Poll
Question:
Which Unix-based audio player do you use most?
Option 1: iTunes
votes: 17
Option 2: VLC
votes: 7
Option 3: Amarok (and forks, ie. Clementine)
votes: 17
Option 4: Rhythmbox
votes: 9
Option 5: deadbeef
votes: 17
Option 6: Banshee
votes: 6
Option 7: xmms
votes: 3
Option 8: mpd (and clients, please mention which in a comment)
votes: 13
Option 9: mplayer (and forks)
votes: 3
Option 10: Other (Please mention which in a comment)
votes: 19
Pretty self-explanatory...
I also use sox's play, along with the mpc client for mpd.
I mostly use mpd for playing my library.
For command line control I mainly use ncmpc. For a graphical client I use gmpc. And I use bitmpc on android as a remote control.
If anyone has suggestions for other clients I'm always willing to try new ones.
For random files I usually use VLC.
I load up and use Banshee, Rhythmbox, Amarok, etc, from time to time as well..
I end up using Rhythmbox most of the time simply because it is running 24x7 as my podcast downloader.
If I'm at home (rare) and on my desktop I use FB2K through WINE.
I use the built-in player on XLD often on OS X (as well as iTunes.)
I personally use mpd. The frontends that I use are:
- MPDCon for regular playing. It is a GNUstep based GUI frontend.
- mpc for scripting and interactively from the commandline.
- bitmpc for remote control from my Android devices.
Other: Vox (http://voxapp.didgeroo.com/index.html) for OS X
Crossfeed-options, EQ and lightweight (I use v0.2.7.1)
I use ncmpcpp (and MPDroid from my phone) with mpd for my music collection and mplayer for just playing individual files. I try to use as few gui apps as possible these days.
Linux: Non-native (wine+foobar2000)
For playing my music collection I use mpd with:
- ncmpcpp: as general desktop client
- gmpc: as ncmpcpp but occasionally preferred as it lets me see pretty album art and has neat magnatune plug-in
- mpc: mpc playback controls are mapped to my multimedia keyboard. also useful for cli database searches
- MPDroid: use it on my Android tablet
For playing non-permanent audio that isn't in my mpd database such as downloads, streams, stuff hosted on other networks etc. I use scripts which call mplayer command line, sometimes in conjunction with a named pipe and aplay (to get gapless if required) and for mplayer's bs2b filter (meier crossfeed for headphone listening is nice).
I don't know if Android is UNIX-like for the purposes of this poll; if not then moderator please feel free to amend my votes. On Android I run Rockbox and DeadBeef much like I run mpd and mplayer on Debian: Rockbox for my collection, and DeadBeef for the temporary stuff, streams, online radio playlists etc.
I've voted XMMS both times but in reality I use Audacious.
I wonder where all other music players are (Juk, Qmmp, Amarok, Clementine, etc.)
I wonder where all other music players are (Juk, Qmmp, Amarok, Clementine, etc.)
Amarok and Clementine are both listed...
I've voted XMMS both times but in reality I use Audacious.
Audacious is a great little player too..
I frequently use totem when I want to listen to just one song - just simply because it is a quick easy interface to the GStreamer backend.
totem /flac/library/artist/album/track.flac
I like banshee for general listening. Rhythmbox is just too bloated. It started as a decent player but it seems it is trying to be iTunes.
Audacious here
Audacious. And foobar through wine.
Linux: Juk with VLC as back-end.
Was previously a Mac user and Juk’s playlist workflow matches iTunes’.
I also use command line audio players, ogg123 and mpg123.
First of all, congratulations for this poll.
I use QuodLibet now. I initially chose it because it has no client-server architecture and because it support gapless and replaygain.
Since then I also got used to the album list view.
I mainly use Clementine, because it has lots of features, a nice interface and it's reasonably fast. It works great for big music libraries (15000+ musics), yeah, it's index is a little slow but still better than most other music players (foobar2000 is unbeatable on this area).
