Comment on Debian 10 Multimedia Applications

[conclave]

Recently purchased through www.osdisc.com the Debian 10 Buster software repositories that I use through Synaptic Package Manager.

In the past I have used Banshee and Amarok for playing my music collection, spent many months converting and tagging tapes, LPs, and CDs to MP3 and WAV files.
I personally like Banshee and Amarok due to the way the data base organizes music collections especially for recordings that are compilations of various recording artists.
Debian 10 no longer supports these two music players. Clementine is one I like and use frequently yet does not have the same type of data base. Compilation recordings with various artists I have added to my music library under a directory/folder entitled Various Artists are not sorted into the Artist's name using Clementine . With Amarok these compilation recordings get separated and placed into the appropriate Local Collection under the correct recording artist's name, since the tagging includes that information under Album Artist and the Artist field. Banshee works well with it's data base sorting compilation recordings in the same way. Clementine on the other hand places my compilation recordings under the library listing category of Various Artists instead of listing each individual track on the compilation under the appropriate recording artist name. There may be a way of re-tagging every recording to get this working in a similar manner yet doing that will change how Banshee and Amarok list recordings, therefore convenience is lost with these opposing forces.

The way I do things is probably obsolete now as cloud access to so many recordings and streaming have replaced my old hack way of doing things. As a result I am staying with Debian 9 on my computer separately on a different partition, Amarok and Banshee are available on Debian 9. Clementine, available on Debian 10, is one of my favorites for other reasons such as ability to customize background with your own images and change colors for background. When using Clementine to set up a playlist of various recording artists it becomes a bit awkward having to run through the various artists category listing looking for one individual artist's recording on a specific compilation that does not appear under the artist's name of the library with all the other LP's, Cassettes, or CDs of that recording artist. Banshee and Amarok worked perfectly for this purpose categorizing the various recording artists on compilations under the appropriate recording artists name. Hopefully Amarok and Banshee will make a comeback on future versions of Debian.

Fo

[sunrat]

I loved Amarok in KDE4 but it has had no developer love for a few years and is basically dead now. KDE is now working on Elisa as its default music player but it is not quite there yet although improving quickly.
I don't use Clementine but use its fork Strawberry now and maybe Clementine is the same. Right-click in the Collections section and select "Display Options > Group by" and you can choose how you want to see your collection.
If Clementine doesn't do this you can get Strawberry from Steve Pusser's OBS repo; it's built for Debian (Stretch - Sid IIRC). I have it installed on both Buster and Sid and it's very nice. Strawberries are sweeter than Clementines.

PS: I don't consider having a local music collection to be obsolete. Conversely I consider streaming services to be an inferior hack. I have a large collection of mainly FLAC files which are better quality than most streams. I can tweak my system to play high res files such as 24 bit/ 96kHz without resampling if I wish. And quite a lot of my collection is rather rare and not available from streaming services anyway.

[conclave]

I am aware and have tried the Display Options in Clementine yet no options there will break up compilation music CDs that have a variety of different artists the way I need them sorted out where the individual songs get listed in the library under the recording artists name. My directory that holds music has folders with recording artists names where within are the different recording artist's CD's, LPs, or Cassettes that are folders with the songs in them. All compilation recordings I list under a folder entitled Various Artists. Banshee, and Amarok recognize the different recording artists within the compilations and sorts them out correctly placing the individual tracks under the recording artist's name in their libraries. Clementine does not place recording artists on compilations under their name in it's library, instead the recording artists in compilations get listed under Various Artists. This would suggest to me that Clementine uses the folder title to list recording artists in it's library whereas Banshee and/or Amarok use the tagging under Artist or Album Artist. I would be able to get the recording artists on compilations listed under their name if I took every individual track on compilations and moved them to the folder of the recording artist. If I do this there is a loss of the compilation being listed with all of it's different tracks and recording artists. Doing this moving around with over 100 compilations will take a lot of time moving things around, in some cases new folders will be needed to start recording artists with no other songs in the library.

