Favorite Music Player?

punkrockguy318 · 2004-07-10 03:49:11

Hey all! What's your favorite music player for linux? Here are some of my opinions on music players for linux.

XMMS: Very nice WinAmp2 clone, though I don't feel that it comes close to being as good as WinAmp2. WA2 has movie support, and more plugins/visualazations. The plugins for xmms are nice, but chances are you won't get them to compile.

RhythmBox: Very functional music player. Never had any stability/configuration problems with this one. It looks half decent in tiny-mode, but no theming support.

BMP: BMP is a GTK2 fork of xmms, which is actively being developed. BMP is still glitchy, but when it matures it will be very nice. BMP promises winamp plugin support in the future!

Zinf: I've been using this a lot lately... It has a nice interface, and decent playlist support and organazation. There are a couple themes available, and it can look quite sexy with the octapus theme!

sarah31 · 2004-07-10 04:09:44

mp3blaster or mplayer with AAC enabled.

whatah · 2004-07-10 05:02:32

XMMS is by far my favorite player, first off, it does have quite a bit of plugins, and you don't necessarily need to compile them, you can get them in a binary format because xmms' API has not changed much over the years. Another advantage to xmms is that xmms is very skinnable, and I do not believe there are any other players on the desktop that resemble it. While zinf does have skins, i find it very unintuitive to use. Also, zinf's playlist editor is ungainly and is not something i would want to keep open on my desktop. xmms also has support for kjofol skins. You can use xmms to play videos with an mplayer plugin, however, i prefer to use mplayer on the CLI to play movies anyways. xmms also has support for most sound systems out there, including ALSA, JACK, ESD and ARTS. And finally, BMP is a gtk2 port of xmms. xmms uses gtk+. :wq

whatah

P.S. if you are looking for a good visualization plugin, try out 'xmms-iris' it has nice visuals and is a light load on the CPU.

punkrockguy318 · 2004-07-10 05:31:34

whatah wrote:

XMMS is by far my favorite player, first off, it does have quite a bit of plugins, and you don't necessarily need to compile them, you can get them in a binary format because xmms' API has not changed much over the years. Another advantage to xmms is that xmms is very skinnable, and I do not believe there are any other players on the desktop that resemble it. While zinf does have skins, i find it very unintuitive to use. Also, zinf's playlist editor is ungainly and is not something i would want to keep open on my desktop. xmms also has support for kjofol skins. You can use xmms to play videos with an mplayer plugin, however, i prefer to use mplayer on the CLI to play movies anyways. xmms also has support for most sound systems out there, including ALSA, JACK, ESD and ARTS. And finally, BMP is a gtk2 port of xmms. xmms uses gtk+. :wq
whatah
P.S. if you are looking for a good visualization plugin, try out 'xmms-iris' it has nice visuals and is a light load on the CPU.

xmmsmplayer is very nice! I just made an AL package for it..

pkgname=xmmsmplayer

pkgver=0.5
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="An mplayer plugin for xmms"
url="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~nandan/xmmsmplayer.php"
license=""
depends=(xmms)
makedepends=()
conflicts=()
replaces=()
backup=()
install=
source=(http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xmmsmplayer/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz)
md5sums=()

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  ./configure --prefix=/usr
  make || return 1
  make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg/ install
}

Xmms-iris is also nice! these two plugins are bringing me back to use bmp!

aCoder · 2004-07-10 06:52:55

iTunes!!! Oh, wait, not Linux... ummm.... Anything that supports AAC!

(Thanks to Playfair, of course!)

sarah31 · 2004-07-10 10:44:09

aCoder wrote:

iTunes!!! Oh, wait, not Linux... ummm.... Anything that supports AAC!
(Thanks to Playfair, of course!)

itunes is great and that is what i mostly use.

Dusty · 2004-07-10 15:51:41

ddcd. I don't play much non cd music, but I use ogg123 for that.

dp · 2004-07-10 15:57:48

amarok

xerxes2 · 2004-07-10 18:58:58

itunes is evil....ogg rulez!!!!!

sarah31 · 2004-07-10 19:02:51

xerxes2 wrote:

itunes is evil....ogg rulez!!!!!

pfft...whatever, the quality of my AAC's far surpasses ogg and that is why I switched. that and the fact that i can get decent AAC support on linux but not good ogg support for the mac.

ogg quality has to improve to get me back.

dp · 2004-07-10 23:48:18

sarah31 wrote:

xerxes2 wrote:
itunes is evil....ogg rulez!!!!!
pfft...whatever, the quality of my AAC's far surpasses ogg and that is why I switched. that and the fact that i can get decent AAC support on linux but not good ogg support for the mac.
ogg quality has to improve to get me back.

http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/

http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/

... but the trouble with macs is that they are more expensive hardware :-(

TheRaginAsian · 2004-07-11 03:56:54

I like Muine.

aCoder · 2004-07-11 06:33:38

... but the trouble with macs is that they are more expensive hardware

That is a problem. I almost cried spending $1500 on a laptop, but the eye candy just drew me in... I'm OK now though. I like OS X almost as much I do Linux, but it's not free!

AAC's great. I'm happy with the quality and it's much smaller than FLAC, which all my music was in, (obviously, being a lossy codec). I need an iPod now...

sarah31 · 2004-07-11 08:25:58

dp wrote:

http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/

very unfriendly program. been there done that.

http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/

i do not really use the qt player except for its embedded web player for the rare movie clip. the qtplayer is really crappy now compared to five years ago. they really have to work on the interface it is just so unpractical now.