Sometimes I use Audacious too, it's great and super lightweight too. The music library manager is still not as great as Clementine, but keeps getting better.
I use iTunes in conjunction with Audirvana Plus in iTunes-integrated mode (i.e., it "hijacks" iTunes and plays it through its own player, which has some advantages).
quodlibet
^^^audirvana plus is an audio player, right? you're paying 50 bucks for an audio player?
confirms how i as a linux user see mac users...
(http://imageshack.us/a/img594/4415/fanboysos.jpg)
Troll.
Troll.
maybe a little bit but come on.
who pays money for a media player? and the player in question is obviously voodooware. "Audirvana is the creator of high?end audiophile players for the Mac platform, aiming at the best possible sound quality."
Then you obviously dont get the concept that its perfectly legitimate for people to make money from licensing software.
Yes, it might be unethical peddling snake oil, but its the dev's perogative. Especially if they know its snake oil they are peddling.
It's his money, he can waste it however he wants..
I would edit that scene, being a Unix user (BSD, Linux, etc), the image of how a Linux user sees Apple, at least for me, should be a person locked in a prison cell with flowers on the wallpaper. being bled dry by IV's, all while having an oblivious smile on their face.
I mostly use a console player called cmus (with screen if I need to be able to lock the tty and with cmuscrobbler script for last.fm scrobbling). I like the Clementine player, but it seems bulky. Unfortunately nothing even remotely compares to foobar2000 on Windows, but don't like how it behaves in wine so I use audacious 3 when I need a fast GUI player.
Here is a screenshot of cmus:
(http://www.deviantpics.com/images/ogp8E.png)
Let me be clear.. I don't have a problem with the underlying OS, after all it's BSD.. I have a problem with the active pursuit of control and lock-in by Apple. I value my freedom and I have no doubt that in a computer driven world that freedom is jeopardized just as much by a controlling corporate interest as it is a governmental one. In the 90's and early 2000's that threat was Microsoft, but the lock-in and control that Apple wields, and which their users blindly accept, is stuff that Gates and Ballmer could only dream of. Apple has almost always been this way, but before the Ipod they were small enough to safely ignore.
We're now WAY off topic.
I'm going to take a closer look at cmus. What backend does it use? Does it handle gapless on FLAC and Vorbis?
I agree with yourlord. I think that Apple's devices have the most superior user interfaces, but the constant locks and drm control makes them very irritating to use. I have an i9000 (private phone) and iPhone 4 (business phone) and I couldn't believe when the iTunes wanted to delete the music from my iPhone when I connected it after I deleted that music from the PC. I just want to have the freedom to transfer the music when I want it and how I want it and the i9000 gives me that much.
@yourlord: you can see the features of cmus on it's official site (http://cmus.sourceforge.net/#features). Here are some of it:
Plugins
- Input: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Musepack, WavPack, WAV, AAC, MP4, and everything supported by ffmpeg (WMA, APE, MKA, TTA, SHN, ...) and libmodplug
- Output: PulseAudio, ALSA, OSS, RoarAudio, libao, aRts, Sun, and WaveOut (Windows)
Playing
- Gapless playback
- ReplayGain support
- MP3 and Ogg streaming (SHOUTcast/Icecast)
- Play queue
- Optional playback resume on startup
It even has an OK support for compilations and albumartist tags (I say OK because I am more used to foobar2000's). It also comes with a cmus-remote binary which makes the use of global hotkeys possible.
I preferred it when it was open-source, and supported it then. I also make heavy use of Linux, so I'll let your OS troll comment slide (but is OS X the real problem?). However...
(1) Why is this inherently different from paying for Bit Perfect (except that it costs more)?
(2) Why is it voodoo-ware, any more than other share-ware options? It does some stuff that iTunes does not do, or does poorly, i.e.,
(a) automatic sample-rate matching. (iTunes will use whatever is set in Audio MIDI, and if that does not match the sampling frequency of your track, then it is forced to resample. This, and bit perfect and Decibel and the expensive options do this. (I think vox does it too, for free.))
