Help wanted to evolve KDEs music players

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Donnerstag, 30. Juli 2015, 12:42:14 schrieb Stefan Derkits:
> Dear all,

Hello Stefan,

> in discussions during Akademy 2015 we found out that while we have with
> Plasma 5 a Desktop that has a modern & consistent look, the state of
> some applications isn't that good. And we want to change that.
> 
> At the moment KDE has no up-to-date music player. JuK is very simple to
> use, but lacking a modern design. Amarok is and will stay the
> swiss-knife of KDE music players, but also lacking a modern design and
> may be too complicated for new users.
> 
> So let's make a new music player, a successor especially to JuK & Bangarang.
> A music player not for power users or music enthusiasts that want/need 100s
> of features in a player but a simple player designed & made for users of
> the Plasma 5 Desktop.
> 
> What do we already have:
> -) A design vision by the VDG including UI mockups & user stories [0]

Why a new one? Aren´t none of the existing ones in a state that they can´t be 
evolved into what you envision?

There is already Amarok, JuK, Bangarang, Clementine, Plasma Media Center and 
you name it. As a user I am confused. Which do I use? Well for me I started 
with Amarok and I really do like it a lot, just want to see it modernized 
instead of looking at all the others to find out which new one to use.

Creating a new one will split energies to another player. Unless it, as you 
suggest it being a successor of JuK & Bangarang, will succeed one or two of 
the existing ones.

I looked at Bangarang, and liked the clean looks of it, but then it had 
several annoying bugs and was done with it. I didn´t even bother to report 
them. That is not to say that Amarok is free of bugs, but it definately does 
the basic job of playing music just fine for me. And frankly I do not bother 
about many of the extended feature so I wouldn´t even notice when some of them 
are buggy. But the player gets it mostly right for the basic job of playing 
music and browsing my collection. For me.

So instead of 3, 4, 5 or more KDE/Qt based music players I´d rather see one or 
two. I´d envision something like the Plasma devs did for Plasma. Make one 
extensible core and give it several faces. Make one player core that for a 
change is absolutely solid and robust – I still have bugs with Phonon without 
Pulseaudio here and with Pulseaudio I also have bugs – and then build upon 
that core and simple interfaces and an advanced interface.

But so or so I think what KDE/Plasma needs most in terms of multimedia is 
fixing of existing bugs like

[Bug 339135] New: JBL Pepples USB laud speakers do not work without PulseAudio
https://bugs.kde.org/339135

[Bug 339134] New: JBL Pepples USB laud speakers do not work without PulseAudio
https://bugs.kde.org/339134

(My focus on Randa Meetings will be on KDEPIM, but I think I will bring this 
JBL Pebbles with me as well, in case someone wants to look at the issue 
together with me and help me to find the cause of it)

and an audio stack that I as an user can either understand or, ideally and 
that I do not have to care about, cause it just works. With Pulseaudio and 
Phonon I have Pulseaudio, ALSA, Phonon, VLC or Gstreamer backends. And now 
when something is not working: Where exactly do I look? Who is responsible? 
Where do I report the bug? So for me also due to the following bug I took out 
Pulseaudio out of the equation already, simplifying things – I am grateful 
that Phonon still gives me the freedom to do that (despite above bugs):

[Bug 85445] PlaneShift with OpenAL sound  stutters: PulseAudio returned minreq 
tlength/2; expect break up
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85445

(basically making the game unenjoyable to play)

That are just three of the bugs that I didn´t even look out for, they found 
me. A new one is in VLC selecting a non-existing loud speaker by default 
requiring me to select the right one *each* time, stop the video and press 
play again.

Friends that come to my place to watch movies with me often joke about this 
"Linux not working right". And heck, they do have a point. From what I see, 
also in discussions on debian-user-german and elsewhere, I got the impression 
that the Linux multimedia stack still needs a lot of work.

I know not all of this is related to KDE/Plasma, but if there is one wish I 
have: It is about a player that *just* works. 100%. All of the time. A player 
I do not have to discuss with that it finally plays music. Right now, on above 
my hi-fi amplifier is a ThinkPad T42 with Amarok and for now it does the job, 
even after suspend/hibernate, cause Amarok stops playback then. But only… with 
the internal audio, not with the way better USB sound card.

With audio and multimedia related issues I switch players often. For video I 
am with VLC, despite the bug, cause non of the KDE based players work 
satisfactorily for me. Kaffeine and Dragon Player do not work for me 
currently. I forgot about the issues they had, since I switched to VLC a time 
ago.

So my plea is: Make one solution or maybe two and make them work just right. 
Instead 4, 5 or more where the most of them appear unfinished and buggy.

Simplifiy. Make it really simple. I like this idea of yours about the new 
player. But please either build on something existing or replace something 
with it. I´d even accept Pulseaudio as an dependency if above bug would be 
fixed and it would work in all my use cases, also with USB device with the 
Pulseuaudio/udev race I had on the ThinkPad T42. But Pulseaudio has probably 
seen the most apt-get install / apt-get purge cycles on my systems so far. It 
needs quite a bit of convincing for me to ever try it again.

In any  case, whatever you choose to do: The best of success for you. 
Plasma/KDE needs simple to use and reliable multimedia stuff. If the player 
you want to create fits my use cases and works reliably *out of the box* I may 
even switch.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin