music media player - need opinions

[kiel]

I am trying to decide the best music player for large playlist or doing family functions, thus meaning a large playlist playing mp3's and cd's, this could be regular or dj software, no scratching just regular playing with a possible fade in and out ( like the dj sound board to switch for cd player to cd player)

So, what I need is some opinions, tried VLC, had some issues with load time etc.

was considering xmms, but i hear support is going to end on it? then I ran across zinf, and it appears to play large play list's..
Kiel :D

[happybunny]

i like amarok with a mysql backend...seemed to be the only player that could support my large 25,000+ songs without choking

[kiel]

I will have to give that a look, a bit confused on the mysql bit tho

[Davno]

I also use Amarok with Mysql for the database, and if you still run KDE 3.5 like me, you could install Amarok 1.4.10 (the latest version before Amarok 2). Like Happybunny, i also have a huge collection and Mysql is doing the job. Postgresql was working also but i found that it was more complicated to set it up. I read that Amarok 2 for KDE 4 use Mysql only (no other choice).

[gamblor01]

I just under 4000 songs but using the default SQLite backend for Amarok works for me.

I will have to give that a look, a bit confused on the mysql bit tho

Basically, amarok uses a relational database to efficiently store/retrieve information about your songs. When you are first setting it up, it gives you a few different alternatives for databases. The default, SQLite, requires no additional setup but it's not quite as robust/fast as the other 2 options (MySQL or Postgresql). However, both of those options require YOU to get the database up and running manually first.

[zyiro]

i liked amarok but it seemed kinda buggy and seemed to lag at times. i now use songbird which is much lighter then amaraok and imo looks much better..... Below is a screenshot of my copy of songbird.

http://zyiro.net/screenshots/songbird.jpg

[gamblor01]

Hey zyiro, you need to chmod +r /screenshots/songbird.jpg ... it's currently unreadable. ;)

[zyiro]

Hey zyiro, you need to chmod +r /screenshots/songbird.jpg ... it's currently unreadable. ;)



try it again..... i can see it. its not on a local webserver. it even loads on my blackberry so you should be able to see it now.

[gamblor01]

It's still not working. All I get is:


Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /screenshots/songbird.jpg on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at zyiro.net Port 80

[zyiro]

try this im too lazy to mess with my server tonight.....

[gamblor01]

Wow that looks really slick -- looks a lot like iTunes really.

The one thing I really like about amarok is how every time you click on a song it loads it into a temporarily playlist. I don't listen to the same music all the time and I like to be able to click on the songs/albums I want and it just puts it into a playlist and then stops when it's done with those songs. iTunes I can either manually create a billion different playlists or click on a song and then it just continues to play the rest of the songs in my library from there until the end. That's annoying.

Any idea if Songbird offers this functionality?

[zyiro]

yeah everything goes into your recently played. it will hold them in that list for as short as an hour or up to as long as you want (possibly for several years). you can set the time frame in your preferences.