Better music player?

brent

WetGeek that's why I call them auditions😉

WetGeek

Got it! When I found the location to load music from in Elisa, it was set to my /home music directory, where I never put anything. I pointed it to /mnt/Music, and it's now loaded 4,000+ tracks and still going.

Since Elisa has the indexing I need to find what I'm looking for, this one is now solved. Thanks for everyone's input.

brent

WetGeek /mnt/Music? makes sense. most of these things do default to home/music (where I keep my music). Enjoy Elisa!

WetGeek

brent /mnt/Music?

The /mnt folder is where my NAS shares are mounted. There's /mnt/Music, /mnt/Videos, /mnt/Pictures, and so on.

WetGeek

Aw, fsck! I spoke too soon. After all that apparent success with Elisa, I put in my bluetooth earbuds, and tried to select something to listen to in Elisa. But there was nothing there. So I checked the menu again, and the source location was again set to /home/jerry/Misic. And just /home/jerry/Music, where I never keep any music.

So I tried adding /mnt/Music again and again, but every time I close Configure Elisa... and open it again, the library is set back to /home/jerry/Music. It doesn't matter whether I press [Apply] or [OK] after setting the new location, it just doesn't remain set. Once I leave the menu and return, it's reverted.

I have no idea what happened to all that stuff I saw refreshed a while ago. None of it is present anymore.

nathanpainchaud

WetGeek If that's your only issue with Elisa, maybe you could try creating a soft link from the music folder in your home directory to your mounted directory, like this: ln -s /mnt/Music /home/jerry. A warning though that I'm pretty sure you have to delete /home/Jerry/Music before for it work (otherwise it'll complain that a folder of the same name already exists).

At least that's how I handle having my data (e.g. music, documents, etc.) on a separate drive while still being accessible from the home directory so that I don't have to manually configure various programs that default to searching in the home directory.

synth-ruiner

nathanpainchaud yeah, that's the way I did it too. worked well for me except that the symlinked folder doesn't appear in the sidebar in Nautilus anymore

WetGeek

nathanpainchaud try creating a soft link from the music folder in your home directory to your mounted directory,

Thanks, I'll give that a try if nothing else works (e.g., I've made some kind of boneheaded error somewhere).

WetGeek

nathanpainchaud I'm pretty sure you have to delete /home/Jerry/Music before for it work (otherwise it'll complain that a folder of the same name already exists).

it didn't take me long to decide to try this. I did delete the Music folder in the /home directory, and after I created the symlink, it again shows up in Dolphin, with the same name, and with contents identical to those on the Music share. I'm tempted to do the same thing with Documents, Pictures, etc. I never use any of those, either.

Elisa is once again importing lots of music. Now ... if it'll just stay imported, I'll be happy.

WetGeek

So far, so good. I'm now listening to Hungarian Dances, and so far everything seems to have stayed where it was put.

WetGeek

@nathanpainchaud : I want to thank you for encouraging me to make this change. I've known for a long time that hard and symbolic links exist in Linux, and what they do, but just never had any reason to use them for anything. This turned out to be a good reason! I've linked everything in my /home directory to its counterpart in /mnt, and it's working wonderfully.

The shares that are not originally part of /home (like Backups, ISOs, and so on) aren't showing up in Dolphin's list, but if I open the /home folder in Dolphin, they're there. And, of course, they show up in an ls command in the terminal.

Now that I've used links here, I'll probably find other reasons to use them elsewhere. Thanks again.

WetGeek

WetGeek Now that I've used links here, I'll probably find other reasons to use them elsewhere.

For sure! I've modified four of our seven Solus Plasma machines so far, linking the original folders in /home to their counterparts in the NAS shares. And I discovered that if I modified the Panels settings in the Dolphin menu, I could get it to display everything just the way I want it.

Now, applications that save output to default folders in the /home folder don't need to be changed after installation. Browsers, for example, will now save downloads to the right place, without changing their default setting. Screen shots saved to the default Pictures folder will now be stored on the Pictures NAS share. I wish I'd made this change long ago -- it only takes 3 or 4 minutes per computer.

zmaint

Audacious. Especially if you liked winamp.

infinitymdm

I use museeks, mostly because it's the only music player that has an interface I like (translation: it's pretty). I also maintain the Solus package for museeks. I'm definitely biased 😁

brent

infinitymdm how long has that been in the repo? I thought I tried all of them.

brent

infinitymdm deleted post before this/ changelog said since June....about the time I ended my music auditions of course. downloading now. see if I like it better than current gmusic.

brent

infinitymdm

no thumbnails no flash. still playing with it. the queue button is interesting--a wild card jumping off point. there's tradeoffs vs. big shiny players but the minimalism and list view-only is appealing to me. only peeve is "unknown" artists and albums were already written in by me in the track's metadata some time ago and seen by most players but not Museek. Not a dealbreaker. interesting critter.
edit: apologies for deviating topic somewhat

PaperTiger

infinitymdm I just learned about this music player from your post, and I don't know how such a good app could have missed me. Over the years I've been searching for a minimalist music app, and hovered between Audacious and Rhythmbox. I've also tried many, many others and they just didn't tick the right boxes. Weird thing is that I've never heard of Museeks until I saw your post. This is possibly as close to perfect as I've gotten. The only thing I would probably request of the developers is to enable an option so that the columns displayed on the library page can be edited. Other than that, this player gives me life!

Thanks for the recommendation.

niobleoum

Lollypop is pretty cool for me. it's internal search engine is quite accurate and it handles well large collections (mine is approaching 500 albums).

GuzziPhil

niobleoum

I like Lollypop too. It handles my 800+ album very well.
Doesn't do tag editing so I use Kid3 for that.

infinitymdm

brent it certainly has its quirks, but thus far it's been the only music player that I actually enjoy using. There's something about the minimalist style that I really like. Definitely not for everyone, but it is for me.

The metadata issue you mention is interesting. Mine shows both thumbnails and accurate track details. That said, I took great pains to update all the metadata on my tracks roughly 2 years ago, so I wonder if it just isn't reading the right bits from your files. I'm pretty sure museeks doesn't do any of the automatic thumbnail and metadata fetching that many other players do.

WetGeek

brent the minimalism and list view-only is appealing to me

I agree. And I like it for what it is. And I also like Elisa for what it is. Can a man fall in love with two music players?

brent

infinitymdm thanks for responding. in fairness, some metadata it picked up, like album 'title.' songs not so much, keep in mind these were brilliantly awesome comp cds I made some time ago. It's possible in the course of a couple decades metadata has changed how it is read. I wonder if the metadata is primitive on my end?

infinitymdm that I actually enjoy using. There's something about the minimalist style that I really like. Definitely not for everyone, but it is for me.

---that's my takeaway as well. this might replace gmusic. I am all about clean and simple anymore.

brent

infinitymdm Hopefully I will end my inquiries with you before this is a full-blown hijack. Any additional questions I will start my own thread.
2 developments:
1) I cannot get a song to play one right after another. Like an album, for instance. I only have two options: play same song in a forever loop, or shuffle. How to remedy?
2) Ignore metadata comments. What a difference a day and a reboot makes. I've been saying that since 2017 and still stunned by the celtic magic. Anyways it reads my album title/artist/track/etc now.
graci