Advice: What's the best linux MP3 player?

glawrie

I have a large collection of MP3s dumped down from my CD collection, most are recorded using high rate VBR, a few are MP3pro and the rest high bit rate CBR (e.g. 192Kbps or better).

I have a dual boot XP / Gentoo dev-sources 2.6.3 machine (AMD XP2400 on an ASUS A7V8X-X Mobo). I use iTunes and MusicMatch when running the machine in Windows XP (mostly iTunes).

Having finally got some sort of sound out of the SPDIF port (the A7V8X-X has an Analog 1980 based sound processor built in) I'm keen to get a similar MP3 experience when working with the machine running in Gentoo.

I'm not greatly happy with the basic mp3 players that appear with KDE / Gnome (I use Gnome mostly) - I'd like to use something that has more of the functionality of MM / iTunes (e.g. track ratings and play-frequency counts, multiple play lists, ability to show artwork if embedded in mp3 etc). I'm also keen to get as good a sound quality as possible - e.g. I am not sure if it is just subjective, but I am pretty sure that tracks played back using MusicMatch play better than with iTunes... but iTunes has a better UI...

So - do you have any suggestions what I should look at?

Regards

Gavin Lawrie

KingTaco

hermes_jr · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:18 pm Post subject:

As I know, xmms is the most popular music player for Linux... Of cource I use it

xmms is opensource project, so it's possible to write extensions yourself... Also there is a huge collection of plugins on http://www.xmms.org/

ed0n · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 8:24 pm Post subject:

- XMMS -

No need to be anything else

stephen.austin · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:58 pm Post subject:

Is there a plugin for xmms that allows you to have a music library? similar to MM, a list of all the songs on your PC which you can sort by artist, album, track etc.

As it stands with out of the box funtionality, I prefer the CLI mpg123 over xmms, dunno why, it just appeals

Steve
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Qball · Apprentice Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 196

mpd. Its just great.

dreas · Guru Joined: 06 Aug 2003 Posts: 359 Location: Germany

hermes_jr · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:00 pm Post subject:

Rhythmbox is ugly and crashes every five minutes

I used it once and that's enough to understand that it's not a good choice... (maybe just for me)

dreas · Guru Joined: 06 Aug 2003 Posts: 359 Location: Germany

asianboi2k · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2003 Posts: 50

just install xmmplayer it should intergrate mplayer and XMMs. That's all you need for video and audio.

idkwiam187 · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 46 Location: Virginia, USA

Personally, I use Zinf, formerly known as Freeamp. It has a library part of it that sorts by artist, keeps track of playlists, but unfortunately does not have track rating or frequency count features. Comparing XMMS, which I used to use, and Zinf I favored Zinf because it at least had the library. That's just my personal preference though.

The best advice would be to try the ones that sound most appealing by descriptions on the package database here (or on the home sites of the players themselves) and see which one you prefer most

glawrie · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 8:16 pm Post subject:

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

I've tried out the following today:

Rhythmbox

Musik

Muine

Zinf

Rhythmbox won't build on my system - fails with a segmentation fault on launch.

Musik will build (thanks to breakmygentoo for the ebuild!) but not run - it crashes mysteriously after it attempts to build a library of MP3s

Muine will build and runs well, but the interface takes a bit of getting used to.

Zinf builds and runs well (on MP3s, crashes if you try playing a CD...)

So, no outright winner, but for now Zinf is ahead by some lengths - it works well for MP3s and does most of what is required.

But I'm going to persist with Muine to see if it grows on me, and attempt to try out the other two - at least to get them working (otherwise it is not a fair comparison).

Regards

Gavin Lawrie

richk449 · Guru Joined: 24 Oct 2003 Posts: 345

I wonder why so many people have trouble with Rhythmbox. I use it constantly on both my computers (one pentium laptop kernel 2.6.3, Windowmaker, and the other AMD Desktop kernel 2.4.22, Gnome), and I have never had it crash. I am running version 0.6.1.

Personally, I love it, and would highly reccomend it, if you can figure out a way to get it to compile. What I like so much about Rhythmbox is that it is very simple and plain. I guess it is a matter of taste, but I like the simplicity.

MighMoS · Guru Joined: 24 Apr 2003 Posts: 416 Location: @ ~

Woody · Guru Joined: 30 Nov 2002 Posts: 592 Location: Milwaukee

juk if you are willing to put up with the crumby output options.

G-Style · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 4:24 am Post subject:

I use XMMS, it's the best thing to use.
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mengle · n00b Joined: 23 Nov 2003 Posts: 64

Used to use XMMS but with 2000+ tracks it really wasn't worth my time. I've been using Juk for KDE which is definitely an improvement but I've very interested in madman. Too bad it doesn't have an ebuild yet so i haven't had a chance to try it out. Maybe something to keep an eye on in the future.

ashtray · n00b Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

Take a look at www.netjuke.org. It's php web based mp3 library.

tatesworld · n00b Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Posts: 67

I actually use lopster / xmms combination for navigating my library of mp3s and downloading them too

zerojay · Veteran Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1033

I mainly use XMMS for my needs with a little shell script and mysql/php/apache to get the library/play counts and all that other fun stuff.

LostSon · Guru Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 514 Location: Wisconsin

Ive been using juk for awhile now and i really like it myself plays great and i like that it docks

mlsfit138 · Guru Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 406 Location: Washington

I used zinf(freeamp) for a looong time. I really liked it's features, I just didn't like the crashes (I can't remember what caused them, but they were always easy to duplicate), and just recently I found some audio output errors. When playing certain ogg vorbis files, there were some very nasty output errors that I couldn't put up w/, so I looked around for another full featured jukebox. (besides i think the project is dead

)

I just discovered Juk, and I like it so far. I like the way the tag editor works, I like the gui (I don't care about fancy skins, just functionality), and I don't get those output errors. I used to be death on anything that used the arts daemon, but arts seems to have improved dramatically.

To be honest, part of the reason I like Juk so much is that I'm rediscovering kde (i used *box for a long time) and am really loving it(Sounds like a McDonalds comercial). I don't think that juk has zinf's streaming audio capabilities, but I'm not done playing with it yet.
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xayland · Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:51 am Post subject:

Hey. It looks like you are looking for something like yammi (http://yammi.sf.net if i remember right)

Gentoo does have a ebuild for yammi, but it did not build correctly, so I downloaded the sources, and did own install. If you are looking for an Itunes clone, and you have loads of music like me, then yammi is what you are probably looking for. :twisted:

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paneb · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2004 Posts: 73

was using beep too, but now am using zinf cuz i have ripped all my cds, and its much easier to manage in there..

dl1vr8r · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 39 Location: SLC

I like Amarok. It's in portage. It's KDE based, which might be good or bad for you. It has a nice playlist builder, clean and simple interface, and a stream tuner built in.