If you’re a Linux user wanting a program to play and manage your music library, but want something a little bit lighter than Banshee, Amarok or Rhythmbox, then you should definitely try out Xnoise Media Player. Check out its home page (where you can read more about it as well as watch an introductory video).
For Linux users, one of the nice things about Xnoise is that it’s writen in GTK, so if you’re using Ubuntu or Xubuntu or another GNOME or GTK based distribution, it will blend in seamlessly to your desktop, no matter what theme you might be using. (image 1)
It also offers the ability to integrate itself with your sound menu. This means if you’re using Ubuntu, you’ll be able to view the currently playing track by clicking the volume icon in the panel. Also, if you’re using GNOME Shell (and not Ubuntu’s default Unity interface), you can install this extension which will place Xnoise controls into a panel for you, for convenient control. (image 2) This means you don’t always need to keep Xnoise on top of all your other applications (or even visible), just to switch songs.
Another nice feature is the plugin system Xnoise offers. There are a few built-in plugins, such as Last.FM integration (both album art and scrobbling), Lyrics lookup, and more. If you have the lyrics checker turned on, simply click the Lyrics button in the bottom of the playback window, and the lyrics for the currently playing song will be found online, and displayed for you to read. (image 3)
In my checking, Xnoise is great for people wanting a player that doesn’t take up a lot of memory. I had it load a library of roughly 5,000 songs (which isn’t tiny, but isn’t overly large either), and it scanned it fairly quickly. This didn’t impress me as much as the fact that while Xnoise was scanning, it didn’t bog down the rest of my running programs. I’ve had music players that practically ground my computer to a halt while it scanned my music collection for the first time. Xnoise not doing that was a nice bonus.
Another nice aspect to Xnoise is its ability to pretty much play anything you throw at it, as long as you have GStreamer support installed. Since it uses the GStreamer libraries, this means Xnoise is not only capable of playing your music, but your videos as well. (image 4)
Now, having just talked up Xnoise’s video playback feature, at the moment it definitely isn’t perfect. For example, if you play a video with two audio tracks, you have no control over which one is used, so if one of the tracks is a commentary track, you’re stuck with it if it happens to be used. Also, internal subtitles are automatically on, and at the moment there seems to be no way around viewing them.
Still, for a music player, it does video pretty well.
All in all, there’s not a lot to complain about with Xnoise. It’s fast, plays and manages your music very well, and has some extra features that are nice (albeit not entirely necessary), and some that add to Xnoise without bogging it down. It’s definitely a program someone wanting a music library manager should consider, if Amarok, Banshee or Rhythmbox aren’t to their tastes.