best linux music player

[barry-potter]

hello all

is there any consensus on the best music player and configuration for linux?

[aquapiranha]

I don't actually use the computers for hifi except to add FLAC files to the HDD attached to the WDTV streamer, but I do have a few albums on the laptop to listen to and I am currently using Banshee which seems OK.

[spendorman]

VLC seems to be in Linux Mint, nothing wrong with that.

[Krisbee]

hello all

is there any consensus on the best music player and configuration for linux?

Consensus amongst audiophiles? Are you kidding ? :)

MPD server/client is favoured by some, especailly if you doing somethig like this:

http://cheap-silent-usb-linux-music-server.blogspot.com/

Otherwise there is a long list of possible candidates, the choice is to some extent determined by which desktop environment you use: KDE, Gnome, or openbox etc.

VLC is OK, but like kaffiene, Xine, mplayer and smplayer, it comes with all the baggage associated with doing both video and audio playback.

As to configuration, the same basic rules apply in Linux as they do in Windows for improved SQ.


Avoid crappy s/cards that do hardware resampling, e.g all 44Khz ends up as 48Khz.
Avoid sound mixers.
Avoid software volume control and set it to 100%.
Ensure, where possible, that ALSA is not doing any sample rate conversion (Format conversion is generally OK)


Whatever music player you settle on, make sure you can select your sound device correctly. Either from a drop down list, or by typing iit in manually. The Linux ALSA sound system uses notation like "hw:0,1" and/or "plughw:1.1". The one to use depends on your sound hardware and which music player is in use.

[Krisbee]

VLC seems to be in Linux Mint, nothing wrong with that.

Actually, there are at least two things about VLC which I don't like.

1. I cannot bypass it's software volume control and what does it's volume control do when you go over 100%?

2. It does not correctly identify all my sound devices and it does not allow manual entry of sound device names in it's perefence panels.

Added to that is the bloat associated with a piece of software that does both video and audio playback.

For audio playback I prefer to use something that does audio only.

[Marco]

Hi Jonny,

Welcome to AoS :)

Could you please pop into the Welcome area and intoduce yourself properly to our community, by telling us what system you use and what music you like?

This is required of all new members.

You'll also need to add the area in the UK where you live to your profile, as "United Kingdom" is rather too unspecific.

Cheers! :cool:

Marco.