Wanted - Audio player which works sensibly
I have a large number of audio tracks on my computer[s] which I woiuld like to play occasionally. When at home I stream them from my desktop machine and that works *moderately* well with an Onkyo media centre and also using VLC for Android in streaming mode. However I can't find anything that simply allows me to select and play tracks (a directory at a time) directly on a laptop. I need to do this when using my laptop away from home and disconnected from the world. So, can anyone recommend a media (just audio is all I need) player which can do the following:- Navigate a hierarchy of directories containing a mix of MPG and FLAC files. Play individual files. Play the contents of a directory *once* only by default in a sensible order (classical music sounds a bit silly if you play the movements in the wrong order!). VLC is strangely almost totally useless playinmg from disk on Linux, quite unlike streaming on Android. Parole doesn't seem to be able to play a directory of sound files, at least I couldn't see how to do it. -- Chris Green
Exaile. Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music. Regards, Huge. On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 17:26 +0000, Chris Green wrote:
I have a large number of audio tracks on my computer[s] which I woiuld like to play occasionally. When at home I stream them from my desktop machine and that works *moderately* well with an Onkyo media centre and also using VLC for Android in streaming mode.
However I can't find anything that simply allows me to select and play tracks (a directory at a time) directly on a laptop. I need to do this when using my laptop away from home and disconnected from the world.
So, can anyone recommend a media (just audio is all I need) player which can do the following:-
Navigate a hierarchy of directories containing a mix of MPG and FLAC files.
Play individual files.
Play the contents of a directory *once* only by default in a sensible order (classical music sounds a bit silly if you play the movements in the wrong order!).
VLC is strangely almost totally useless playinmg from disk on Linux, quite unlike streaming on Android.
Parole doesn't seem to be able to play a directory of sound files, at least I couldn't see how to do it.
-- Today is Pungenday, the 36th day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3182 I don't have an attitude problem. If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.
On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 05:32:46PM +0000, Huge wrote:
Exaile.
Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music.
Pity it's not in the Ubuntu repositories but I may try it anyway, thanks. -- Chris Green
On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 17:40 +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 05:32:46PM +0000, Huge wrote:
Exaile.
Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music.
Pity it's not in the Ubuntu repositories but I may try it anyway, thanks.
Odd, given that it's available in Mint. -- Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 37th day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3182 I don't have an attitude problem. If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.
On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 05:40:10PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 05:32:46PM +0000, Huge wrote:
Exaile.
Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music.
Pity it's not in the Ubuntu repositories but I may try it anyway, thanks.
Hmm, it's obviously not my day. I've installed exaile on my laptop running xubuntu 16.04 and it starts up OK and the interface looks the sort of thing I want. However it fails when asked to actually play something with:- Playback error encountered! playsink0: Possible audio device error, is it plugged in? Other programs seem able to make noises so it would seem I do have sound, just that exaile doesn't think so. -- Chris Green
On Thu, 24 Nov 2016 17:32:46 +0000 Huge <huge@huge.org.uk> wrote:
Exaile.
Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music.
Dead simple? According to the description of Exaile on my machine it says :- Exaile is a music player inspired by KDE's Amarok, but for GTK and written in Python. It incorporates many of the cool things from Amarok and other, like: * automatic fetching of album art * handling of large libraries * lyrics fetching * artist/album information via the wikipedia * Last.fm support * optional iPod support * an advanced tag editor * a SHOUTcast directory browser In addition, Exaile also includes: * a SHOUTcast directory browser * tabbed playlists (so you can have more than one playlist open at a time) * blacklisting of tracks (so they don't get scanned into your library) * downloading of guitar tablature from fretplay.com * submitting played tracks on your iPod to Last.fm Simple eh? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|
On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 06:44:55PM +0000, Chris Walker wrote:
Simple eh?
Just because something has lots of features doesn't automatically mean it isn't simple to use. Indeed many everyday items frustrate me as they are difficult to use and don't offer many features (like my microwave) and some are actually quite simple and straight forward despite having lots going on when they are being used. Adam
On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 18:44 +0000, Chris Walker wrote:
On Thu, 24 Nov 2016 17:32:46 +0000 Huge <huge@huge.org.uk> wrote:
Exaile.
Took me ages to find a dead simple media player that (i) didn't look like a car radio; why do people pick the *worst* UI in the world to emulate? & (ii) didn't have about a gazillion "features" I didn't want. Just play the damn music.
Dead simple?
According to the description of Exaile on my machine it says :-
[snippage]
Simple eh?
I'm not sure I care for your tone. If you'd bothered to look, you'd see it has a nice clean UI and all those useless "features" are trivially ignored, unlike Amarok, Banshee & so forth where they all get in the way. -- Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 37th day of The Aftermath in the YOLD 3182 I don't have an attitude problem. If you have a problem with my attitude, that's your problem.
participants (4)
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Adam Bower -
Chris Green -
Chris Walker -
Huge