Top Five Amarok Tips

[Rob Williams]

Amarok is one of the best audio players for Linux, but there is a lot more it can do than just play your tunes. We are taking a look at our top five tips of things you can do with this amazing player.

You can read the article here and discuss it here.

[madstork91]

Anyway that i can get that ID3 filler feature on a pc?

I have never seen a working Amarok .This program is useless and hopeless The only player that allways works in linux is Xmms for audio and Mplayer for video .
There is simply no competition for these two .
Marcel.

I didn't know they had an auto tag built in, I'll have to try that as soon as I get home.

[linnerd40]

Amarok is by far the best media player Linux has to offer. It simply offers everything that I need for my music. It supports LastFM streams, works great with my iPod, has great organization, and gets you info/ lyrics about your songs. The interface and easy shortcut setup is awesome (it detected the media keys on my Saitek Eclipse II flawlessly). What's not to love? I'm listening to music through it as I write this!

Great article Rob!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have never seen a working Amarok .This program is useless and hopeless The only player that allways works in linux is Xmms for audio and Mplayer for video .
There is simply no competition for these two .
Marcel.

Wow... Seriously dude go back to windows...
Damn near every distro includes or makes available amarok packages, if you can't make those work you've got issues that go far deeper than the fact that you're a complete chode.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have never seen a working Amarok .This program is useless and hopeless The only player that allways works in linux is Xmms for audio and Mplayer for video .
There is simply no competition for these two .
Marcel.

Someone please give this gentleman his 8-track back.

I have been using amarok since I switched over to Kubuntu earlier this year.

It's pretty much the best thing I've seen since the original Winamp 2 release.

My favorite features, the moodbar, the firefox plugin via one of the scripts(can't recall it's name)....so I can control the music from my laptop.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madstork91

Anyway that i can get that ID3 filler feature on a pc?

I am not sure of an exact alternative for Windows, but you might want to look at the official MusicBrainz product list. They have applications for Windows, but I have never tested any of them.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have never seen a working Amarok .This program is useless and hopeless The only player that allways works in linux is Xmms for audio and Mplayer for video .
There is simply no competition for these two .
Marcel.

Sounds like a problem with configuration. I've never not had an Amarok work in any distro I've used. You could always run the program from a terminal and see what error it gives.

Originally Posted by linnerd40

Amarok is by far the best media player Linux has to offer. It simply offers everything that I need for my music.

One of the reasons I like Amarok is that it offers so much, but never feels bloated. That's a hard thing to pull off. Just load up WMP on Windows and you know what I mean... Amarok is easy to use and works well.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

the firefox plugin via one of the scripts(can't recall it's name)....so I can control the music from my laptop.

Now that's cool. If you happen to remember the name, let us know. I don't need such a thing, but it's cool nonetheless

The 'streaming' mentioned in the article sounds like just remote storage. Is this what 'streaming' really is? I assumed there was client/server setup involved in streaming?

[Rob Williams]

It's streaming the music from the remote storage. This is kind of a client/server setup, the Windows machine was the server, Amarok was the client. If you are playing music off another machine without copying over the entire file first, it's streaming.

Your explanation makes sense... thanks. One more question, why wouldn't you mount the samba share and treat it as a local directory?

Also, how is this different than the 'Music Sharing' feature described on Amarok's website that describes DAAP server?

Sorry if I'm posting more questions than comments, but I'm intent on using a separate machine for my music that can be accessed by multiple computers (like what was described in the article) and want to make sure I do it the most efficient way possible.

[Rob Williams]

Hi Carlos,

Mounting the Samba share is no problem at all, it's not just something I delved into since I format my Windows PC every other week. Regardless of whether you mount a Samba share as a local drive or connect via my method, you are still essentially streaming the exact same way. If you mount a share, it makes it easier to locate inside of Amarok, since it will be a folder under /mnt, instead of my way which required pasting the smb:// address in the bar. However, you do not have to paste the smb:// address every single time. I save mine as a bookmark, so I can access it very quickly.

I am unsure of the immediate advantages of DAAP, but it all works similarly I'm sure. In order to stream music from the Windows machine, I just set it up for network sharing and the music folder on the network. Samba picks up on it no problem, and makes things simple. So, DAAP may have some advantages I am unaware of, but it's not required to stream music. If you have a Windows PC open on the network, you can stream music from it.

Originally Posted by Carlos

Sorry if I'm posting more questions than comments, but I'm intent on using a separate machine for my music that can be accessed by multiple computers (like what was described in the article) and want to make sure I do it the most efficient way possible.

Just do what you like, it should all work out in the end. If you are going to go with DAAP with iTunes, I am sure Amarok would pick up on it, and if not, you could likely target it similarly to my method above. Even in Windows, you can mount a network drive and use it like a local drive, so DAAP is far from being required, but it's up to you what you'd like to do.

Thanks Rob for the article and the replies.

After reading a little more, it seems the DAAP stuff would probably be more useful if I was concerned with iTunes interopability. I think I will follow your advice and use simple samba file sharing for my centralized music with Amarok.

[Rob Williams]

You are not likely to be disappointed, it's worked well for me. Good luck with the setup!

Amarok could be THE best player ever, much better than any windoze or linux competitor. The features I like most are: last.fm integration (including related artists); the lyrics search; and the wikipedia integration. What I don't like is that it rarely stays on for more than a few hours without hanging and/or crashing (especially with streams), and it rarely stays more than a few days without unadverdentely loosing the collection db.