actually, i would rather run foobar2000 built for linux! i switched recently from vista... that os's highly touted new audio subsystem is *terrible*! i have a good hifi setup, and it was immediately obvious to me that vista cuts out low frequencies... i.e. there is a high-pass filter in there somewhere that can't be disabled! i have no proof for this except for my ears, but certainly there is some monkey business afoot. ugh...

barebones · 2008-01-16 15:22:53

If you like Foobar, then you probably want to check out QuodLibet. It was mentioned in an earlier post but I'll mention it again. I think it's very similar to Foobar and was what I used for a long time. That being said, I currently use mpd since I've been trying to get rid of as many gui apps as possible on my laptop.

Last edited by barebones (2008-01-16 15:23:42)

schivmeister · 2008-01-16 18:45:41

shlom: hmm i don't really know about those since I've only just started to really use it. previously it only served my monitoring needs since it's the only media player that is built with solely JACK in mind; thus provides me psychological relief. Haven't really dug much into it Amarok takes care of my music "library" for now, though it's been quite a while since i've bothered myself as i'm not an organized person.

well players like Aqualung indeed only serve a niche area..sort of a you-feel-it-or-don't kinda thing and more audiophile-oriented I wouldn't really say it can be an alternative to Foobar2000 though.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-01-16 18:48:19)

sijoku · 2008-01-30 19:49:30

Something good for podcasts and audiobooks is mplayer with the scaletempo audio filter (stock mplayer doesn't have this filter - you need mplayer-svn from testing. Use mplayer -af help to list what audio filters are available)

This filter allows you to change the playback speed without changing the pitch of the voice.

Typically, I playback at between 1.3 and 1.75 times depending on the speed of the reader and my concentration level. A 10 hour audiobook can be listened to in between 5.7 and 7.7 hours. It sounds just like normal, except read faster, not at all like a chipmunk.

mplayer -af scaletempo *.mp3

Decrease/increase speed with [ and ]

codemac · 2008-01-31 15:52:07

sijoku wrote:

Something good for podcasts and audiobooks is mplayer with the scaletempo audio filter (stock mplayer doesn't have this filter - you need mplayer-svn from testing. Use mplayer -af help to list what audio filters are available)
This filter allows you to change the playback speed without changing the pitch of the voice.
Typically, I playback at between 1.3 and 1.75 times depending on the speed of the reader and my concentration level. A 10 hour audiobook can be listened to in between 5.7 and 7.7 hours. It sounds just like normal, except read faster, not at all like a chipmunk.
mplayer -af scaletempo *.mp3
Decrease/increase speed with [ and ]

I do the same thing!

Success in speed listening!

Also people should really read up on speed reading. (Get it? _read_ up on speed _read_ing?). You don't have to do everything they say, but just look at all the small tips they give you. The best is probably just trying to read two words at once, and another is using your finger along the page where you are reading. You'd be surprised in how much your eyes dart around the page instead of just reading along, and using a finger along the page really helps your eyes focus on the words. You'll look like you just got out of kindergarten, but you'll probably be reading faster than your college professors, and understanding it to boot!

ps: I drank coffee this morning.

Borosai · 2008-01-31 23:37:02

If you're not allergic to Java, aTunes is worth a look.

leo2501 · 2008-02-01 01:35:37

im in love with cplay, it simply perfect and clean, intuitive too, so simple to use, cmus is great too but i prefer cplay more... i hate gui media players... music in the background doesnt need to eat my memory/cpu, that's for my work...

ramoneur · 2008-02-01 08:12:13

mpd + ncmpc
nothing beats it!

Ante · 2008-03-29 17:12:22

The first reason why I haven't switched to linux from windows yet and only dabbled in it is the lack fb2k audio player alternative, and second reason is lack of Adobe Creative Suite (yes, EVERYTHING from it) alternative. I can cope with booting XP to do work in Creative Suite, but since I listen to music all the time

Now, sorry for resurrecting the thread but I need to know am I right on the first one (there is no fb2k alternative)?

Just to clarify what "fb2k alternative" means to me - it is a player that plays most of these filetypes (sorry, some of the following extensions are just alternate extension names and some are playlists):
vx, 8svx, ac3, aif, aifc, aiff, apl, snd, au, ay, wpd, brr, cds, bw, cue, adx, flac, fla, gbs, adp, mss, spt, hps, gcm, spd, dsp, idsp, gym, kwf, hes, iff, acm, px, waf, 8, kss, midi, mus, gmf, xmi, hmp, cmf, mid, mids, hmi, rmi, dsm, mtm, psm, am, mdz, ptz, xm, s3z, itz, stz, mod, mtz, ptm, it, stm, umx, amf, xmz, 669, j2b, s3m, ape, mac, mp4, m4a, mp1, mp2, mp3, mpp, mp+, mpc, nsfe, nsf, pcm, m3u, fpl, pls, m3u8, rac, aac, sap, shn, spc, spx, ogg, wdt, tak, mpf, vgz, vgm, nwa, wav, wv, wma, xa.
It also has replaygain support and gapless playback. Preferably, it's console based, but that doesn't really matter.

finferflu · 2008-03-29 19:05:48

Did you actually try MPD?
Surely it doesn't play ALL of those formats, but it plays the most common ones: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Mod, and wave files. In addition to that it also supports streaming playlists, like m3u (not sure about pls).

Arch Linux

#26 2008-01-14 03:57:33

Re: A good audio player

#27 2008-01-14 06:45:45

Re: A good audio player

#28 2008-01-14 09:54:16

Re: A good audio player

#29 2008-01-14 10:21:17

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#30 2008-01-14 12:03:46

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#31 2008-01-14 15:10:04

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#32 2008-01-14 16:19:06

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#33 2008-01-14 22:10:23

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#34 2008-01-15 16:32:32

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#35 2008-01-15 22:41:47

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#36 2008-01-15 22:51:06

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#37 2008-01-15 23:39:25

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#38 2008-01-16 02:20:51

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#39 2008-01-16 15:22:53

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#40 2008-01-16 18:45:41

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#41 2008-01-30 19:49:30

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#42 2008-01-31 15:52:07

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#43 2008-01-31 23:37:02

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#44 2008-02-01 01:35:37

Re: A good audio player

#45 2008-02-01 08:12:13

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#46 2008-03-29 17:12:22

Re: A good audio player

#47 2008-03-29 19:05:48

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