I haven't heard anyone mention Rythmbox, is there a reason why? I like it more than Amarok but I've never used Banshee.

Calvin Blackburn

@aphexbr: I tried all the engines, the only ones that didn't lead to the player freezing after a half hour of playback was Alsa. Apparently it's a problem in Ubuntu. As for the podcasts: I could never get them to download correctly, and just kinda assumed that they were broken, like the rest of the software. Maybe it runs better in Kubuntu or a completely different distro, but I can assure you that Amarok does not offer adequate performance, at least not for my use.

jopari

Apparently this version still doesn't support 6th gen iPods, just like the previous beta. Rhythmbox already does this.

t3mujin

cough cough Quod Libet cough

JMC

I tried everything and nothing in Ubuntu would sync videos to my 5th Gen iPod Video. I really would like to can Windows but it seems XP has become a $90 iPod syncing device.

battra92

@jopari: I use Amarok all the time, and never have problems with AAC files - maybe you have something wrong with your setup? The sound problem is probably down to the audio engine you're using - change this in the setup. The default is usually xine, but you have a choice of at least 3. (If you find this clunky, it'll be streamlined in Amarok 2)

Oh, and:

"Amarok doesn't even support podcasts."

Huh? [amarok.kde.org]

I'm not saying it's perfect, just that I've never experienced any of the problems you're describing, and I can play podcasts perfectly. Either way, that's the beauty of Linux - you should have at least 5 different audio/media players in you repositories, choose the one you like best. No need to diss on the others.

aphexbr

@FreeChaos:
Submit a bug!

bradwjensen

I've tried pretty much every music player on Ubuntu and I always come back to Amarok. In fact, the only reason that I even look at others is because it's a KDE app and I'd prefer to stick to Gnome libraries. But much like K3B is just the best disc burner, Amarok is the best music player and worth loading those extra libraries.

I recently gave Exaile another try, but the lack of compilation/various artist support (as mentioned by FreeChaos) was a deal-breaker for me. Plus the Amarok library organization and overall interface is just so much more intuitive and compact in my opinion. I use the standard SQLite backend with a library of about 12,000 tracks and it never lags (if it did I'd use a more robust backend).

I don't play podcasts with it or mess with .aac files, so I've never run into any of the problems that jopari has.

zoomZAP

Wow.... check out that list of dependencies. I don't want all of that extra junk just to play my MP3's or MP4's. I'm saying no to this one. (Thanks, Nancy Reagan!)

john.mull

The only music player I can use is Amarok. Why? I have collections of 500+ random techno songs from one album. Amarok shows this under various artists, very nice and clean. Every other music player I've ever used shows them all as separate artists even though they all have the same album tag. Combine this with my other 4000 songs and you've got a messy interface... but not in Amarok.

FreeChaos

@rikostan:

What about using the regular filesystem tools for playlist management, and then using xmms or audacious to play them?

$ find /home/blackrabbit/music -type f | sort | grep -i "ogg$\|mp3$" >> playlist.m3u

$ xmms playlist.m3u &

...works fine with my 25k+ song collection. Audacious (via audtool) is a little easier to work with for scripting and WM integration, but you sacrifice some snappiness.

I've had zero luck over the years with the various all-singing-all-dancing iTunes clones - I've never had the patience to let them churn through my filesystem for the initial database import, and xmms (and audacious) have all the features I need after installing a few plugins and writing a few shell scripts.

Then again, I'm the guy who prefers the command line mplayer, so YMMV.

black_rabbit

I have very bad experiences with Banshee on my Zonbu mini. So every new version should be better :-)

Wokkel

I use Exaile on Ubuntu and foobar on Windows. I could give Banshee a try though.

PyroRaver

@jopari: Oh, silly me. How could I have forgotten that Amarok doesn't even support podcasts. Sorry, last gripe. I'm done, I swear. I'm with someone new now. Banshee. He's good to me. Sorry, Amarok, but it just wasn't meant to be.

jopari

What is everyone's favorite audio player in Linux? Like, full featured ones with music management capabilities, not VLC.

