Chris Hermansen - Seldom without a computer of some sort since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1978, I have been a full-time Linux user since 2005, a full-time Solaris and SunOS user from 1986 through 2005, and UNIX System V user before that. On the technical side of things, I have spent a great deal of my career as a consultant, doing data analysis and visualization; especially spatial data analysis. I have a substantial amount of related programming experience, using C, awk, Python. Thanks for this comment, too, Eduardo. You raise an interesting point about classical music. I have some classical music that I have ripped and a great whacking shelf full of classical CDs that I will get around to, some day. For what it's worth, my experience to date with music players is that they don't serve classical interests very well.

For instance, I would like to have a classical library and a non-classical library, because I would like my user interface for the classical library to be organized around composer and composition as well as artist / performer and album / track. But that extra bit doesn't work particularly well for popular music (or whatever you might wish to call it). I kind of disagree with your 'whole album' comment.

As I'm sure you know, a lot of classical LPs and CDs package more than one work, often by other composers, performers, etc. Sometimes the packaging is inspired but most often I'm not too interested in an album that includes works by two unrelated composers who had no particular interest in or knowledge of the other's work. The nice thing about ripping this music is that I can separate the two works and make them stand on their own, provided that I can get the tags right.

It was an open source music player released back in 2006 that drummed up a lot of hype and anticipation due to its potential. It was shut down in 2013, but.

My point being, I guess, that classical music needs more / different player horsepower and a lot of curating. In my experience, anyway.

'A reader suggested this player, but in looking at its configuration, I could not satisfy myself that it would meet 1. For example, in Settings > Audio, it requires selecting bit depth. Given that I want to play my music at its native bit depth, I don't think I want this feature. Therefore I didn't continue with its evaluation.'

So you totally missed the drop-down where you can change from pulseaudio to oss4/SSL/jack or even OMG ALSA.You also missed that ALSA by default, uses the same sampling rate and format as the source file, whilst pulseaudio for example down samples everything by default so Audacious allows you to be easily change those pulseaudio defaults *eyeroll*.Sounds like the best of both worlds to me. Please do yourself a favour and go and take a serious look at Audacious. Thanks for writing, Gognos.

I did not totally, or even partly, miss the drop down where I can change from pulse to whatever. In fact I am looking at that right now on my other screen, and here is what I see: - the 'output plugin' is ALSA Output - just below that is a drop down that requires me to set 'bit depth', the choices for which are 16, 24, 32 and floating point It is this requirement to choose a bit depth, when I've already selected ALSA and therefore I know that I'm not required to choose a bit depth, that makes me turn away from Audacious. Thanks for your comments, Frans. I've added both Aqualung and Goggles to my review list. Adobe photoshop cs6 installer failed to initialize mac os x.

I really appreciate those recommendations. I also really enjoyed reading your reasons for liking / disliking players. Your reasons are well thought out and as you say a bit different than mine. A few comments of my own: - as far as I know, I only have FLAC and MP3 files (maybe there is an ogg or two), and I don't notice gaps in playback.

That's not to say they aren't there; they just aren't 'in my face'. I'll try to pay better attention. In this respect Aqualung looks pretty serious. - I like the idea of replay gain as applied to some of my older CDs which are often 6dB or more down, but I'm not keen about having my music player / computer resampling stuff.

I have thought about dealing with some particular sinners with Audacity, but that's a future project. - I don't find myself adding files while I'm listening. Not sure why that is, I guess that's just the way my workflow happens. So I've never had an issue with the UI freezing up on me because of this. - good audio quality - I think we are agreed there! - and to me that means passing the bits on through to the DAC without futzing with them.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful comments! Sorry Frans I forgot one thing. You set the playback device on Quod Libet as follows: Start the applciation (d'oh) and pick Music > Preferences from the menu. The Preferences pane has five tabs, the middle one being 'Playback'.