Linux Audio Players, Tested and Graded

In which our Linux guru falls in love with a Microsoft app (!) and goes searching for an Open Source equivalent. Will he find it?

Matthew Newton, PC World

Matthew Newton is PC World's QA engineer and unofficial Linux guru. If you're new to Linux and are feeling a bit lost in one way or another, drop him a line and let him know what's vexing you. Or, speak Freely in the comments section below!

One longstanding Unix tradition is best summed up thus: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together." On a Linux machine, this philosophy is most clearly visible from the command line, where Unix hackers continue to provide simple, flexible tools that talk to one another and don't have the huge overhead of a graphical user interface.

The "discrete tools for discrete tasks" concept does not always translate well to the world of GUIs. Most end users, raised on Windows and Mac interfaces, are accustomed to monolithic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tools. In many cases, this makes perfect sense: Why should you need separate programs for receiving e-mail, sending e-mail, and filtering e-mail? The answer is, you shouldn't, and Mozilla's Thunderbird (for instance) does a great job at handling all your e-mail related tasks.

I use my main Linux desktop for a lot of things, but music-related activities are key. For quite some time now, I've been very pleased with some tools that, in old-school Unix fashion, focus on specific tasks, and do them very well: Muine for playing music in my digital collection, Streamtuner and XMMS for listening to Internet radio, Sound Juicer for ripping CDs, Ex Falso for editing tags in my music files, and Serpentine for burning CDs. All of these Gnome apps are more or less first-rate. They get the job done, and do it well.

But over the holidays, while visiting my family back home, I encountered Windows Media Player 11. I was surprised to discover not only that I really liked its all-in-one approach, but that Microsoft had crafted an interface that made all the pieces fit together naturally. (Readers who chastise me for "constantly bashing" Microsoft, please take note: I just praised the UI in one of its flagship apps.) Many of my friends have found similar nirvana with Apple's iTunes. I began to wonder if there were an all-in-one music application for Linux that I could love.

To find out, I put the following integrated music apps through their paces on a machine running Ubuntu 6.10: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Listen, Amarok, and Exaile. (I started with Rhythmbox because it's Gnome's official music player, and then I worked my way through the rest, saving Amarok and Exaile for the end since the latter is a clone of the former.)

I've given each program a letter grade in each of five areas:

Browsing and searching: The app should provide an easy means of browsing my music collection by artist or album, and a solid search function for artists, albums, and songs. A grade of A cannot be earned here unless the browsing interface properly alphabetizes The Beatles along with other "B" artists and The Information along with other "I" albums.

Playlist management: I should be able to craft and save custom playlists with ease, and export them in M3U or PLS form for use in other apps.

Rip and burn: It should be simple to pull music off shiny discs, and to put tunes on them.

Tag editing: Fixing the inconsistent tagging that crops up in any digital music collection should consist of a wee bit of typing and a few clicks.

Internet radio: I want a straightforward means of tuning in to Net radio streams and bookmarking my favorites. For an A grade, I should also see a way to browse Shoutcast listings directly, as I can on my Squeezebox.

Anything else is gravy for me, and that includes the app's ability to decipher the scrambled files and folders that inhabit iPods. (My 20GB iRiver H120 acts as a standard USB mass-storage device, with all files stored in human-readable files and folders; I tend to just use the Nautilus file manager to move tunes back and forth.) I will note iPod support as I reveal the marks for each program, and I'll also mention any extra pluses or minuses that affect each player's final grade.

Rhythmbox and Banshee

Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox's boxes will look especially familiar to iTunes users.Rhythmbox is the official music manager for the Gnome desktop. Like all the Gnome apps here, it uses the GStreamer framework for playback, so it can play just about any file you toss at it. At first I worked with Rhythmbox version 0.9.6, the version built into Ubuntu's Edgy Eft release.

