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Topic: MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux (Read 5516 times) previous topic - next topic
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MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

From my last 2 posts it is evident that I entered Linux, and it's the first time after couple of tries in the past which held me back to Windows for this or that reason.
I'm on Debian and managed to make environment that's suites my needs and now I'm tweaking last bits.

As a foobar fan, while not believing in wine/crossover solutions, I tried to find my music manager.

Rhythmbox comes with standard Debian distribution, and IMHO it's a solid general purpose audio player and manager. It's iTunes inspired and not what I'm after.

DeaDBeeF is suggested here couple of times, and not without a reason. My main problem with it, is lack of media library feature and if I understand it's author sayings it would be like this for some time. There is optional file browser plugin and that's all. As I have relatively big collection, option to parse, search tags in my collection is demand. No masstagger, Discogs tagger or similar, limits nice tagging features this player has, but high hopes for near future. I only noted what I miss, and it's futures are numerous to be mentioned - DeaDBeeF won't leave my OS for sure

There are other players, like WinAmp clones or else, and I guess I didn't miss anything there, but could be wrong.

So I decided to give MPD go and use it as media library server, then choose appropriate client for read-only playback through Jack as DSP manager, and then find some tagger OTOH for managing new stuff.

I think I tried all those GTK/Qt clients and all look similar with minimal browsing capabilities and majority as unfinished one author hobby projects. As MPD exposes all your media library to client it's my understanding that client job is only to provide genuine parser, but take a look for yourself in implementations if you wish. From available clients tried, I have 2 right now (GTK):

  • Glurp - it's like foobar album list and playlist view with fixed %artist% - %title% format. No groupings or anything else, can't be simpler. Search capability is like that of Rhythmbox - 3 tags lookup
  • Gbemol - uses filters which can be customized in 3 columns from 7 available tag, and has search feature for lookup in 10 tags (search in playlist or library). Playlist view format can be customized with those same 10 tags. It sounds fine only that: (screenshot)
  • filters lists items unsorted, so everything looks like it's messed up
  • library search does not work, or I can't make it work, but how hard it could be?

Also tried Ncmpcpp as console client, without explaining further as I'm in graphical environment.


I welcome you comment my post.

Thanks

MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

Reply #1 –
You could try Clementine. It has a media library.

MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

Reply #2 –
Amarok has media library, IIRC.
TAPE LOADING ERROR

MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

Reply #3 –
Thanks for your suggestions

Somehow I find idea of using MPD as library server for local playback and possible future usages, suite best my preferences

I spent some more time with Ncmpcpp and it's features are great (even has regex search), but console application seems too strange and orthodox

Then I searched again MPD clients wiki, then Google, and I gave Sonata (what's in a name) client another try. I'm staying here. I had some problems yesterday with it, not worth explaining

It has:
- custom playlist columns (with column title sort feature)
- find as you type
- custom search (by some tags or all tags)
- 4 library tree views (FS, artist, genre, album)
- standard features, even tagging capabilities (tagpy and taglib)
- beeing forked from Pygmy, with reasonable effort can be extended to liking
- it's cute and fast (reminds me on some popular foobar mockups):



Cheers

MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

Reply #4 –
Don’t forget to try Quod Libet as well.

MPD clients or alternative media library solutions on Linux

Reply #5 –
I sticked with sonata, also. Good choice. I prefer Ex Falso for tagging, though.