Good media player for Linux

I've been able to find a good replacement for most of my old Windows apps, except for one commonly used one - a media player. I know, I know. But anyway, on Windows I used XMPlay, it had a nice interface, had playlist support, supported many formats, and many more with plugins, and had an equalizer, and *drum roll* an auto-amp feature. Auto-amp is awesome, basicly, it changes the volume for each track it plays (and each section in the track), the same way a normalizer does. This is great because I can have a naturally quite song and a naturally loud song (or just loud and quiet parts in the same track), and yet hear everything equally as well without having to adjust the speakers to my liking.

JuK came with my distro, so I tried it. It's terrible in every way, I won't waste any of our time talking about it. ;)

So, I got Audacious. Even with the other skins, it has tiny tiny little buttons which I hate. Good playlist support, but no auto-amp, plus for some reason it play MP3s a little choppily.

Next, Amarok 2. Really really nice interface IMO, and it plays MP3s very well. But it's all around playlist support stinks. And no auto-amp.

Next in line, Rhythmbox. I don't like it's interface, though I think it would do well. But for some reason, the GStreamer bugs out on me so I can't play MP3s with or without the proper filters. And I don't think it had auto-amp.

Now I'm trying VLC. I've run it on Windows before, but it just doesn't live up to the Linux user-friendliness standards now (very bad interface). It plays MP3s almost perfectly, but jumps and grains randomly at the start of songs. And terrible terrible playlist support. But really good all around format support. Oh, and no auto-amp.

So at this point I don't what to get. I would love to have a Linux player with the glorious auto-amp feature. And I would like something that can play MP3s properly, and WMAs, even if it's bad with other formats. And a decent editable and functional playlist functionality. I can live with no equalizer, small buttons, and no skins. But a nice useable interface would be nice. Oh, and I don't place much value in the internet radio either. Basicly, I just want (Auto-Amp + MP3 + Playlist)
At this point, I almost want to whip out Wine and XMPlay. :p (dunno how well that would work, though)
Advice anyone?

"doesn't live up to the Linux user-friendliness standards now"

You don't like any of the fourteen billion skins?!

"jumps and grains randomly at the start of songs"

I've never seen this. Where did you get the binary?

What do you mean by "terrible playlist support"? What would you like to see?

"and WMA"

If all else fails, convert.

Soma

Well that's easy...

For music, mpd (choose your own front-end) or xmms
For video, mplayer (choose your own front-end) or xine

Just my personal choice.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

Next in line, Rhythmbox. I don't like it's interface, though I think it would do well. But for some reason, the GStreamer bugs out on me so I can't play MP3s with or without the proper filters.

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Rhythmbox is pretty much just like foobar2000 on Windows. Can't really get anything better. I'd try to get a GStreamer version that works. Your distributions online forum can probably help you there.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

I would love to have a Linux player with the glorious auto-amp feature.

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It's also known as (volume) normalization. Try looking for that. There's also the replaygain, which I think is the same thing, but instead of scanning the file for the loudest point, that information is already stored as meta information in the file. I know that at the very least, Rhythmbox supports this. If it doesn't work for you, use gconf to change apps > rhythmbox > use_replaygain to true.

I think part of the vacuum here is because last year xmms closed shop to start xmms2, which was finally released in May.

xmms still works tho and comes with most distros (I think). It was pretty much the standard going back to before the turn of the century, it's got a zillion skins, visual plugins, etc. xmms was actually the first place I ever saw one of those 3D visualizer things.

xine works, but the one with (eg) Fedora requires you to download a plug-in to actually watch dvds, because the codec is proprietary so redhat won't ship it. But it's not hard to install a plug-in...

I installed xmms2, and Blastwave for it's front-end.
But it xmms2 refuses to play MP3s, something about failure to add it to it's 'chain'.
GMusicBrowser seems interesting, it even allows for 3 playback options. GStreamer is broken as I've said (can't seem to fix it, I already fell back a version to get to prevent from crashing). mpg321 refuses to play anything, something about failure to get a lock on libao. And icecast doesn't error out, but just produces no sound.
I'm beginning to think Fedora + Music = Yeah right

On modern Linux distributions sound output is usually controlled by a supervisor system like ALSA. Having each application provide abilities like auto-equalization is not "the Linux way." What you need to do is install a plugin to the audio system which does auto-eq. This way, every application on your system will automatically have auto-eq instead of each application providing it by themselves.

