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Topic: looking for a linux audio player (Read 12679 times) previous topic - next topic
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looking for a linux audio player

I've been using fb2k in windows for the past three years. I'm looking for a linux solution.

What do my fellow fb2k users recommend? I'd rather not use wine, I'm looking for something native.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #1
Try Quotlibet. It's the closest a linux player comes in advanced features compared to foobar2000 (from the ones I tested).

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #2
I use amaroK under KDE (Kubuntu) and I like it.

http://amarok.kde.org/
*sigh*

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #3
Try Quotlibet. It's the closest a linux player comes in advanced features compared to foobar2000 (from the ones I tested).


I also like Quod Libet a lot. It has powerful metadata management.

Still it doesn't quite come close to fb2k: the audio playback is handled through gstreamer, so it doesn't give you any of the DSP-possibilities of fb2k (which to me is the greatest feature of fb2k). And at the moment, gstreamer doesn't allow for gapless playback yet.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #4
I'm waiting on gstreamer playing friendly with JACK. That way a whole host of audio players for Linux will suddenly dramatically increase in flexibility and features.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #5
I was on the same situation recently and I tried a few linux players. My preferences goes to Listen (http://listengnome.free.fr/) which is really great, supports Last.fm, displays covers, etc.

Try it.

You can also take a look at Banshee...

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #6
I was using mostly XMMS for a while because I found a plugin that would read replaygain values from the APEV2 tag in my MP3 files.  Now, I found MPD (with GMPC as the frontend) and it's a really easy way to listen to music.  It's great for networking (computer with wireless card behind my home stereo can be controlled from main desktop in different room) but I don't think it supports replaygain for MP3s yet.

I still use foobar2000 with Wine for tagging/organizing and replay gain-ing my collection.  If only the player didn't stutter when playing back audio and working on the computer, I would use it all the time.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #7
I was on the same situation recently and I tried a few linux players. My preferences goes to Listen (http://listengnome.free.fr/) which is really great, supports Last.fm, displays covers, etc.


Yeah, Listen does quite well on the UI side of things, too. But then, there's a whole lot of linux players that support album art, last.fm and such. Quod Libet and Amarok can also do that, for example. And if it's just for last.fm, even the very sober Rythmbox supports that.

The really cool stuff in fb2k isn't present in any of the linux players I know. Fb2k is so much more than a fancy music library manager... the replaygain tools, the encoding tools, but most of all the whole plugin infrastructure for dsp's that's keeping high precision...: if anyone knows a linux alternative for that (preferably also one that is as easy to control...), that would be really cool.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #8
Now, I found MPD but I don't think it supports replaygain for MP3s yet.

Latest release candidates of MPD support replaygain in mp3 but only in ID3v2 tags (it's now recommended way of tagging mp3, also in foobar2000 0.9.x). Also MPD has true gapless playback and for lame encoded mp3. Get latest version sources from http://musicpd.org and compile it youself to get most quality player for mp3/ogg/etc in linux. See also this topic about ALSA resampling issues.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #9
Quodlibet is the best I've seen so far, but for me at least, it's rather slow with a 15000 song database, much slower than is reasonable. The one thing I miss most from foobar is its tagging abilities: quodlibet itself, for some reason, can't read the frame of id3v2 that foobar uses to store non-standard tags (I, for example, have stored such tags as 'date_performed' in addition to date, or 'place', etc.); oddly, its tagging backend, mutagen, can... I suppose I'll stick with mpd and ql for now, and hope wine can someday improve foobar's skipping.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #10
Though, of course, you can write a script using mutagen (which so far is the best tagging engine for linux), which will convert the txxx frames that foobar uses into other frames that ql can use; I'm trying to do that now, but I'm afraid to let something that I've written recurse over my music collection...

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #11
I don't like any of the audioplayers under linux.
Tryed:
- amarok: nice looking on first sight, but low usabilty,bloated and tons of bugs
- quodlibet: nice features but buggy
etc... ...

Most promissing candidate for a solid audioplayer but still in heavy development:
XMMS2: nice architecture with client/server model

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #12
I still use foobar2000 with Wine for tagging/organizing and replay gain-ing my collection.  If only the player didn't stutter when playing back audio and working on the computer, I would use it all the time.


foobar2000 0.8.3 works fine as a player under wine, using waveout and a big buffer
foobar2000 0.9.4.1 on the other hand... kaputs!

The most disturbing lacking feature in linux players is replaygain support. Some barely read tags for some file formats either with extra scripts or using their own tag format. My biggest problem are mp3s tagged with foobar2000 (APEv2). Quod Libet (player) Ex Falso (tagger) likes id3v2.4 for some odd reason, rva something (page is down).

