Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Audio Apps

[adamovera]

We're back with the fifth installment of Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup. Today, we'll be covering general end-user audio consumption applications, designed for organizing, playing, ripping, tagging, converting, and basic recording of audio.

Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Audio Apps : Read more

 

[nevertell]

Great stuff, I'll try out some of those.

Although I had tried Banshee a few years ago, and it just couldn't deal with 30 gb of music.

 

[machvelocy]

D'oh.... i didn't know before if you can sync ipod in linux (yes i'm a linux n00b).

 

[pelov]

Linux has always been quite robust in the audio segment, particularly if you consider that the majority of apps are completely free and hog less resources. Move over apple.

Though some apps are .deb or .rpm, or what have you, depending on the linux distro you can still open/install them just fine.

Good writeup

 

[haplo602]

I miss xmms in the list, just for nostalgia.

Audacious fits my bill for a music player. Simple yet capable.

 

[nukemaster]

does Audacious take winamp 2 skins like xmms does?

 

[admiral_grinder]

I have tried several of the Winamp clones on my Ubuntu box, but I'm using Audacious to be the better. Out of all the clones I have found the playlist sorting options are a bit weak. While you can sort by Artist or by Title, you can't do both. They do have the important one of sorting by path and filename though so you can que up albums in the right order.

 

[Guest]

Nice review! I look forward to looking at how gaming works on linux

 

[castlefox]

Thank you Toms for doing a linux article !!!!!

I didnt know those ipod syncing programs actually worked. I cant wait to try out Banchee in Ubuntu 11.04

PS> Type O Negative and all the other metal put a smile on my face

 

[Crazy Hitchhiker]

Nice to see that you are still doing linux articles! I'm a little curious why several programs were left off, though: VLC, Audacity, and WinFF. Oh well, just keep up the good work!

 

[castlefox]

[citation][nom]Crazy Hitchhiker[/nom]Nice to see that you are still doing linux articles! I'm a little curious why several programs were left off, though: VLC, Audacity, and WinFF. Oh well, just keep up the good work![/citation]

VLC is more of a video thing.... it does stand for "video lan client"

 

[Dave_69]

So now Tom's has fallen into the trap of confusing an "application" from a "program." Nice...

 

[gmgj]

Of interest to some of us would be LIRC and other remote control - smart phone capabilites. I am a windows Media Monkey fan. I exercise to music and watch milkdrop visualizations. I installed projectM, a milkdrop replacment last week and it has been working great.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]castlefox[/nom]VLC is more of a video thing.... it does stand for "video lan client"[/citation]It's changed over the years so the abbreviation doesn't really fit anymore. It can transcode and serve streams.

 

[hangfirew8]

Good timing for this article. I'm tired of my Gentoo/KDE latest-and-greatest Amarok crashing 50% of the time when connecting to Internet Radio. As soon as I'm done transitioning boot to SSD, I'll be checking out Banshee et al.

 

[Phu5ion]

I've been using Pithos for my Pandora listening pleasure and it works pretty well. The only problem I've had with it is that if you pause and then restart the station you will lose your stream. This probably has more to do with Pithos closing the connection to Pandora's stream than anything else, but it is frustrating when you have to pause a great song.

 

[adamovera]

Really sorry for the late responses everyone, didn't know this published today, doh!
[citation][nom]nukemaster[/nom]does Audacious take winamp 2 skins like xmms does?[/citation]
Sure does, version 2.x WinAmp skins supported.
[citation][nom]castlefox[/nom]Thank you Toms for doing a linux article !!!!!I didnt know those ipod syncing programs actually worked. I cant wait to try out Banchee in Ubuntu 11.04PS> Type O Negative and all the other metal put a smile on my face[/citation]
The older and simpler iPods should not give you any issues, can't speak for the iPhone or iPod Touch though. LOL, I tried to break it up a bit with classic rock, but my collection is overwhelmingly metal
[citation][nom]Crazy Hitchhiker[/nom]Nice to see that you are still doing linux articles! I'm a little curious why several programs were left off, though: VLC, Audacity, and WinFF. Oh well, just keep up the good work![/citation]
Audacity is in the next segment: Audio Production. VLC and WinFF are in the one after that: Video Apps
[citation][nom]Dave_69[/nom]So now Tom's has fallen into the trap of confusing an "application" from a "program." Nice...[/citation]
We used app/application/software/program interchangeably, otherwise we'd have the word 'application' about 3,000 times in this series.
[citation][nom]gmgj[/nom]Of interest to some of us would be LIRC and other remote control - smart phone capabilites. I am a windows Media Monkey fan. I exercise to music and watch milkdrop visualizations. I installed projectM, a milkdrop replacment last week and it has been working great.[/citation]
Smartphones software will not be in the Roundup, maybe sometime down the road. LIRC will not be covered here either, possibly in the final segment of the Roundup, but I can't promise anything because I have not fooled around with that yet (due to Netflix streaming and Blu-Ray, my HTPC is, unfortunately, running Windows). Is projectM really close to MilkDrop now? I tried it about 2 years ago and it didn't compare. God I miss MilkDrop, hell, I miss WinAmp. Nullsoft: MAKE A LinAmp!
[citation][nom]HangFireW8[/nom]Good timing for this article. I'm tired of my Gentoo/KDE latest-and-greatest Amarok crashing 50% of the time when connecting to Internet Radio. As soon as I'm done transitioning boot to SSD, I'll be checking out Banshee et al.[/citation]
Have you given Arch or Chakra a spin yet (I'm pretty heavily in the weeds right now and haven't gotten around to it yet)? Let me know how the SSD works out - another thing I have yet to tinker with
[citation][nom]Phu5ion[/nom]I've been using Pithos for my Pandora listening pleasure and it works pretty well. The only problem I've had with it is that if you pause and then restart the station you will lose your stream. This probably has more to do with Pithos closing the connection to Pandora's stream than anything else, but it is frustrating when you have to pause a great song.[/citation]
Although I missed that app, Pithos does not qualify for the Roundup due to it not being in the default repos, nor offering a DEB/RPM installer.

 

[mayne92]

Nice Linux roundup! I love reading your Linux articles Adam.

 

[bit_user]

Hey, great article! I usually just stick to what I know, so articles like this help expose me to new progs.

I just wanted to put in a plug for GStreamer. It's kind of like DirectShow in that you construct a processing graph with nodes that are data sources, sinks, and some number of filters. It's pretty technical, but it's by far the most powerful tool out there for converting, decoding, or streaming just about anything. There are some GUI front-ends, or you can just use gst-launch to build graphs from the commandline.

 

[Dave_69]

We used app/application/software/program interchangeably, otherwise we'd have the word 'application' about 3,000 times in this series.

Oh, okay. Well, technically they're programs.

 

[compton]

One aspect of music playback is supp)ort for ASIO and WASAPI. While I have a couple of options for Windows (Foobar, J.River), I'm not sure what my options are for Linux. Any thoughts?

 

[Guest]

Nice article.
However, I'm missing a section covering WEB-based audio managers...
Hints: Ampache, Subsonic, Ampjuke, kPlaylist...

 

[Guest]

what, no mention of the glorious thing that is MPD?

 

[Guest]

Thank you for great article. I've been really surprised that you've mentioned even not very popular apps like JuK (but haven't seen i.e. very interesting Bangarang). BTW great choice of music. ~_^

Personally, I use Audacity for recording. Yeah, I know that it's rather an app for producers and it'll be probably mentioned in the next part...

 

[mamarok]

I just wonder why you review Amarok's 2.2.0 version which came out in October 2009 while Kubuntu 10.10 ships version 2.3.2 (released in September 2010) by default?