I'm not enough of an audio geek to have done this myself but I've seen it done. Check here:

Ladspa (plugin) - ALSA wiki

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Originally Posted by Yarin

I installed xmms2, and Blastwave for it's front-end.
But it xmms2 refuses to play MP3s, something about failure to add it to it's 'chain'. mpg321 refuses to play anything, something about failure to get a lock on libao. And icecast doesn't error out, but just produces no sound.
I'm beginning to think Fedora + Music = Yeah right

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Hmm. I still have not tried xmms2, since at this point in my life (to be honest) it is not actually that interesting to watch little squiggles dance around near a chrome & graffiti GUI that looks like you should unplug it from your dashboard (no matter how much weed I smoke :p). I just use mpg123, and I have a perl/Tk thing I wrote to load an mp3 stick that will also produce playlists*. But I notice mpg123 is in /usr/local/bin, so I must have built it from source. Fedora is really strict about the proprietary codecs or whatever.

So try a source build of mpg123; you may have to resolve some dependencies, but (like anything) the more you build from source, the easier it gets to intuit the details. After all, you are an aspiring programmer, Yarin ;) I truly believe "they" make the music & video stuff esp. hard on linux just to be frustrating and get some bunch of suckers** interested in what the heck is going on and why is this such a hassle, I want my g'dam entertainment :p

* how I got started programming in earnest!
** eg yours truly

Never mind about mpg321, just a configuration error in the front-end I was using it with. GMusicBrowser's working well now. But I still like Amarok's interface better.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

On modern Linux distributions sound output is usually controlled by a supervisor system like ALSA. Having each application provide abilities like auto-equalization is not "the Linux way." What you need to do is install a plugin to the audio system which does auto-eq. This way, every application on your system will automatically have auto-eq instead of each application providing it by themselves.

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Never thought of a plug-in working on such a low level... cool. I'll look into that, thanks.

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Originally Posted by MK27

So try a source build of mpg123; you may have to resolve some dependencies, but (like anything) the more you build from source, the easier it gets to intuit the details. After all, you are an aspiring programmer, Yarin ;) I truly believe "they" make the music & video stuff esp. hard on linux just to be frustrating and get some bunch of suckers** interested in what the heck is going on and why is this such a hassle, I want my g'dam entertainment :p

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I know, you're right, I've already had to build a few sources when the binaries didn't work out.
Heh, programmer or not, sometimes you just don't feel like killing time on something like that, when you know there ought to be a much quicker rout, which you could be taking.

And... GMusicBrowser is interesting. I know it's rare, not even mentioned in big lists, but it has a unique way of organizing songs. And I like it's extensive settings caps.

The uh, appropriate plug-in, probably alsa, is pretty key, you know linux is all options. If I follow, which I think I do.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

I know, you're right, I've already had to build a few sources when the binaries didn't work out.
Heh, programmer or not, sometimes you just don't feel like killing time on something like that, when you know there ought to be a much quicker rout, which you could be taking.

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It becomes no effort, dude. I actually have an environment variable that plays out to "configure --help | less" (just kidding).

At least youtube works (I presume); here's my "US health care debate" related choice for the kool keith kut-in. You do have to listen to it all the way thru tho.

Volume normalization within a song? I've only heard of volume normalization across different songs. So you are basically looking to get rid of all the dynamics in the songs?

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The uh, appropriate plug-in, probably alsa, is pretty key, you know linux is all options. If I follow, which I think I do.

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Hmm, not sure what you mean. ALSAs been working fine for me.

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It becomes no effort, dude. I actually have an environment variable that plays out to "configure --help | less" (just kidding).

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Yes, I was more so refering to the downloading of devel packages that are needed.

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Volume normalization within a song? I've only heard of volume normalization across different songs. So you are basically looking to get rid of all the dynamics in the songs?

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Yup, within a song. It doesn't remove the song's dynamics, it just softens them, so the song still has it's up and downs, just not so extreme. Download XMPlay from un4seen.com and you'll see what I'm talking about (auto-amp).