(b) Uses a good up-sampling algorithm (optionally).
© Optionally uses iTunes as a music file browser/tagger/etc.
(d) Plays flac
(e) Uncompresses and loads the current and N+1 track into memory prior to playback.
(f) on OS X 10.7 and 10.8, recovers the ability to use integer mode playback, and allows the output device to operate in exclusive ("hog") mode.
(g) I got it free for helping with the open-source version.
Let me be clear.. I don't have a problem with the underlying OS, after all it's BSD.. I have a problem with the active pursuit of control and lock-in by Apple. I value my freedom and I have no doubt that in a computer driven world that freedom is jeopardized just as much by a controlling corporate interest as it is a governmental one. In the 90's and early 2000's that threat was Microsoft, but the lock-in and control that Apple wields, and which their users blindly accept, is stuff that Gates and Ballmer could only dream of. Apple has almost always been this way, but before the Ipod they were small enough to safely ignore.
Actually, they weren't always this way. It is getting steadily worse. Darwin (the derivative of freeBSD) was for awhile a RMS-approved free software initiative. It was only the GUI iCandy that was proprietary. They have backed off on that. With 10.8, the default setting prevents you from installing third-party apps that aren't distributed via the "App Store." You can turn it off, but the naive user turns around and blames those of us who deploy free software but refuse to pay their ransom.
That, to me, is much more of a problem than their musical walled garden.
I mostly use a console player called cmus
That looks nice. I just compiled it on OS X. I like how you can use vi key bindings.
Ok great, thanks.
Let's get this thing back on topic, m'kay? [that it's a question is me trying my hand at being polite; your (plural) compliance is required and expected]
EDIT: To be clear this was in response to the off-topic posts before the immediately previous on-topic post by wgscott and applies to all participants who were off-topic (though this should be obvious!).
Most of the time I listen to music using an ALIX board running Voyage MPD. As a client I use MPoD on my iPhone. When I'm working on a computer (either iMac, Macbook Pro or an Arch Linux box) I sometimes use VLC for quick playback as it's set as the default player for most media files, but usually it's just there for video files. For serious listening while working I use mpd on my Arch Linux box, I don't really need a music player on the Macs because I use them for music production.
QuodLibet.
I would use foobar2000 if only it was available on Linux (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/style_emoticons/default/crying.gif)
Most of the time I listen to music using an ALIX board running Voyage MPD. As a client I use MPoD on my iPhone.
Interesting.
Clementine for music/radio and audacious for chip tunes (psf/sid/midi)
Finally set up a Linux (Ubuntu/LXDE) machine about a year ago. Have tried every player I could run on it. All seemed very basic (especially in terms of library management) in comparison with the Windows programs I have run (MediaMonkey, f2000, XMPlay, MusicBee, and others). After a few months, I gave up on this. Instead, I set up a separate desktop PC on Win XP to act as a music server, and I remote desktop into it from my Linux laptops. This allows me to control MusicBee from Linux laptops positioned anywhere in the house. I am very happy with this solution.
By the way: should iOS and Android players be included here, as they are Unix variants in its own right or, as I see it, they better deserve now a dedicated poll?
gmusicbrowser
I'm presently using Aqualung, because it's reproduction quality seems to be way ahead of all other linux players I've downloaded (but I haven't tried any terminal-based ones yet). Aqualung's "best linear interpolator" setting makes it sound just incredibly detailed, and it's LADSPA plugins available on Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager have a very nice 8-channel equalizer, that allows arbitrary frequency values. It's a shame it's library manager is very limited, though.
Very fond of the MPD daemon and one of its clients, mainly the console ones, such as PMS. I used it when I had got Arch Linux on a netbook with dwm window manager.
I use Audacious, because it links with X for global keyboard short-cuts and has a simple OSD that I like. I use cmus on my RasPi.