Browsing and searching: The interface for browsing and searching is clearly patterned after iTunes, and is very efficient. It does not, however, pass the alphabetization test I mentioned above; the developers are aware of the issue but a solution doesn't appear imminent. Grade: B+

Playlist management: Simplistic and cumbersome if you have more than a dozen or so playlists. Rhythmbox does let you export playlists as M3U or PLS files, though I missed the menu item for this in my initial review. (Look not in the context menus, but rather to Music, Playlist, Save to File.) Grade: C

Rip and burn: Easy-peasy. Every bit as simple as it should be, though the command to start a burn is not easily discoverable (see 'Audio CD Source' in the program's help). Grade: A-

Tag editing: Intermittent. It's unclear to me what's going on here. Sometimes Rhythmbox will let me edit a file's tags--other times, not. Editing multiple files at once never seems to work. Grade: D

Internet radio: Well, if you know the URL of a stream you want to listen to, you can feed that to Rhythmbox, and it will tune in the station and drop a bookmark into the 'Radio' listing. The bookmark is listed as the URL of the stream, but I can rename it manually. I appreciate the rudimentary support, but there's plenty of room for improvement. (Rhythmbox's Podcast module is in a similar state of infancy.) Grade: C

Rhythmbox allows for plug-ins, and there are a few good ones: a lyrics fetcher, an album-art fetcher, DAAP sharing (translation: the ability to share music with iTunes users on the local network), and, new in version 0.9.7, an interface to the Magnatune music store. (What Magnatune lacks in inventory--that is, everything you've ever heard of--it makes up for by being DRM-free.)

Rhythmbox also has great iPod support: A colleague of mine was truly impressed when Rhythmbox on my laptop was able to talk to his Mac-formatted iPod--a device unreadable by iTunes on Windows. So I'll award some extra credit here and give Rhythmbox an all-around grade of B.

Banshee

Banshee puts CD burning front and center (well, okay, top and right) in the interface.Banshee aims to outdo Rhythmbox. At one point in time, the two applications were virtually indistinguishable, but Banshee is evolving much faster than Rhythmbox these days and now has a look all its own. Banshee is written in Mono, and is thus a favorite of the Novell/SUSE crowd. I began my testing with version 0.11.1.

Browsing and searching: Banshee's approach is simpler than Rhythmbox's, as it presents your entire library in one enormous list that you can re-sort by any column. A search box acts as an immediate filter for that list. The search/filter function is painfully slow, and Banshee is unresponsive while it is working. Alphabetization does not ignore A or The. Grade: C

Playlist management: Virtually identical to Rhythmbox's. Works well enough as long as you don't have many playlists. No apparent means to export playlists. Grade: D

Rip and burn: Simple, straightforward, solid. You can't miss the command for burning a disc--it's a big button in the main window. Grade: A

Tag editing: The 'Edit Song Metadata' command brings up a simple dialog box that made me smile. You can alter the tags for one or many tracks quite easily. Grade: B+

Internet radio: A Banshee plug-in handles Net radio. The plug-in is not included in the Ubuntu Banshee package, so I compiled and installed Banshee version 0.11.4 from scratch to check the plug-in out. Unfortunately, it wasn't worth the trouble. The plug-in lets you tune in to only 15 preconfigured stations; you can't add entries of your own. Obviously this is a work in progress. Grade: D

The bad news about Banshee: Every version I've ever tried has been as buggy as heck. Banshee freezes very, very frequently. When it does, it refuses to start again unless I delete its internal database file and re-import my music. Importing music brings the program to a crawl, and I have never been able to import my entire music collection (about 40 gigs) successfully; Banshee freezes somewhere along the way every time. I know there are Banshee users out there who don't experience these problems--could it be that Ubuntu's Mono support is not up to snuff?

On the other hand, Banshee talks to iPods. Via plug-ins, it can fetch album art, let you share your music via DAAP, make recommendations about music you might like, and automatically download podcasts. A "Smart Playlists" plug-in lets you define playlists such as "all songs by the Beatles, before 1968, less than 2 minutes long."

