(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Posted: **Mon 18 Jun 2012, 07:16**

Moderators: this is a reference document. I think it's better in the "HOWTO (Solutions)" section rather than "Additional Software" section.

I've tried many/most Linux music player applications since I started using Linux 10 years ago, and specifically with Puppy Linux since 2005. Here's the current state of play, at June 2012.

Be aware that Puppy is a minimalist Linux distribution, avoiding large libraries such as Gnome/GTK, KDE/QT , Python, Perl, Java, etc.
Forum member Dougal had some interesting comments about these libraries;
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 246#134246

So some of the larger audio player applications you may find in full-sized Linux distributions are likely to fail to install and launch properly in Puppy, unless you can also install all of those extra dependencies.
Slim-and-trim is Puppy's philosophy, and the audio players which work best tend to be likewise.
This remains useful and relevant today as some people are now running Puppy on low-power X86 embedded boards, and soon, ARM-powered boards! Here's the overall summary:

COMMANDLINE
- aplay
- wavplay
- madplay
- mpg123
- ogg123
- lamip
- ecasound
- sox

GUI for COMMANDLINE
- xhippo

CONSOLE
- moc
- mp3blaster

FULL FEATURED GUI WITH PLAYLISTS
- XMMS (requires the old GTK+ library)
- BMP (Beep Media Player)
- Audacious
- Aqualung
- DeaDBeeF
- Pmusic (Puppy's dedicated audio player)

FULL "JUKEBOX" with database support
- Rhythmbox (requires large Gnome/GTK libraries)
- Banshee (requires large Gnome/GTK libraries)
- Exaile (requires large Gnome/GTK libraries)
- Clementine, formerly Amarok (requires large KDE/QT libraries)
- Songbird
- Goggles Music Manager (requires Xine as underlying player app)
- aTunes (requires MPlayer as underlying player app, plus Java)

MUSIC SERVER/CLIENT
- MPD (Music Player Daemon)
- XMMS2

Posted: **Mon 18 Jun 2012, 07:21**

Description, and download details:

xhippo + lamip + mpg123
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=10722

moc
http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups ... player.pup

XMMS 1.2.11
This is the benchmark of audio players in Linux - first developed in 1997 as a Linux equivalent of Winamp.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=26528
Requires the GTK+ library (absent since Puppy ver 3.x)
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... 1.2.10.pet

BMP 0.9.7.1
is a GTK2-compatible fork of XMMS. Development later moved to BMPx, then Youki, then MPX-Audiosource, all since abandoned!
But the original BMP remains a good mid-level audio player application, and is included as the standard audio player in Classic Pup 2.14X -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=42553
BMP-0.9.7.1
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=20919
BMP extra plugins - FLAC/AAC/WMA codecs
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 010#320010

Audacious 2.5.4
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -2.5.4.pet
Audacious 3.2.3-2
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 568#665568

Aqualung
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... 142-p5.pet

DeaDBeeF 0.5.6
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=663234

Pmusic
Puppy's dedicated music player application. Uses underlying ffmpeg libraries, gui written in C. Can be CPU-intensive, particularly on slower computers. Latest version here -
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=31206

Rhythmbox - no known successful instllation in Puppy.
Uses GStreamer media player back end, and a unique database in XML format.

Banshee 2.1.0 (53MB !)
Uses GStreamer media player back end, & SQLite database.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... cid525.pet

Exaile 0.3.1.2
Uses GStreamer media player back end, and a unique Python database.
Very well regarded by computer music users.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=79202

Amarok (49MB)
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... k-sfs4.sfs

Clementine
Uses GStreamer media player back end, & SQLite database.
ver 0.7.1 (36MB) - compatible with all Lucid-Puppies -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=68537
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... cid525.pet
ver 1.0.1 - compiled for Dpup Exprimo, might (?) work in other Puppies.
Requires QT4/Phonon/Gstreamer library-package, + GStreamer plugins package -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 427#635427