[sunrat]

I just had a quick look at Strawberry and you're right, some files seem to be grouped under Various artists regardless of their tags or directories even when Group By>Artist is selected. I've always grouped by Album Artist/Album so haven't noticed. It works for me.
I also had a quick look at Elisa and some files come up both under Artist and Various when sorted by Artist, but not all. Less confusing than Strawberry (or Clementine assuming that's the same). Weird. Maybe something to do with type of tag? I don't know.
Alternatively try Rhythmbox if you're on Gnome, I believe it's popular. There are dozens of players for Linux, some other good ones are Cantata, Quod Libet, Guayadeque, Gmusicbrowser, Audacious.

[conclave]

I have tried Rhythmbox on Fedora and Debian. Until the recent operating systems, (Fedora 30, and Debian 10) anything I would add to the Library Location would show up with song titles and number yet nothing else to identify the Artist, Genre, or Album in the appropriate data base fields. In Fedora 30 and after or Debian 10 that has changed, interface now looks more like Banshee, yet one little flaw in every operating system I have tried, the numerical listing of song tracks for numbers 7 and 8 do not show up for any recordings in the library for some odd reason.

Have tried Audacious yet do not like the layout interface with all recordings like one big giant folder with thousands of files, although they are listed well in appropriate data base fields alphabetized scrolling through that entire listing is sometimes annoying, especially using a mouse with traction pick up flaws, or low memory on a slower computer. Easier to have recordings separated into sub categories under recording artists.

I have been into Linux for the past 5 to 6 years, started with AV Linux and a few books that I purchased. Been trying out a lot of different Linux flavors. Recently discovered another flaw using Clementine on Linux Mint 18 that I added to an older computer that also has Debian 9. Mint 18 for some odd reason cuts off your Clementine library after it reaches a certain maximum, do not believe the limit has anything to do with memory usage since the same cut off occurs with WAV files or MP3. Since WAV is significantly larger in memory size of files than MP3 the MP3s would add more recording files if memory were the issue. If I run the same size music library for Clementine on Debian 9 on the same computer the entire collection of files A to Z get picked up into the library. Therefore I would conclude that Mint for some odd reason does something in their operating system that limits the number of music recordings you can add to the library. Never had that happen with any other operating system that I tried out.

So far as tagging is concerned, I manually tagged over 95% of my recordings years ago in Microsoft Windows XP using a WAV tagging program known as "TagScanner" and for MP3s one of two programs known as "Mp3tag" or "Freac". Since getting into Linux I have used Kid3 and EasyTag to make corrections yet have not noticed anything different in results so far as what appears in music players under identification fields such as Artist, Album, or Title.

[conclave]

One other point to mention here. The reason I would like to see Banshee and Amarok return to Debian is related to what I have mentioned in the above posts adding a memory consolidation circumstance for my personal use.

I originally set up the music directory files with tagging for use in Windows Media Player, Real One Player, and MusicMatch jukebox. I have since progressed to a computer set up with 4 operating systems on them. My music directory folders are 1.3TB in memory size for WAV Files and 178GB in memory size for MP3s (same recordings in both folders). Cannot place these folders in each operating system under Music directory due to memory limitations of my hard drives. Instead I have a separate partition with these folders that are accessible by each operating system, three Linux and Microsoft Windows. Moving the individual recording artists around in compilation recordings will solve one music players problem yet cause another problem within another in a different operating system.
I like Clementine since it seems more light weight working better on computers with smaller amounts of RAM memory also like the options under changing appearance of music player. Amarok and Banshee work sorting out music recording artists the same way as Windows Media Player making it a better choice in my situation, 4 operating systems accessing the same music directory in a separate internal hard drive partition.

[LE_746F6D617A7A69]

Have You tried DeaDBeeF ?

It's an open source project, licensed under GPL/LGPL and it's actively developed: https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef

This is a cross-platform project, so it allows to have exactly the same Directory/Tags format for all the platforms.
Of course, most likely the format will be different from what You're using now, but it might be worth to try ...