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Poll

Which Unix-based audio player do you use most?

iTunes
[ 17 ] (15.3%)
VLC
[ 7 ] (6.3%)
Amarok (and forks, ie. Clementine)
[ 17 ] (15.3%)
Rhythmbox
[ 9 ] (8.1%)
deadbeef
[ 17 ] (15.3%)
Banshee
[ 6 ] (5.4%)
xmms
[ 3 ] (2.7%)
mpd (and clients, please mention which in a comment)
[ 13 ] (11.7%)
mplayer (and forks)
[ 3 ] (2.7%)
Other (Please mention which in a comment)
[ 19 ] (17.1%)

Total Members Voted: 177

Topic: 2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll (Read 54418 times) previous topic - next topic
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2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #25
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #26
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:

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #27
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?

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #28
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. Here are some of it:
Quote
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #29
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #30
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.


2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #32
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!).

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #33
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #34
QuodLibet.
I would use foobar2000 if only it was available on Linux

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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #35
Clementine for music/radio and audacious for chip tunes (psf/sid/midi)

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #36
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #37
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?
... I live by long distance.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #38
gmusicbrowser

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #39
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.

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #40
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.

 

2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll

Reply #41
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.