vlc as #1? it is versatile I'll give it that.
I have tried most of these, believe or not, even cmus (I thought I wanted a CLI music player but I was wrong 🙂
The real problem I really never complained about but gets me is these players, with a playlist of let's say 40 albums (450 songs roughly) songs...never really play anything "random" or "shuffle"---the same songs it gravitates to every single day. You make a playlist so you can hear all sorts of cuts...
...but when I auditioned most of them, often for the day, the mimic the same thing. Maybe 50% of music it played earlier or the day before so same songs every day...and the other 50% were deeper cuts.
What's the use of hitting "random" or "shuffle" when they are both inaccurate?
Spoiler: many software writers, and statisticians, say it should be this way and we don't really want "random". In the articles I said these shuffles and randoms are set to repeat some songs with the reason 'that's the way it should be' or something. It was fascinating reading. Apparently I wasn't only one who wondered why you didn't get constant deep cuts with these players---internet littered with people like me.
Eventually I became enamored of a gnome-based player called gapless (not on the list).
The secret to getting more deep cuts, I'm finding out, is shorter playlists.
Not perfect works better than huge playlist.