... but the trouble with macs is that they are more expensive hardware :-(

that really depends. when i was looking at getting a decent quality laptop i settled on the 12" g4 powerbook that had just come out at that time. when i compared around (and that is like to like not high end apple to low end pc like most dolts do) macs were very reasonable. of course it varies region to region.

i could argue some more on this point but i really don't want to because people just have the tendency to compare unlike systems.

dp · 2004-07-11 10:58:58

sarah31 wrote:

dp wrote:
http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/
very unfriendly program. been there done that.
http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/
i do not really use the qt player except for its embedded web player for the rare movie clip. the qtplayer is really crappy now compared to five years ago. they really have to work on the interface it is just so unpractical now.

ohh ... then we ran out of alternatives and the conclusion is that you were right (as always ;-) )

sarah31 wrote:

... but the trouble with macs is that they are more expensive hardware :-(
that really depends. when i was looking at getting a decent quality laptop i settled on the 12" g4 powerbook that had just come out at that time. when i compared around (and that is like to like not high end apple to low end pc like most dolts do) macs were very reasonable. of course it varies region to region.
i could argue some more on this point but i really don't want to because people just have the tendency to compare unlike systems.

that's very true

sarah31 · 2004-07-11 11:50:31

dp wrote:

ohh ... then we ran out of alternatives and the conclusion is that you were right (as always ;-) )

well for my needs itunes suffices. some folks might be happy with those features you point out. but for me, at least for oggdrop, it was a laborous task to use it (it might be better now though). in the end itunes is easy to use feature rich and i like the quality of AACs and AAC was the first format that was easy to support with good media player on both OSes (i would note that if the quicktime player was better i may have gone for using it and oggs).

in the end i am happy as i have good quality compressed music files that i can readily use on linux, my ipod and OS X.

aCoder · 2004-07-11 15:01:42

that really depends. when i was looking at getting a decent quality laptop i settled on the 12" g4 powerbook that had just come out at that time. when i compared around (and that is like to like not high end apple to low end pc like most dolts do) macs were very reasonable. of course it varies region to region.
i could argue some more on this point but i really don't want to because people just have the tendency to compare unlike systems.

Well, in my case, my choice was between a $600 Wal-Mart HP or a $1500 iBook, to get reasonably silimar systems. The only real differences were looks, which the Mac won, OS, which the Mac won, but could easily be fixed on the HP with that ever-useful Arch disc one my desk, size, the iBook is smaller, and, of course CPU. Same 'speed', differrent arch. My love for IBM drove me to the Apple store to pick it up.

Macs are much more expensive, when compared with a similar-functioning PC, but you get your money's worth by getting a system that's not cluttered with OEM junk that must be immediately cleared out by the liberal use of cfdisk as well as a system that's much more tightly integrated than any other OS can be without quite a bit of work.

And sorry about the messy Mac ranting. I'm just feeling very enthusiastic about my Mac. I need something to draw me back to my PC to update Arch.

hyp0luxa · 2004-07-11 20:06:23

i was using xmms, real nice, but i recently switched to amaroK because it's playlist it better (searchable, etc...)

aCoder · 2004-07-12 02:04:46

I do like amaroK. I like the way Rhythmbox handles it's library though.*cough*iTunes*cough*

mcubednyc · 2004-07-14 11:33:17

I liked cplay a lot, but I use xmms because of Audioscrobbler. Still, it's a pity there is nothing for Linux that approaches the awesomeness of foobar2000. (That and Xnews are the two Windows apps I miss most.)

One audio app that takes away some of the pain of having to use xmms is longplayer -- it makes for some startling juxtapositions!

thegnu · 2004-10-30 14:29:44

I don't have first-hand experience with AAC, but I've been using oggs for years. One thing I noticed when I started is that mp3s SOUNDED better, because they fattened the low end on the crappy punk music I was listening to. Add to that bad speakers, and oggs sounded worse. But ogg sounded almost exactly like the CD, whereas MP3s sounded nothing like it.

So I'm not sure "OGGs sound bad" is necessarily a bad thing, when the music you (or I) are listening to sounds "bad". Accuracy, to me, is the aim. And from what I've read, oggs beat AAC. I could be wrong.

punkrockguy318 · 2004-10-30 14:34:31

I used to use mp3s all the time, but with the amount of music on my pc, oggs work best. Better quality and smaller size!

LB06 · 2004-10-30 17:40:49

Hmm. I like amarok best with xmms on its tail.

hyp0luxa · 2004-10-30 19:41:17

amaroK in X
mpg123 in CLI

djhizz · 2004-10-31 11:08:46

AMAROK rulez.
When i had indows (this things can hapen ) i tryed a lot of players...but none was like winamp.winamp 5 is now the best and most polpular player in the digital world.When i turned to linux i was surprised to see a clone of winamp (XMMS), but xmms isn't that good.Now i've discovered amarok who gives me more freedom and it is more stable than xmms.the only baf thing is that it doesn't looks so good (some skins or other stuf like that).

Arch Linux

#1 2004-07-10 03:49:11

Favorite Music Player?

#2 2004-07-10 04:09:44

Re: Favorite Music Player?

#3 2004-07-10 05:02:32

Re: Favorite Music Player?

#4 2004-07-10 05:31:34

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#5 2004-07-10 06:52:55

Re: Favorite Music Player?

#6 2004-07-10 10:44:09

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#7 2004-07-10 15:51:41

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#8 2004-07-10 15:57:48

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#12 2004-07-11 03:56:54

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#14 2004-07-11 08:25:58

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