For some years, I just used directory-organized audio files. I used emacs’s emms to control the playlist, and had it set up to have mpv play audio files.
Some years back, I used at mpd for a while, but it’s really oriented towards accessing audio via metadata, which wasn’t really what I wanted to do: that really entails getting correct metadata on all of an audio collection.
Then recently, I ran into beets, which is a utility to do semi-automated metadata cleanup (compute and apply ReplayGain tags, insert metadata using a variety of techniques, etc) en masse and finally got my metadata in a reasonable state, and flipped back to using mpd. I was pretty impressed with beets; it takes some setup, but runs what it can in parallel, doesn’t block the process when it needs human guidance on metadata, and can be set to automatically set metadata when its confidence is above certain levels but ask below that.
Mpd is probably especially useful when one has an audio server that one controls remotely with a other devices, though I just use the thing locally. It supports a bunch of frontends; can be controlled from GUI software, from the command line, from TUI clients like ncmpc or ncmpcpp or a few others, from various emacs software packages, can keep running if you bring down your graphical environment. A lot of OSD/“bar”/“dock”/“wharf” software can display MPD information out-of-box; I’m currently using waybar in sway, which can display mpd information.
I’m not always directly at the media-serving machine, and I’m using unison to synchronize my music files to a laptop. New files or removals or whatever will get propagated in either direction. That lets me have a replicated media library accessible for disconnected use.
All of the above stuff is packaged in Debian bookworm; should be available in at least Debian-family distros out-of-box, and probably others.
Anyone else want to describe their favored music-playing setup, stuff that they’ve found works well for 'em? Maybe give other folks who might be looking for something similar useful ideas?
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VLC on Win XP on a Thinkpad R52, connected via shielded cable to the aux input on a Sony receiver from about 1995.
Hey, why not?
I used to do
beetsandcmusbut eventually moved to MusicBrainz Picard and Strawberrry Music Player. I sync to my phone withsyncthing.I’m running Mopidy with web interface to stream to multiple audio output devices (like my receiver in the living room) using Snapcast on Pi’s (some with HiFiBerry module) over the network. Mopidy also integrates nicely into my workstation with KDE using MPDRIS and a local Snapcast server.
This works for both my music collection and some webstreams. I’m quite happry with this setup.
I wrote my own music player using qt
I once asked this question time ago on a different account and found some useful recommendations. Here you go.
At that time I decided to run mpd + ymuse combo and now mpd + ncmpcpp because I can use it with the keyboard. Personally all I really care is playlist management.
Cheers!
Rockbox has worked really well
I use Spotify for most of my music, but seeing how we’re on the Linux sub, I use “Strawberry” to play music on my steamdeck in game mode. It works well enough to play music on my desk while I do HW or something.
(I am also looking for a way to have videos in SD game mode if you have any ;) )
I use Exaile. It has queue(s) that you add tracks to, and the library search is outstanding. I have some albums with various artists, and Exaile can group the library by the album artist.
I used to have the files on my NAS, and “syncing” them via smb. Then I reinstalled my NAS, and for some reason decided to not install smb. I was tinkering with the idea of doing a small http server/client thing instead. But to be frank, my library never changes any longer. I just copy it from the NAS once, and that’s it.
I used a player called Listen back in the days. I loved that one so much.
I can’t hype up Tauon Musicbox enough.
I’m a big fan of keeping it simple:
- audio files get organised by artist and then album
- VLC for playing them
- SMB for sharing them across devices
URLs like these:
http://edge1-b.exa.live365.net/a90706 and this https://cafedelmar.com/radio/
I’d rather go deaf then deal with software while making music.
just make it with your hands.
Is this some kind of Meat Beat Manifesto?
