1. using X, have modeline for 1280x1024 100Hz on my monitor generated by gtf.
it works, i can use it, but i have to switch from 85 Hz to 100Hz every time i restart X.
How to make it stick as default?

2.Can some audiophile tell me why should one prefere Amarok to juk or that for rythmbox or xmms to snackamp?

3?Is audio handling via gstreamer something superior to python based snackamp handling? what about sound quality?

4.If alsa is configured ok, which audio application will make most natural and accurate reproducing of sound in your opinion?


I have used them all, tried some other programs, but still i cant tell, what program is better in means of sound.

So am asking about your opinions and impressions, if you wish to share.
Please do not answer with suggestions like-program X have nice skins , font, emoticons and etc...

cataloging functions i consider important too, it must be logical and fast.

Hi there:

1) Not sure what you mean here - you have to do something with your monitor, or are you using xset or xvidtune to change the display card frequency?

If the latter, you should simply need to edit your xorg.conf to give the mode a name like "1280x1024_100" and then put that first in the list of modes. If you post the relevent chunk of the file I will try to point out what to change.

2+3+4) They are all the same! They all use the same sound library (mpg123 + alsa) to do the output. The only difference is in the interface. Unless you have a super pro soundcard and are playing high fidelity WAVs then your hardware will be the limiting factor in quality.

If you use a streamer you may get skips in the sound, depending on your hardware, but that will be very obvious.

Personally I like beep-media-player, or use XMMS with crossfade plugin to eliminate clicks between songs. With these you also get an EQ, but be aware that changing the EQ levels on an mp3 (or any lossy-encoded sound recording) may really reduce the quality.

HTH - TIM

I'm not entirely sure how to do that. Honestly, however, do you see any difference? My monitor supports a refresh that high at lower resolutions, and to my eye, at least, I get more eye strain at refresh rates above 90Hz, and I actually see the monitor start to flicker in the >110Hz range. I stick to 85Hz because for me, that's the best. Your eye can't distinguish a higher refresh rate, anyway.

There's no real reason to prefer one over the other from a technical standpoint. They all use the same basic decoder libraries, and they all should (theoretically) put out the same quality of audio. The quality of your soundcard, decoder (if you have one), and speakers makes a far more significant difference.

I use Juk, because I like the the interface and features. That's an aesthetic decision, not a technical one.

The audio decoding is done at the shared library level. If you remove libogg, then it doesn't matter which audio app you're using: none of them will be able to play Ogg/Vorbis. This is the same on Mac and Windows-platforms, as the libraries are essentially CODECs. I guess theoretically, whichever one has the smallest memory footprint is best. On a system with resources to burn, however, there's really no difference between the programs aside from interface and features.

Use whatever you want, because unless your speakers cost more than some computers, you really will not hear a difference from one program to another. Even with a Cambridge Soundworks DTT 3500, I have trouble telling the difference. It's not until I hook the computer up to my decoder with Tannoy Monitor Gold speakers that I can hear any difference at all, and that's jaded because of the quality of audio patch I'm using. It just isn't worth my trouble hooking that up, because I use that decoder for DVD's and Sattelite TV, not listening to music and games on my computer.

my HI-FI speakers are as expensive as my computer (pc is just cheap one-some 500 EUR )
also i do listen via my Pioneer quality headphones. there is much hypes around, distros are using now players-organizers, what try to imitate media player on windows or itunes on mac
yes i do play wav-s, try to use lossless codecs.(can't say disk is limiting me ;-) )

i honestly like snack-amp, because its small footprint in memory and it is very fast at job.
i just tried to justify on base of sound quality such large projects like amarok is.
also i try to find such not so well-known programs around...

sometimes it just makes me feel like i am freak, because using something others even do not know existing around.
so i wonder-am i fool -not realizing mainstream applications superiority or are they just eyecandys i do not need.

about xmms i must say same as about winamp in windows.
they are good mp3 players, but they just do not fit to me.

on windows i preferred audiostation like programs. now i use snackamp on my windosa box at work.

basicly same can be said about slackware usage too in region i live in.
suse, mandake, fedora = yea, cool man, here.
debian, solaris = ok, poor thumb nolifer admin.
slackware = who is/was slackware

some words about snack itself:
SnackAmp is a multi-platform music player with normal music player abilities, multi-user support, integrated web server, and a powerful AutoPlaylist feature. Currently mp3, wav, ogg vorbis,and many other sound files are supported. SnackAmp also plays mp3 and ogg streams and can act as a Icecast/Shoutcast compatible server for other stream clients. Both auto-leveling (normalization) and gapless playback are supported. Tcl/Tk scripts and stand-alone executables (for Windows and Linux) are available from sourceforge.
The motivation behind SnackAmp was to overcome the deficiency in other media players to manage thousands (or tens of thousands) of mp3/ogg files in a both powerful and easy to use manner without relying solely on ID3 tags to categorize the music by genre or complete re-indexing of the media folders when tags or file names are moved or modified. SnackAmp runs on a number of platforms and has multi-user capabilities making it a natural fit for office or educational environments. Being open source and written Tcl/Tk, the best scripting language around, you can change it to suite your needs. SnackAmp includes the wonderful Snack 2.2.5 Sound toolkit written and maintained by Kåre Sjölander.

the part i do not understand is-how good is "wonderful Snack 2.2.5 Sound toolkit" versus those other libmp3-s based things in eans of quaity. how can it measured?
are they really same?as much i can read here: http://snackamp.sourceforge.net/ -look for sack link itself-it is different engine.


sorry about my poor english...

The player doesn't really make that much of a difference in playback that I've noticed. I'm a big music fan and have music playing when I'm on the computer. I used to use .mp3 format, but after a while I noticed the quality wasn't as good as the cd. I was using XP, so I started ripping my cd's into the .wma lossless codec. Now that I've changed to Slackware, playing .wma files is too much of a hassle. I'm currently in the process of re-ripping my collection into the .flac format. Free Lossless Audio Codec. I have no complaints about the sound quality. I'm using a program called xmcd to rip the cd's. It's pretty good and fairly simple to use. Has Gracenote CDDB acces so you can get the info on your cd's. It plays cd's in normal mode and in CDDA mode. It doesn't play back the music files on it's own though. I think there is a plugin for that, but haven't looked into it yet.
I'm trying to find a good media player that will organize my music and let me create playlists easily. That's about the only thing Windows MediaPlayer was good for was organizing music. Using xmms right now. It's ok, but looking for something a little better.