Count Zero

[Log in to get rid of this advertisement]

Hi all,

I'v been using Amarok for a few years and up until Amarok 2 I was really happy with it, even though I'm not a KDE-user (fact is, Amarok being a KDE app was about the one thing I didn't like about it). Now I find Amarok 2 buggy and unreliable and consequently I'm looking around for a new audio manager and I could really use some help on what to try.

Ok, so what made (and makes)- in my mind - Amarok so great? Simple. The way it organizes the audio collection. With Amarok, I get my collection organized/sorted/displayed by artist/group and then by album AND it also displays all those various artist albums as - wait for it - various artists and then displays them by album.

This sounds pretty simple but I've been looking at every major audio manager out there and none of them seem to be able to do this.

For example, I tried out Exaile. Seems nice and all and the collection can be organized or displayed in a number of ways. What ways? Well, artist is one. Only, this will show all those odd songs from various artists albums and what not under the same heading as the albums that the artist has made alone. By album? Well, sure but say that I want to listen to a Miles Davis record. I got about fifty so ... maybe not such a great idea after all. Of course, I could always reorganize the display of the collection depending on what I'm looking for but to be honest I'd rather have it displayed the way I like it from the beginning.

Is there any audio managers out there that can display the collection the way Amarok does? I don't care if it does so by default or not, tweaking and configuring is not a problem for me but what I've seen so far of the other big audio managers out there they don't even seem to have the option of fine-tuning this.

I use Debian squeeze and would prefer something in the Debian repository but at this point it is certainly only a preference and not an absolute. Also, I don't use Gnome and don't have it installed so I'd rather see that Gnome in its entirety is not installed by installing the audio manager

Any help or suggestions on what to look into, try out or how to go about is very much appreciated.

Best regards
CZ

ps: sorry if this sounds a bit whiny. ds

theacerguy

well amarok 2.1 is out that is much better but i recomend songbird it is very much like itunes and works well if you use ubuntu it should be in repos otherwise http://www.getsongbird.com/ 2.1 is good though so give it a try

theacerguy

i thnk it is in debian repos aswell

craigevil

You might try gmusicbrowser, or Rhythmbox. A .deb of songbird is in the liquorix repo, but not in the "official" debian repos.

kdelover

SOngbirddddddddddd!!! its brilliant 10x better than amarok and there are tons of addons for it from adding coverflow ( like itunes) to automatic album artwork downloader.

http://www.getsongbird.com/

adunamia

Exaile, banshee, rythmbox, and songbird are all good options. I'd go with either Exaile or songbird though, if it were me.

Count Zero

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I've been looking at all of these audio managers at one point or another. Any of them would satisfy my needs as audio player. No problem there as my needs are not very extravagant.

The problem is that I've never been able to configure any of them to display the collection the way Amarok does and this was the question I asked in my post.

So, if these audio managers can be made to display the collection the way Amarok does by default, how do I go about this?

Best regards
/CZ

windtalker10

If you liked the winamp look, give XMMS a shot.
One can download tons of skins so changing the look is no challenge.
I'm a soft rock/southern rock/C&W fan and keep my music sorted myself in separate folders and loading the folder I want or song/s is nothing more than a click.

adunamia

In my experience, Exaile is nearly identical to Amarok. Perhaps you could clearify what your organization is more clearly?

Count Zero

Ok, from the first post:

Incidentally, in that post I also compared how differently Exaile displays the collection and describing it as almost identical to Amarok is to stretch it pretty far.

So, stating it one more time: I do not want albums containing songs from several artist displayed by artist, giving me about a dozen entries for one album. The only way (at least that I have found) to avoid this in for example Exaile is to display/sort the collection by album. That solution would spew the different albums of an artist all over the collection. Changing the preferences for the display every now and then is hardly a good solution.

So, what does Amarok do? It displays the collection as it were a collection of CDs. So, you get a bunch of RL Burnside CDs here, a bunch of Miles Davis CDs there, and a bunch of various artist albums here etc. THAT is what I want to be displayed!

I'm sorry if I come out as a bit frustrated and grudgy but from some of the answers I wonder how many actually took the time to read the original post.

cheers
/CZ

EDIT:
For the record, I've looked at Exaile, Juk, Rhythmbox, Banshee and Songbird. Good players all but I have yet to configure any of them to display the collection the way Amarok does. If anyone knows how to do this, or knows of another audio manager that can be made to do this, I would greatly appreciate some pointers on this.

Count Zero

I couldn't make Rhythmbox or Songbird display the collection like Amarok does but gmusicbrowser do. Wonderful application. Thanks.
/CZ

Elv13

I am an Amarok fan too and I still use 1.4, but 2.2 seem to look to be a great release. It is now possible to drop the useless Plasma middle thing. The playlist is also much better and overlall it is much more stable. If I get the MySQL db to play nice with my config, I may finally switch to Amarok 2. I can advice you to wait for it or grab a GIT build (even if it is less stable) to see if it is better enough for you versus 1.4.

Road

I came here to find a Rythmbox replacement. I like Rythmbox but it freezes up way to much. Trying Exaile per everybody recommendations, so far I like it. My needs are simple, just work and don't freeze up much. I like when I can rate the songs but I keep loosing the rating whenever I switch so it's a bummer.