Sensai

This couldn't have been released a second to soon-I switched to Ubuntnu a week ago and got fed up with Amarok immediately. The only caveats I have about Banshee are the fact that I can't sync my iPhone (solution: create a playlist in Banshee, open it in Amarok, then sync my phone with it) and that it takes ~4 seconds to move onto the next track (I assume it'll be fixed in future versions).

Oh, and it doesn't skip the first second of my .aac tracks. And I can pause it, watch a video on youtube and hear the sound in the video. I could go on, but I'm sure anyone who has been forced to use Amarok knows the million-and-one things wrong with it.

jopari

@rikostan,

Try running foobar2000 in wine maybe?

Aztek

@rikostan: I have nowhere near that many songs, but I've used and liked Quod Libet in the past, and one of its claims is that it can handle larger libraries with a lot less hassle. Might be worth a shot if you haven't tried it.

seasleepy

@abhiroop: That's probably because it's a beta.

@rikostan: Have you tried MPD?

Sam.C

@xint: Should have gone nvidia, no problems with any of my 4 nvidia cards.

daybringer

@xint: Yeah hardy and my ATI card are not playing well together either....its frustrating...esp. because it worked perfectly in gutsy :-/

Banshee is okay, I'm not a big fan of it although I will have to check this beta out and see how it compares to Amarok

That_Eagle_Scout!

I have not found a single player/manager that can handle my collection. I am closing in on 90K songs now.
I have to load just parts of the collection at a time.
Even the media managers with database backends choke.

rikostan

Weird, I was just listening to that episode of This American Life last night!

dscosson

I've been testing this. It is HIGHLY buggy. It didn't add a number of my songs, crashed a few times, didn't recognise the iPod didn't copy all songs to the iPod, and FINALLY it didn't write the iTunesDB properly because none of the songs were readable. Suggest using something else. On another note I find it MUCH faster, easier, and intuitive than amarok. I hate being forced to create a playlist every time I want to play a song! And if I load all albums to the playlist it takes a good 10 minutes. Annoying!

abhiroop

Hardy Heron won't display my videos unless I turn off Desktop Effects. Still trying to get that ATI driver to have full functionality. But I gotta say I likes this...

xint

If you guys need help syncing with a 6th gen iPod I've got it working: [ubuntuforums.org]

abhiroop

Amarok is simply the best media manager i have ever used. I have no idea what other posters are talking about with the lack of support of podcasts, or not being able to handle huge libraries of music. It's clean interface is simply the best (But a bit dated, can't wait for 2.0) It's podcast and device handling is fantastic. It's plugin system is built on python, which makes dev simple. It supports a wide variety of backend databases which means it WOULD scale to just about any libary you could through at it. I really recomend using a mysql database for any decent size collection. I do have a few gripes.. No upnp support (yet). The daap isn't great. I recommend installing Firefly if your going to be doing that.. I find last-fm support a bit murkey. I'd like to the interface cleaned up a bit (I'm really a gnome fan these days). Amarok is the reason I run ubuntu. I don't think there is a media manager in windows that can touch it. I'm excited by the windows port.

prosonik

@jopari: "Apparently it's a problem in Ubuntu."

You said it yourself -it's a problem with Ubuntu, not Amarok. I use Mandriva, so I can't comment on the exact problems but as I said; I've never had problems in 4 years of using the program on a (currently) 115Gb collection of music and podcasts.

I don't want to argue, but if you've honestly tracked the problem down to being Ubuntu's packages, blame those and not Amarok. Use the media manager you find best suits your needs, but please don't spread FUD - there's enough of that around.

aphexbr

I've just tried Banshee and i love it. It is much better (IMO) then Amarok. I have a prob with Amarok that i can't map my multimedia keys to its controls like play/pause next/prev track etc.

Anyway, just give a shot you might find something you like about it.

TNA5000

if you are using gnome there is an amarok script called Gnome Multimedia Keys that allows you to use them

abhiroop

For me the best is gmusicbrowser :

[squentin.free.fr]

Anyone have tried ?

angang