How to choose an open source audio player

There are areas where free and open source software is full of options, one of which is media players. ANDn this article we will tell you how to choose an open source audio player In addition to recommending some titles that you can install both from the official repositories and from the different application stores.

Although there is much to be said in favor of streaming platforms: updating the catalog, being multi-device, not requiring too much storage space, etc., there is also quite a lot to be argued for on the local storage side: data privacy, ownership of your music collection and no need to be connected, even occasionally to the Internet. I am not a music connoisseur, but I suppose that, depending on the format, the audio quality must be higher.

How to choose an open source audio player

There are several criteria to determine which audio player to use. Some of them are:

Use

If we only listen to music occasionally or do not want to have too many programs installedIt's a media player like VLC o SMPlayer they can be a great option.

If you have a large record collection, rhythmbox, The GNOME Project Audio Player has several tools for sorting and playing large music collections.

Music is not the only audio content, there are also podcasts and online radios. With Clementine you can play them, as well as music stored in cloud services and download album covers.

Formats

Digital music comes in various formats. Some of the most common are:

• MP3: Yesigla for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. This is the most popular audio format. so the hard part is finding a player that is not compatible. It offers a reasonable mix of audio quality to file weight. However, being a compressed format if you are a fan of musical purity it may not be for you.
• WAV: It is an acronym for Waveform Audio File Format. It has uncompressed audio quality, but results in larger files.
• FLAC: Abbreviation for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It combines the best of the other two since they are lighter files, but without loss of quality.
• AAC: The acronym stands for Advanced Audio Coding and describes a file format that offers better quality at the same size as an mp3 file.
• OGG: (Ogg Vorbis): Provides mp3-like quality with a smaller file size.
• AIFF: Acronym for Audio Interchange File Format: It is an uncompressed format, although the files are usually larger than WAV files.
• WMA: The native Windows audio format.

Amarok, the KDE project's audio player plays these formats.

User interface

If you don't want to have a full screen player a good alternative is Audacious. It has all the facilities of a complete audio player, but its customizable interface occupies only a small interface on the screen.

Linux Terminal Has Its Fans, Manual Package Installation Too. If you fall into both categories MOC You're going to love it.

A clarification, I wrote the article trying to include as many titles as possible. The fact that a title is mentioned in one of the characteristics does not mean that it does not have that of the others.

Audio Editing

Some of the players have basic audio editing features. However, if you are looking for a more complete solution you can try Audacity or any of these others alternatives.

All these programs are available for Windows, Linux and Mac. On Linux you will find them in the repositories and in the Flatpak and Snap stores.

There is also no shortage of open source alternatives for Android users. For example, we have TurtlePlayer, a very simple player that can also download album art. Snapcast on the other hand, it allows multiple devices to play the same audio file synchronously.