Songbird 1.9.3
Uses GStreamer media player back end. Has some integrated web features. No longer developed for Linux, but still well regarded.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -Lucid.pet

Goggles Music Manager 0.12.6
Requires the Xine media player, as the back end. Older versions of Puppy prior to Lucid 5.1 included Xine as standard. Relatively light on resources for a larger application.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=78403

aTunes 2.1.0
Requires MPlayer as the back end, plus Java. Seems closest in appearance to iTunes ... but that doesn't necessarily make it the best audio player!
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=64949

Music Player Daemon
Very powerful music playback/management system, but not for the faint-hearted! Requires a bit of technical configuration, and arrangement of your music files. Forum member ldolse's customised Puppy - "mpdPup" is well regarded, and is currently under active discussion on several other high end audiophile web forums.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=70052

Posted: **Wed 20 Jun 2012, 14:53**

Update regarding Exaile - the previous link I provided is an old version which won't work in modern Puppies.

Link is now updated to a recent version of Exaile; ver 0.3.1.2, compatible with Puppy Slacko.

Posted: **Wed 20 Jun 2012, 15:18**

Clementine-1.0.1-dpup has been finished, as part of other Qt-4.8.0 - gstreamer stuff:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 427#635427

Posted: **Wed 20 Jun 2012, 16:02**

pemasu, can you tell us whether this Clementine will work in other Puppy versions?
Lucid, Slacko, Wary, Racy?
I presume Qt4 is needed?

Posted: **Wed 20 Jun 2012, 18:15**

In that above posted link are 2 choices for Qt-4.8.0. Phonon ie gstreamer support in Qt-4.8.0 is needed. Also there is QtWebkit support in those Qt libs in mentioned link.
Also I have created the gstreamer-plugins-deps mega pack as pet and sfs. For gstreamer that is good solution - to pack all needed together. There is large support for gstreamer plugins.
Clementine-1.0.1-dpup has been created and tested solely in Dpup Exprimo which uses debian squeeze packages. It might work in Lucid Puppies also since Lucid Lynx and debian Squeeze uses quite same version of libs. About slacko or others, I have no idea.
Only by testing you can know. Installing all the stuff as sfs you wont brake anything.

Posted: **Thu 21 Jun 2012, 01:55**

avoiding large libraries such as Gnome/GTK

?
But of course Puppy includes GTK (just not Gnome).

Posted: **Thu 21 Jun 2012, 03:34**

disciple wrote:But of course Puppy includes GTK (just not Gnome).

Yes. I just wanted people to understand that they would be unlikely to be able to install an Ubuntu package of Rhythmbox, for example, without also having to chase down additional (and sometimes significant) library dependencies.

As it turns out, the dependencies for Exaile are modest, and I will have a Slacko-compatible Exaile package available in the next day or so.

Posted: **Thu 21 Jun 2012, 04:50**

pemasu, I just added your Clementine version to the links above.

Posted: **Wed 09 Jan 2013, 04:05**

[quote="tempestuous"][/quote]

Thank you for the excellent info that you have provided.

Here are a couple of newer versions that have been made:

DeaDBeef 0.5.6
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=663234

Audacious 3.2.4
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82293

Posted: **Wed 09 Jan 2013, 10:32**

Updated.

Posted: **Thu 10 Jan 2013, 02:46**

Hi tempestuous.
I have always liked to use 'mplayer' from the command line, because I have music files in many formats. I cannot find it in the list, but it may be covered by one of the other titles?

tallboy

Posted: **Thu 10 Jan 2013, 08:41**

I'm a fan of MPlayer, too - but as a VIDEO player, not a music player.

i) it's overkill in terms of size and CPU use.
ii) the various GUI's for MPlayer are generally not designed for music management - no artist/genre listings, etc.

Sure, you can use MPlayer as a music/audio player if you wish, but I don't consider it a music player. And I certainly don't consider it as good for this purpose as the applications listed above.

Posted: **Thu 10 Jan 2013, 08:42**

tallboy wrote:I have music files in many formats.

