Linux Audio Players, Tested and Graded

Listen, Amarok, and Exaile

Listen

Listen is a freelance effort out of France. I started testing with version 0.4.3 (the latest Ubuntu package) but found the Internet radio support in that version completely broken. I compiled and installed version 0.5 beta 1 to complete my evaluation.

• Browsing and searching: Listen uses a music-library view that is very similar to Rhythmbox's. Browsing through your collection is easy, and searches come back faster than in Rhythmbox or Banshee. Alphabetization is boneheaded, alas. Grade: B
• Playlist management: Works similarly to the feature in Banshee and Rhythmbox, but playlists can be exported! Grade: C
• Rip and burn: Just the bare minimum: You can burn playlists to CD. That's it in the current version. Grade: D
• Tag editing: Very similar to Banshee's facilities for tag editing. Fixing multiple files at once is straightforward. Grade: B
• Internet radio: The radio module in Listen 0.5 lets you tune in to a station manually, and also has a hierarchical, genre-based Shoutcast browser. Huzzah! Grade: B

Listen can speak to iPods, downloads album art, and has strong integration with Wikipedia and Last.fm. If not for two issues, I'd be a full-time Listen user. First, the lack of ripping functionality means this isn't yet the all-in-one solution I crave.

Second, the user interface is a very odd beast indeed. The 'Sources' bar in the middle of the Listen window is in exactly the wrong place and takes up too much space. (Shouldn't it be a bar of tabs or something?) The window itself has a minimum width sufficient for two lanes of traffic. If Listen learned how to deal with shiny silver discs and got some love from someone who understands good UI design, it would be stellar. But for now, it gets an overall grade of C+.

Amarok

Amarok is the only KDE app I tested. There are two reasons for this: One, I'm a Gnome user, and prefer Gnome apps, mainly for aesthetic reasons. Two, not as many KDE programs are competing in this arena, probably because Amarok so clearly reigns supreme. This is an amazing piece of Free Software. I tested version 1.4.3.

• Browsing and searching: The way Amarok presents your music library stands in stark contrast to the approach of the Gnome apps I've covered thus far. Albums are grouped by artist in a hierarchical listing. A search box provides instantaneous filtering--the fastest in any app I tested. And The Beatles are alphabetized under "B." Grade: A
• Playlist management: Playlist creation is a snap, and you can organize playlists into subfolders so that things stay manageable even if you have dozens of playlists. All playlists are stored as M3U files, so feeding them to other apps is no problem. Grade: A
• Rip and burn: Amarok assumes that KDE is running and depends on that desktop environment for ripping and burning facilities. I have read that it should be possible to get these functions working under Gnome by installing a few KDE libraries, but so far I'm coming up short. Even if I do get ripping and burning working, the documentation leads me to believe that it won't be a natural experience unless I'm running KDE. I'd give Amarok an A grade here if I were a KDE user, but I'm not. Grade: C
• Tag editing: You can retag files via a dialog box that is pretty much what you'd expect. Grade: B
• Internet radio: You can tune in to streams manually and bookmark them in folders. Amarok comes with a small, built-in selection of "Cool Streams." No Shoutcast browser. Grade: B

Amarok also pulls down album art, fetches lyrics, offers Last.fm integration, and speaks to iPods. It feels very well thought-out--the 'Remove Duplicate & Dead Entries' command for playlists should be a standard feature in apps like this--but it also suffers from the standard KDE tendency to stuff too many widgets into windows, and too many options into dialog boxes. Overall, Amarok rates a hard-earned B+.

Exaile

The coders behind Exaile are open about their goal: "Exaile is a media player aiming to be similar to KDE's Amarok," they tell us. But Exaile is built atop the GTK libraries, so it looks and feels like a Gnome app. It's not a full-fledged Amarok clone yet, but it's off to a good start. I worked with version 0.2.6 of Exaile.

• Browsing and searching: Exaile's music-library view is very similar to Amarok's, with the most obvious difference being that you can't double-click an artist to begin playing all their songs. As for alphabetization, I have no idea what is going on. The Beta Band appeared under "B", but The Beatles were down in "T"! Sigh. Grade: B.
• Playlist management: Creating playlists is easy, but they're all stored in one big list, and you can't export them. Grade: D
• Rip and burn: Not implemented. Grade: F
• Tag editing: Implemented, but rudimentary. No way to add track number tags to multiple files. Grade: C-
• Internet radio: A very nice Shoutcast browser--the nicest I've seen, actually. The program also gives a way to manually bookmark favorite stations, but the bookmarks I save don't work. Why? I'm unsure at this point. Grade: B (If my bookmarks worked, this would be an A.)

Exaile sports Wikipedia and Last.fm integration, and it will download album art, lyrics, and even guitar tablature. It may well become Gnome's answer to Amarok, but it still feels like a work in progress. Currently Exaile rates a C-, but it could easily find itself right up there with Amarok, in close reach of an A, if it gets the development attention it deserves.