ArsGeek

This is a new segment I would like to introduce to you all. I will try to comment on something open source related as often as possible, without boring your minds. I will mainly present the programs I use personally, but it could also be about the latest development in the open source community.

Everyone likes to listen to music, to some extents. Some will just like the background noise, some will appreciate the music they hear and some, like me, want it tidied-up the best way possible. I currently use, on windows systems, musikCube to do my biddings.

What I like about it

It is a quite powerful audio player with integrated library management, quite iTunes-like. You can view and edit tags of your music from within the player. It can also work for you by either tagging your audio by the filenames or by renaming your file by the tags.

The library is maintained through a SQLite backend. It means that I can create some queries with an SQL-like syntax easily to create a Dynamic Playlist. It is possible, let’s say, to create a playlist which contains only the less-played songs from your library which are tagged 0 stars or more (-1 are disliked songs) randomized.

MusikCube has integrated crossfade feature, something Quod Libet (my favorite Linux audio player) has not and I would want. It might seem stupid, but I find it is nice.

The player also has a plugin system. Last.fm support is available through a plugin. There’s also a winamp emulation plugin; it will allow other programs that use the underlying functions of winamp to work with MusikCube.

What I don’t like

It has no integrated album art feature! This is something that I would really want. Maybe I’m blind and/or stupid and I missed something, but it doesn’t seem to exist from within the program.

Balloon tips won’t work with Vista. Well, they won’t work for me, I don’t know if it is a known behavior, but I can live without that.

It lacks some finish in some places.  As an example, there’s the place where I can see how much time I’m into a song, when I click onto it, I can see how much time is left to the song. This setting doesn’t register and I have to click on it every time the program is started.

Other than that, it could be nice to have a better skinning system, but personally, I wouldn’t use it. I want a useful music manager, not a fancy player that’ll eat all my resources!

Even with those little problems, I still haven’t found a better music player/audio management software for Windows. On Linux platforms, there’s the fabulous Quod Libet, but that’s going to be a matter for another time, I need to have something to write about later!

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