So, as with Rhythmbox, a little extra credit pushes Banshee to a final grade of B-. But I have to add the caveat that if the application crashes with your library as often as it does with mine, it takes itself out of the running entirely.

Listen, Amarok, and Exaile

Listen

I want to rearrange Listen's elements in this screen shot and send it back to the developers for implementation. What a mess!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 beautiful, speedy--and best used with KDE.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

Exaile: A lightweight Amarok clone in Gnome clothing.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.

The Bottom Line

KDE users have it easy: Amarok is slick enough to crow about in a room full of iTunes or Windows Media Player users. On a Gnome desktop, however, burning and ripping with Amarok seems problematic, and then there's the issue of the app looking a little bit out of place. Of course, our friends who use iTunes or Windows Media Player 11 on a Windows XP machine have the same problem: iTunes looks like a Macintosh program, and WMP has a decidedly Vista-ish look to it.

I'll take another look at burning and ripping with Amarok soon, and I'll keep an eye on the Gnome apps. Rhythmbox is known for a relatively slow pace of development, so my hopes that it will come into its own in 2007 may be a bit premature. Banshee is farther along, but I can't get it working reliably at this point. (Anyone have any tips for me?)

Listen will kick butt someday when it can rip and burn, and when it has had a bit of an interface overhaul. And Exaile is being built true to Amarok's fine blueprints, so depending on how quickly it matures, it could find a permanent place on my desktop this year. But for the moment, I'm sticking with the suite of tools I listed at the beginning of this column. Sometimes, individual tools that meet specific needs still work best. Have you found a better solution? Speak Freely in the comments section!

No Podcast? No Problem! (An Audio Tip)

Robert Altman's 2006 cinematic adaptation of A Prairie Home Companion turned me into a Garrison Keillor fan, and I decided to start listening to the venerable weekly radio broadcast.

The problem: The show airs on Saturday afternoons, when I usually have far better things to do than sit around the house listening to the radio. Fortunately, the Prairie Home Companion Web site offers an archive that delivers old broadcasts as RealAudio streams. But that's convenient only if you're connected to the Net. What about slapping this week's show onto your iPod and listening to it on the go?

American Public Media says no, it can't let you do that: "The reason we cannot offer the whole show up for podcast is that we feature many different bands and musicians on our show. As such, their intellectual property is being broadcast to the listening audiences. We would have to get each artist's permission, not only to distribute their music in this way, but they would also have to be comfortable with the fact that it could be shared easily."

American Public Media's stance doesn't make any sense, since the audio streams it provides are easy enough to capture as files. Sure, RealPlayer has no option to save a stream to a file for later playback, but as a Linux user I have other options. Which means that it really is possible for me to enjoy "Tishomingo Blues" and the News From Lake Wobegon as I cruise along in a BART train under San Francisco Bay.

In this case, MPlayer comes to my rescue. This multimedia playback engine is available under pretty much any flavor of Linux; I installed it on my Ubuntu box with a simple sudo apt-get install mplayer. To create a Prairie podcast, first I use my Web browser to navigate the archives, arriving at the page for a particular show. Next I right-click the 'Try this one' link and select Copy Link Location. Then I open a command-line terminal and enter the following magic incantation, replacing URL with the link I have copied to the clipboard, and FILENAME with a file name ending in .wav ("PHC.wav" works just fine):

mplayer -playlist URL -ao pcm:file=FILENAME -vc null -vo null

When you enter this command, you'll see a lot of strange communication between your PC and the server scroll by, and then MPlayer will start capturing the stream. (You won't hear anything.) The stream comes down in real time, of course, so it will take 2 hours to capture the 2-hour show. Once that's done, you'll have an enormous .wav file on your hands; it's a good idea to convert that file to a much smaller MP3 file before taking it on the road. To do so, first check your package manager to ensure that Lame is installed, and then use this command:

lame filename.wav filename.mp3