Songbird 1.2.0 - 10-band Equalizer Now Included

It's been a while since I had a look at Songbird, and that was when 1.0 came out. The new release was put out a little earlier this month and comes with a brand new equalizer, a new mode to auto-organise media files included in the collection and Last.fm radio integration.

However, the most awaited feature is probably the 10-band equalizer and it is available using the Controls -> Equalizer menu option (or Ctrl+E). Here's how it looks:



As you can see, unfortunately there are no default presets available, but maybe the next version will include some.

A pre-compiled Linux version is available for download on the official website, so you can just uncompress the file you downloaded, copy the Songbird directory somewhere inside your home folder and run the songbird script to start it.

Songbird 1.2.0

The metadata editor is somewhat similar with that of Amarok 1.4, and you can use Alt+N and Alt+P to switch to the next and, respectively, previous track:

Editing tags

A very useful add-on for Songbird is the mashTape extension, which retrieves various information about the currently playing song: mashTape show Last.fm artist biography, reviews from various specialised websites, news, photos and even videos.

Some other noteworthy features which come with Songbird are:

- the ability to fetch album covers
- integrated, fully functional web browser based on the Mozilla browser
- support for themes, called 'feathers' by Songbird
- Last.fm and Shoutcast radio (available through two add-ons which can be installed when Songbird starts for the first time or afterwards, from the official website)
- Songbird displays concert dates for artists on demand
- it offers a huge number of fields to sort the playlist
- integrated 7digital music store

MashTape configuration

Still, there are several drawbacks which don't look like they have been fixed: the fonts are too small and it doesn't seem to be a method to increase their size; the cover art is not retrieved from local folders.

Overall, 1.2.0 is a new step in the development of Songbird and it surely cannot dissapoint its users.

Official homepage

Songbird 1.0 Review - An Awesome Release!

Not long ago I reviewed Songbird 0.7.0, and in the meantime version 1.0.0 was released. What are the new features Songbird comes with and what improvements over the previous releases features 1.0? Well, to begin with, I was extremely impressed in a pleasant way with this Songbird release, so let me tell you why.

Songbird is an audio player and music collection manager built using XUL, the same language used by Firefox. Songbird is available on all the three major platforms: Linux, Mac and Windows.

To start with, I must say I was very impressed to see how many improvements and how much work was put into this player in the last couple of months only, since my last review of version 0.7.0.

When Songbird starts, it will prompt you with the license agreement, and then it will let you choose your media directory so it can scan your music collection. Scanning is pretty fast, and it took around 1:30 minutes on a collection of aproximately 5000 Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files, using my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz.

Scanning the music collection for the first time

Next, you will be able to choose what plugins you want to enable by default. Songbird comes with an iTunes plugin, Last.fm support and song submission, Shoutcast support, and a plugin which I strongly recommend, mashTape. mashTape is a configurable add-on which will fetch detailed information about the currently playing song from various websites. For example, it will show the artist's biography using the Last.fm wiki, album reviews from Amazon.com, artist news from Google News, photos, and the most wonderful thing, it will even embed YouTube videos related to the artist. It's just great, isn't it? And all these features are possible due to the fact that Songbird is practically not only an audio player, but a web browser too. It embeds most of the Firefox browser into it, so you will be able to search for lyrics or read artist info (other than that provided by mashTape) directly from it just by opening a new tab inside Songbird.

The Preferences window is similar to the one of the Mozilla browser

The interface is clean and intuitive, and the playlist allows you to sort it by any information possible: from title, artist, album or year, up to bands' tour dates, genre or file location. And these are just a few. You will be able to search the playlist using the Ctrl+F shortcut.

I also love the tabbed approach, which lets you open more than one playlist in each tab, and eventually browsing the artist info in another one. Also, this release includes several new keyboard shortcuts to improve Songbird's functionality, and you can see them from the Help -> Keyboard Shortcuts menu. You can install new add-ons directly from Songbird, or from the official add-ons website, in which case you will have to install them manually in ~/.songbird2/RANDOM.default/extensions (they are ZIP archives). There are plenty add-ons to choose from, which allow you to change the appearance, customise the web browser, get further information about your music and even more.

Another thing to mention: Songbird will automatically detect album covers inside the song's directory, and will display in the lower-left corner (I tried it for cover.png and cover.jpg). You will be able to right-click on a cover and save it under a different name if you like.

Songbird in action - notice how useful the mashTape add-on is

The official page provides a package which contains the binaries, so you won't have to compile anything yourself. Just copy the directory Songbird in a location of your choice (I use ~/apps for example), then make a launcher to the songbird binary. The configuration files are kept inside the ~/.songbird2 directory.

One of the few minuses is that Songbird does not start very fast and the interface is a little bit too slow, but this should not be such a big deal. Once in action, Songbird is beautiful!

Regarding stability, for the couple of hours I tested it Songbird never crashed and I could not catch any bug at first sight. It seems pretty solid.

Conclusion
Well, Songbird definitely became a major player with this release. With plenty of features and a wonderful approach, I can say I warmly recommend Songbird as the primary audio player to anyone, and at least a try if you haven't used it yet. It's powerful and it practically acts like a music centre for an audiophile.

More screenshots

Tick and untick the add-ons you want Songbird to use - I strongly recommend Last.fm and mashTape

Importing media when Songbird is started for the first time

Artist information from Last.fm

About

Official website

Songbird 0.7.0 Review - Audio Player for Linux

I'll start with a quote from the official Songbird homepage, which goes like 'Songbird promises to be the Firefox of media players'. Although not (yet) as popular in the audio players world as Firefox is in the one of web browsers, Songbird looks and offers an interface which integrates both powerful browsing features and music collection management.


Interface and usability
The first thing that strikes compared to the previous version is the interface, called Gonzo, which is now metal grey instead of black.

As I already said, Songbird provides not only an audio player, but an integrated web browser too, which is based on Mozilla Firefox, and it even provides the well-known about:config configuration variables together with a preferences dialogue which offers the same options as Firefox does.

about:config

The default UI font size is too small and according to this discussion I found on getsatisfaction.com, currently there is no fix available for it. For the library and playlists you can use the View -> Zoom In feature, or Ctrl + +, but this won't change the font sizes for the menu and left navigation panel. This should probably be fixed in the next release.

One funny thing is how the developers chose to name the themes, they are called 'feathers' in Songbird, which goes pretty well with the player's name. You can download more skins from the official website using the View -> Feathers -> Get More Feathers... menu.

The nice thing about Songbird is its ability to use tabs for any given task. For example you can have the Songbird add-ons page opened in one tab, lyrics for a song in another, or the music library or a playlist in the third one.

Music management and scanning
Scanning a collection of around 4400 Ogg Vorbis songs took almost 3 minutes on my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, which is quite reasonable I'd say.


Another plus for Songbird is that it takes no time to load the media library after you start it, compared with players like Amarok which will need a few seconds for it, depending on how large your music collection is.

You can only sort the collection by title, time, artist, genre and rating, a little poor in options if you ask me. At least directory and year would be useful too. There is no possibility to re-arrange the order in which they are displayed.

A crash occurred when I was browsing the feathers on the homepage, but the good thing is that Songbird offers a feature to automatically send your feedback regarding any crash to the developers.

Conclusion
I liked this Songbird release better than the last version I tried, but I think it needs some improvements too, like the UI font size or more features regarding the collection management. Having such a powerful integrated web browser may be useful to some, although it can look a little bloated to others. Nevertheless, Songbird is worth a try for any of you who like to fetch music information while listening, get lyrics etc, without opening an additional web browser.