Tuxfreaks

There are quite a number of audio players in linux.It is very tough for a newbie to decide the best player available out there.This post sheds some light on the available players.In Linux we have players with both CLI and GUI which supports almost all available formats.

1.Amarok

Amarok is definitely the best player available out there..When i used it way long back,i had to let it go primarily because it didn’t have an equalizer.Now Dont shout,it might look silly,but I’ve got a speaker system with really good base but no control on speaker bass control, so the neighbors get pretty upset if I run things without an equalizer.But When i used it for the second time i unable to live without it…The features which i like are
* MySQL database support for media library (makes exporting your media library as easy as a SQL query)
* Automatic d/l of lyrics from Wikilyric(lyrics are written to the database so u dnt have to d/l them every single time)
* Automatic download of artist information from Wikipedia
* Download of album art from Amazon.com(Not a big deal though)
* Easy organization of media files from tag information
* LastFM support
* Support for mp3, AAC, FLAC, ogg and WMA files
and the list goes on..Its better ill write a dedicated post on Amarok..

Download it here

2.Audacious  [edited]

I am still in a dilemma whether to put audacious after xmms,because of a few valid reasons.It is a drop-in replacement for XMMS.The menus are a lot easier to read than XMMS, being properly integrated with my desktop.It has got the required plugins like:- audacious- docklet puts an icon in your system tray, audacious-plugins provides optional extra features and audtty provides command-line controls.

3.Exaile

Good news to gnome users who has been using Amarok,coz u can now Shift from the wonderful AmaroK ans save your long load time on a gnome system.Exaile is very fast and an excellent replacement for amarok.As it is an young project,it still doesn’t match up to Amarok IMHO.But the features are increasing day by day.The icons are tangoish, which looks great in GNOME.Music sounds the same, but I am not an audiophile. The equalizer didn’t work, said it needed gstreamer-plugins-bad, but then I never bother with the equalizer.

If anyone has ideas for improving Exaile, or has found a bug, please file a ticket on Exaile’s trac (http://www.exaile.org/trac), or inform a developer (synic, sjohannes, or reacocard) about it in #exaile on freenode.

4.XMMS  [edited]

Xmms is the player who are running on a low memory and cannot live without a GUI.On my maschine (AMD-Athlon 3200+) it produces a cpu load of lower 1% and you know what mpg123, who asserts it is the best, produrces 8% of cpu load.It is very similar in function to the classic Winamp (i.e. before AOL bought it and ruined it).This groovy little app. has played an important part of my computing routine for the last half-decade, and although Gstreamer is becoming more-and-more important as the default media framework for the Gnome desktop, Gnome has not yet provided any real Gstreamer-based challengers to XMMS’ pride of place as my music player or mplayer as my video player.Many have decried the removal of XMMS from the Ubuntu repositories – it has been absent since Gutsy.Anyways You can find many tutorials on net to install it.

5.Songbird (Itunes Replacement)

Songbird is the other player which many havent tried out still,but i am sure you will love that.It has got cool menus,unique plugins  like Songkick(Discover upcoming shows in your area based on the artists in your library) and Mashtape(Discover Flickr photos, YouTube videos, last.fm biographies, Google news (and more) for the currently playing artist).This is the best answer for those who are searching a player to sync their ipods with ease.