Music Manager Software other than Clementine/Strawberry

[seaken64]

I did solve my permissions issues with Cantata.

As you might have guessed it was user error on my part. I was choosing the "Single User" setup when Cantata first started. When Cantata starts for the first time it presents a dialog where you have two choices, either "Standard" or Single User". I was using the Single User option and that is why I was having problems when I tried to run from a second user I added to my system. It worked fine as long as I was the only user but after I added the second user and tried to use Cantata from that new user it failed.

I removed both mpd and Cantata and deleted the config files from both users. Then I re-installed mpd and Cantata. I then launched Cantata and selected "Standard" this time. It worked fine on user number one. Then I logged off and logged in as user number 2 and launched Cantata, again selecting "Standard". It worked! I can now use Cantata with both users.

This is going to work out just fine for my purposes. Cantata remembers where you left off and will show the last playlist used. This will be easy for my wife to use and I setup a bunch of playlist files in her users Music folder. If she wants she can browse the Streams directories for something new. I'm very pleased.

I will continue to learn more about setting up Cantata as my own music manager. But for now it is working fine as an internet radio stream music player for our store stereo.

Seaken64

[Stevo]

Thanks for the update, and glad you found how to fix your problems! That'll help other users.

[seaken64]

Thanks for the update, and glad you found how to fix your problems! That'll help other users.

Thanks Stevo. I appreciate your help. I used your OBS repo to update both Cantata and Audacious. I'm still learning how to set it all up but I'm farther along than I was a week ago.

Seaken64

[seaken64]

Spoke too soon. Now I am getting some errors:

“Failed to send command to “Default” (localhost:6600) - not connected”

I put mpd in default log mode. It was telling me that it could not find /var/log/mpd/mpd.log. I created the directory and an empty file. I restarted mpd and then restarted Cantata. No more error message.

But now I have a similar problem I had seen before where the music starts to play but then goes off and the pause icon is on the playlist track name.

I reset the mpd log to “verbose” and tried again. The error message this time was:

“Decoder is too slow, playing silence to avoid xrun”

I did a lot of reading on this error but I couldn’t decipher most of it. I thought maybe it was a hardware issue. I uncommented the line saying “Device” in the ALSA block for the audio outputs in the mpd.conf file. This was pointing to the “hw:0,0” device. Then I saved mpd.conf and restarted the mpd service. Then I restarted Cantata and tested. This time the streams played without going silent. And they seemed to come up faster. When I was having the problem there was a delay before it started to play and then it would play for awhile and then go silent. Now it playing quickly and continues until I click on stop.

I looked again at the mpd.log and I noticed there were no more errors about the decoder being too slow. But I also noted that it said it was changing the format to 44100:16:2, from 44100:24:2. So, apparently this hardware likes 16-bit audio? Being an idiot in these matters, I’m not sure. I am at my office and using the LiveUSB for this setup. I will put this LiveUSB in the target machine when I get home and see if it still behaves.

Anyway, I seem to be back in business. But this shows the difficulties in setting up a music client-server application. I had no issues with Audacious at all. It just plays the streams with no hiccups. But Cantata takes a bit of dexterity in setting up. I’m sure I’ll learn to use the settings and config files to get the most from Cantata in the future.

[seaken64]

When I got home I put the LiveUSB that I am setting up with Cantata in my Thinkpad R61i to test it. (This is not yet the target machine. It's my easy chair laptop in my living room). When I started up Cantata it worked fine, except the Volume slider on the toolbar was greyed out. I then went back in to the mpd.conf file and put the comment hash mark (#) back in front on the “Device” line, which was the default setting. I restarted mpd and Cantata.

Again, Cantata works fine. And I can control the volume from the taskbar icon or mixer, even though the volume slider is still greyed out. I checked the log and there were no errors, and this time the log said that the format for the audio was being changed from 44100:24:2 to 44100:32:2. Again, I don’t know what this means but it does seem that mpd reacts to different hardware and that may have been why I got poor results in the past.

So, I can’t say for sure that I have really been having any issues with Cantata. I think these issues were more related to my mpd settings and that I did not make the necessary settings to fit the hardware that mpd is running on.

Interestingly, I have installed Audacious along side Cantata each time I tested and Audacious has never failed to play, no matter what computer I was on. So Audacious must be using a different approach to handling the different hardware than mpd. I also wonder if some of the issues I had with Guayadeque could be related to some of the hardware in the same way that mpd is reacting. I’m not very good with the details of setting up the audio in Linux. These are all just guesses. But it does appear that I have to be more careful in setting up mpd for each set of hardware before I go blaming a client player like Cantata.

Cantata has been working good, and I put it on the final target machine last night and it is playing everything with no trouble and the volume slider is working normally. Conkey reports that the CPU is less than 10% and memory use is low. Contrast this to playing AccuRadio on the SeaMonkey browser which puts the CPU at 100%. I would say that mpd/Cantata is a good choice for this old P4 with 1GB RAM.

Seaken64

[seaken64]

Just an update to say I've found "moc" player to be very useful on my lower powered older machines. I can use it from a console only install without X.

Of course moc is not a music manager like Cantata. But I have been using moc a lot for playing streams, instead of firing up Cantata. I will stay with Cantata as my music manager but may be using moc more as my player.

Seaken64

[mxer]

Just an update to say I've found "moc" player to be very useful on my lower powered older machines. I can use it from a console only install without X.

I haven't read the thread, but noticed you've just found moc, & from another thread, see you aren't afraid of the command line, so thought I'd just mention that I often use mc & mpg123 to manage & play my music at the command line.

[seaken64]

Just an update to say I've found "moc" player to be very useful on my lower powered older machines. I can use it from a console only install without X.

I haven't read the thread, but noticed you've just found moc, & from another thread, see you aren't afraid of the command line, so thought I'd just mention that I often use mc & mpg123 to manage & play my music at the command line.

Was that a typo or is mc another player? And I've seen mpg123 on the list but haven't tried it yet. I've been trying to get ncmpcpp to work with mpd but so far have not been successful. I still need to learn more about setting up mpd. Is mpg123 more of a manager or only a player?

Seaken64

[sunrat]

...so thought I'd just mention that I often use mc & mpg123 to manage & play my music at the command line.

Was that a typo or is mc another player? And I've seen mpg123 on the list but haven't tried it yet. I've been trying to get ncmpcpp to work with mpd but so far have not been successful. I still need to learn more about setting up mpd. Is mpg123 more of a manager or only a player?

mc is midnight commander, a powerful console file manager. mpg123 is an mp3 player which I think only plays mp3 format. mp3 is an inefficient legacy format for which there are now much better options such as AAC and Ogg Vorbis, while opus is better still but yet to gain much traction.

[seaken64]

Nice console-based player ... more features than MOC .... good documentation too ....
https://cmus.github.io/#home

Good summary for console players here:
https://opensource.com/life/16/8/3-comm ... yers-linux ... don't bother with RipIt (console CD ripper) discussed at the bottom of the article ...

Nothing beats abcde for command line CD rip/encode ...
https://abcde.einval.com/wiki/

Thanks Bluesguy,

I've seen cmus mentioned before. I'll check it out. Also going to try out abcde,

Seaken64