Indeed, that's a valid concern.
Let's be precise about what audio file formats and codecs are available:

- MP3
- MP4/AAC
- Ogg Vorbis
- WMA (WindowsMediaAudio)
- FLAC
- uncompressed WAVE
- CD audio

That's it. All of the applications listed above, if suitably configured, support all of these formats/codecs.
If anyone discovers otherwise, report it here, and we will sort it out.

Posted: **Thu 10 Jan 2013, 17:48**

Hi tempestuous,

The latest build of DeaDBeeF for various distros can also be obtained directly from the devs' site. Of particular interest perhaps is the 'debuntu' .deb package. Thanks to your list, I upgraded deadbeef on my dpup Exprimo from version 0.4.4 to 0.5.6. There was a minor annoyance though - the menu entry was created in the utilities instead of multimedia section. No big deal, that was easy to correct.
http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/download.html

Taking this opportunity, I'd very much appreciate your expert opinion on the use of deadbeef for serious, 'bit-perfect' music reproduction. Do you think it's up to the task, given the material is exclusively lossles (mostly encoded in flac), output to an external 24/96 usb DAC?

Thank you in advance

Posted: **Thu 10 Jan 2013, 21:36**

I've deliberately avoided getting into the fine details of audio quality, because this can be overwhelming for the average (non-audiophile) user.
Best-audio-quality configuration is discussed at length in the Music Player Daemon threads -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=70052
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=81984

Now that you have asked, here are the basics: roughly speaking, sound quality depends on
1) the ability of the playback application, operating system and hardware driver to process the PCM audio data without changing it - such that the processing chain is bit-perfect.
2) the ability of the operating system and playback application to present the PCM audio data to the hardware device with a bare minimum of digital jitter (timing accuracy).

1) is relatively easy to achieve in Linux - just disable the "dmix" function of ALSA, and its audio processing will then be bit-perfect. Here's how - create a new document in Geany with this -

Code: Select all

pcm.MYSOUNDCARD {
   type hw
   card 0
}

and save it as /etc/asound.conf
Reboot. That's it. Now a good test that you have successfully disabled dmix is to slide the volume control up and down in DeaDBeeF. If the volume control has no effect, that's good! DeaDBeeF is probably passing bit-perfect audio.
But if the volume control still works, it likely means that DeaDBeeF includes its own internal software volume processing - that's no good for audiophile purposes.

Regarding 2) there are some audio playback applications that are better for sound quality than others. This probably means their processing method is more technically streamlined ... but the theory is unclear and frankly I don't understand it.
As an experiment, you could play the same track with DeaDBeeF and a also a commandline application like aplay.
If you're really keen, try the commandline applications ecasound - it's been reported as possibly the best-sounding application. Let your ears decide.

But there are also tweaks possible to the ALSA audio driver - especially for USB audio interfaces under Linux, by varying the "nrpacks" parameter of the driver.

And there are also tweaks possible to the Linux operating system, itself, to improve jitter. One significant configuration is to disable the graphical display! This reduces the overall load on the operating system.

At the end of the day, if audiophile quality is what you want, I suggest you get Idolse's MPD-Pup, and use Music Player Daemon as your playback application.

Posted: **Sat 12 Jan 2013, 05:00**

tempestuous, thank you for the feedback.

tallboy

Posted: **Fri 14 Jun 2013, 10:35**

Posted: **Fri 14 Jun 2013, 19:32**

Weighing in at 26K this music app is great for minimal distros. It can
also stream internet radio stations.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 28&t=31220

Posted: **Tue 16 Feb 2016, 02:27**

Deadbeef Version 0.7.0 Clique the blue
assembled as .pet package for various Pups including Wheezy, Precise, Slackware 14.0 Slackos.
XiX music browser on test bench Puppy Slacko to-day.
Consonance plays CDs, and playlists.
YoYoplayer completely Garbled

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Audio player applications - THE LIST

Audio player applications - THE LIST

Herrie

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