Some Linux audio players

Recently, I tried Audacious. It is too nice. Banshee and Rhythmbox, both of them are storing the audio files as in the library, but Audacious just uses simple playlists. Rhythmbox allows the users to create playlist too, yet it is not as simple as Audacious, which allows us to sort the playlist easily, and using shortcut key to queue the songs we want to listen.

Recently I also found that OSD Lyrics is just wonderful, which allows me to replace what I need in TTPlayer (千千静听). Because TTPlayer is built for Windows only, and works badly in Wine. OSD Lyrics is able to download the lyrics and display the lyrics. It is actually a standalone tool which can work with other audio players, such as Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, and Audacious.

Because of the Rhythmbox, which is heavy weight and difficult to manage the playlist, that is why I tried those audio players which can be supported by OSD Lyrics, and also available in the main repository of the Linux distribution that I am using (Arch Linux).

The followings are my brief description with the problems:

  • Banshee - Cannot drag and drop from the file manager (previously, I am not sure about the current version).
  • Rhythmbox - Cannot perform sorting.
  • Audacious - The volume is softer than Rhythmbox. But the playlist is very easy to manage.
  • Amarok - The interface is too complex. Give up immediately.
  • Clementine - Cannot disable Internet providers, which I don’t like.
  • Pragha - Is not supported by osdlyrics.
  • Quod Libet - Does not support drag and drop also.
  • Qmmp - Good. Support drag and drop. Easy interface. Exactly same as Winamp. Should be able to be supported by OSD Lyrics, but I cannot make it work, may be due to version’s problem, (qmmp 0.6.6 and osdlyrics 0.4.3)
  • LXMusic - Based on XMMS2 (command-line). XMMS2 supported by osdlyrics, but LXMusic itself does not.

Among these, I like Audacious best. Qmmp also good, but cannot be supported by OSD Lyrics. Then followed by Rhythmbox.

But most these audio players, including Audacious, Rhythmbox, and Banshee, I experienced the problem of editing ID3 tag. None of them works well. That is why I always use Kid3 to edit the ID3 tag.