I think im needing a converter to move all replaygain tags from apev2 to id3v2 to make use of mpd.
She is waiting in the air

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #13
You might be interested in checking out this thread on the same topic (I think this will be a popular topic throughout the life of this new "Non-Windows" forum).  Mentioned on this thread, in addition to the ones mentioned above, are
  • Aqualung (appears to have many features, but must be compiled from source)
  • Exaile (a gnome copy of AmaroK, excellent if you like that kind of thing)
  • Lamip (very similar in design goals and conceptually to foobar2000, but still under heavy development)

Also mentioned were a couple other "clients" for Music Player Daemon.

Good luck, and share whatever opinions you develop after you try different players.
a windows-free, linux user since 1/31/06.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #14
My biggest problem are mp3s tagged with foobar2000 (APEv2). Quod Libet (player) Ex Falso (tagger) likes id3v2.4 for some odd reason, rva something (page is down).

I think im needing a converter to move all replaygain tags from apev2 to id3v2 to make use of mpd.


It prefers id3v2 for the extremely odd reason that it’s /the/ standard. To be frank Foobar2000 doesn’t set the standard even if it might seem like it on this board. You’re aware that the new Foobar stopped writing Ape tags to MP3s per default, right?
RVA2 is in the id3 spec.

BTW there’s an official plugin for QL to rewrite MP3s with APE tags to id3 tags. You need to select a bunch of files and then call the plugin. The problem remaining is converting RG to RVA2, and I hate that one.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #15
It prefers id3v2 for the extremely odd reason that it’s /the/ standard. To be frank Foobar2000 doesn’t set the standard even if it might seem like it on this board. You’re aware that the new Foobar stopped writing Ape tags to MP3s per default, right?
RVA2 is in the id3 spec.
What standard? The mp3 format never defined any official tag system, as far as i know all tagging is non-standard. "Defacto" could be a better word, perhaps in the likes of winamp and musicmatch.

I  am aware of current foobar2000 v9 practice. I'm also aware of all the discussion about why ID3v2 was evil? back in the day foobar2000 started, and why not even include ID3v2 support and use APEv2 and or ID3v1 instead. In fact that should remain in the archives of hydrogenaudio. Some years have passed and now i have thousands of files APEv2 tagged.

BTW there’s an official plugin for QL to rewrite MP3s with APE tags to id3 tags. You need to select a bunch of files and then call the plugin. The problem remaining is converting RG to RVA2, and I hate that one.
Then the problem remains. I'd rather have the player support APEv2 and be done with it.
She is waiting in the air

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #16
What standard? The mp3 format never defined any official tag system, as far as i know all tagging is non-standard. "Defacto" could be a better word, perhaps in the likes of winamp and musicmatch.

You’re right, I should have enclosed the the in double quotes instead of italics.
What’s so frustrating about it is that the code for the canonical RG tags is there, he just refuses to read them from liekwise named id3 frames.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #17
Aqualung supports replaygain in mp3 and mpc files with apev2 tags as of the latest cvs version after a feature request I made. It is replacing xmms in my laptop as my audio player of choice.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #18
Really? Oh i might be testing Aqualung pretty soon then
Maybe i'll build an Ubuntu package and all 

Oops, i'm missing TagLib and libmac packages... wonder if TagLib supports apev2?
Hmm TagLib is called LibTag, no wonder

Oh, and I don't have any monkey audio files anyway...
She is waiting in the air

 

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #19
http://havtknut.tihlde.org/qmpdclient/

This looks like a pretty sweet MPD client, if anyone wants to give it a whirl. I wish I could try it but I'm currently stuck on a notebook which has ACPI issues with Ubuntu.

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #20
http://havtknut.tihlde.org/qmpdclient/

This looks like a pretty sweet MPD client, if anyone wants to give it a whirl. I wish I could try it but I'm currently stuck on a notebook which has ACPI issues with Ubuntu.

like it for organising playlists. Not being able to set the cursor to follow the currently playing track is very anoying though (I'm an idiot)


looking for a linux audio player

Reply #22
Amarok supports any replaygain tag format through the  replaygain script , and it is fast for huge collections (you may use mysql or postgresql as backend).

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #23

http://havtknut.tihlde.org/qmpdclient/

This looks like a pretty sweet MPD client, if anyone wants to give it a whirl. I wish I could try it but I'm currently stuck on a notebook which has ACPI issues with Ubuntu.

Well, you don't have to use Ubuntu 

Yeah, I know . Suse and FC have similar issues though. I think it's a kernel bug (actually, a bug in my notebook's BIOS which doesn't like the current kernel  )

looking for a linux audio player

Reply #24
I wish I could try it but I'm currently stuck on a notebook which has ACPI issues with Ubuntu.

Modify grub to pass these options to the kernel: NOACPI ACPI=OFF
Don't use the laptop unplugged

BTW: Is your notebook an ibm (now lenovo) ThinkPad?
She is waiting in the air