Audio Players, Continued
Juk (v. 3.3)
Juk is a KDE jukebox application that revolves around local audio files. The feature set in Juk includes a player, playlist, tag editor, and cover art fetching. There are no EQ options or visualizations in Juk. This player is certainly capable of doing its intended job of local audio file playback. The tagger and cover art fetching are pretty spot-on as well.
Playback history and the ability to organize music folders from within Juk are two features this app has that most others do not. Juk is an adequate middle ground between simple music players and the much more robust music managers, a good, light solution for people that listen mostly to MP3 files, but have no interest in streaming content.
Minirok (v. 2.1)
Minirok is a python music player modeled after an early version of Amarok.
This is a pretty simple player with no support for tags. Instead, Minirok relies on the organization (or unorganization) of the folders in your music directory.
The UI is also pretty basic: menu bar on top housing mostly settings, and a split pane for files and a playlist. The left-hand pane shows the current directory in a file tree view. Files there can be added to the playlist via drag-and-drop or double-click. Back, forward, play/pause, stop, undo, redo, clear playlist, repeat, random, and a progress slider are located in the bottom-right corner of the playlist pane.
Both the file directory and the playlist are searchable, but without tag support, only file and folder names are scanned. Minirok has a notification area icon, though it offers no play controls, and simply serves as a way to minimize or exit the app. If you are one of the (apparently) many people who dislike the current design of Amarok, Minirok might just be your cup of tea.
Muine (v. 0.8.11)
Muine is a very simple music player. There are no EQ or media library functions, just straight playback and playlists.
The interface is very minimalistic, fitting the playlist and playback functionality in a single window. The standard play/pause, forward/backward, and volume buttons are what comprise the toolbar. There are also dedicated buttons for adding single songs or entire albums to the playlist.
Album art is displayed, but only when embedded into the actual file; there is no fetcher. Muine is definitely a lightweight player, but it is good at what it does.
Potamus (v. 0.10)
Potamus is as lightweight as an audio player can get. Designed for the low-overhead XFCE desktop environment, this player cuts the fat--all of the fat. You can't even open files from within Potamus. Instead, it relies on drag-and-drop from a file browser.
The user interface is similarly Spartan, without so much as a menu bar. Play controls include back, forward, play/pause, stop, clear playlist, and shuffle.
Below the play controls sit a progress slider, the name of the current file, and the playlist. One unique addition is a drop-down that lets you adjust the audio channels to: normal, mono, out-of-phase stereo, phase, left, right, and stop.
If you want only the basics, than Potamus is it, though we can't verify the degree to which this app minimizes system resource usage, considering it relies on a separate file manager to add tracks.
Qmmp (v. 0.4.1)
Qmmp stands for Qt-based MultiMedia Player. This simple audio player is styled after early versions of WinAmp, and can even utilize WinAmp 2.x skins. Therefore, Qmmp doesn't take on the system window decorations.
There are three dockable windows: the player, the playlist, and the EQ. The EQ and playlist can be hidden via buttons in the player window. Fortunately, undocking any of the windows does not create separate entries in the taskbar.
One quibble we have is the lack of included EQ presets. Beyond that, Qmmp is essentially a WinAmp 2.x clone for Linux.
Quod Libet (v. 2.1)
Quod Libet is a simple music player that has some of the more complex sorting features found in music managers. These features include randomized playback by genre, the ability to choose playlists by the frequency or infrequency that tracks are played, and user ratings. This lets you rediscover songs you might have forgotten were in your library, or quickly create a playlist composed only of your favorites.
Quod Libet is as extensible as any lightweight player we've seen. This application comes preloaded with a ton of optional plug-ins for added functionality; you simply need to enable them. If you feel like doing some easy customization, Quod Libet can be made to fit the needs of nearly anyone.
