Top Five Amarok Tips

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
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.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
Amarok

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.
 
G

Guest

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

linnerd40

Obliviot
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!
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
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.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
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

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
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.

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.

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.

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 :D
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
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

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
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.
 
C

Carlos

Guest
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

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
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.

Carlos said:
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.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
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.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
amarok rules (almost)

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.
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
I have Amarok crash occasionally, but not really after a few hours. I sometimes have it open for days at a time without issue. I've also had the problem of losing the collection, but it was after the initial time of adding it. So essentially, I've added it twice. Since then, I haven't had another issue.

I'd like to think a lot of programs have their issues though, and hopefully all these Amarok ones will be ironed out in the future.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
streaming music from Mac to Amarok-Linux

will give you a more detailed query as soon as my registration goes through -

but am trying to figure out how to use music that I am currently storing on my PowerMac G5 (actually on a RAID volume on the Mac).

I can access the music via a desktop browser (under go) and when I enter that address in the amarok, it finds all the folders & files (all 200K of them)...

however, when I try to play any one of these music files, I get an error message :

"no suitable input plugin - this often means that the URL's protocol is not supported - network failures are other possible causes."

sftp://power-mac-g5.local:22/Volumes/Matrix June 1.8/Louis Armstrong/Monterey 1958/12 these foolishing things.m4a

willfriedwald

am not sure why it can find the music and sort of load it, but then not be able to play it - I guess I have to figure out how to properly mount the volume on the ubuntu desktop....
 
Top