Any music player recommendations? (similar to audacious)

Hey!

I have been blessed lately with the fact that I don't need to use Windows10 software (or as I was doing Linux and Win10VM) for work, and my laptop started dying, so I went full on for a FreeBSD/OpenBSD dual partition on my "new" T420 laptop.
Because of its lower specs compared to my old computer, I am trying to go as minimal as possible, so I went into install Audacious, but I saw it pulls dependencies on pulseaudio. I went to compile it into ports, but saw that audacious-plugins doesn't have the option to flag that out, so I am wondering if I can get something similar that it's not it. I tried XMMS2, but is not available anymore. So what would anyone recommend as a substitute? I already have moc and madplay installed, but I would like something I can have a GUI when I work on a DE. Does anyone have a recommendation for a guy who used audacious for over a decade and is completely lost on modern media players? Internet radio capabilities would be a must, and Winamp skins would be nice, but I don't hold into a hot iron for it.

I am using WindowMaker, so I'll rather don't pull a lot of dependencies.
Thanks in advance.
 
While this does not count as being audacious like - the only music player you need for entirety is musicpd. All the rest are smokes and layers of fancy looking things
Perhaps I should have tried that, but it is too late.

I wrote my own handmade, primitive player, put it in a thin client and connected it to my amplifier.


The thin client has an old version of FreeBSD and a mini wirless keyboard, no monitor.
After it booted, rings a bell, then I log in.
 
TCL and fossil, pure old school :D
It is not old school, but tcl school.

Yes, unfortunately out of fashion, but still maintained and developed, alive.

tcl, tk, the multiple packages, sqlite3, fossil indeed all belong to tcl school.

Quality programs, bricks to build what one wants in few lines.

In this case: tcl, sqlite3 and snack packages.
 
It's multimedia/audacious-plugins who is depending on audio/pulseaudio and that can be "fixed" by configure the port with make config and then make package.
eg.:
Code:
cd /usr/ports/multimedia/audacious-plugins
make config (#remove pulseaudio)
make package
cd work-qt6/pkg/
pkg add audacious-plugins-4.x.y.x.pkg
cd ../..
make clean
pkg lock -y audacious-plugins-4.x.y.x.pkg (#if you don't want bo be reinstalled by pkg.)
 
Sorry for my late reply; I am having an hectic week!
I installed the ports tree, but haven't done much with it (thinking about modifying the flags od Audacious-plugins). I didn't see any flag for pulseaudio, but again, this is another rabbit hole: In the past (before it was even git based), I used to bruteforce my way by just mixing precompiled apps and binaries, and nowadays I want to do it the proper way: By installing poudiere and making my "own" local repo.
I tried some of those players. Didn't try musicpd, but sounds interesting (I have mocp, but the ncurses interface seems broken. Need to make sure it is not a global issue).
DeadBeef seems nice, even if it looks a bit weird on my WindowMaker DE. By default it supports many formats, including mod music.

I am missing a simpler play method, as I am using WindowMaker, on OpenBSD I got this handy docapp that lets me interface with madplay. I guess I can compile it from source, but at the moment I have quite a bit to chew on :P

Thanks for all the recommendations.
 
C* Music Player - cmus with screen, the cmus package needs to be built from ports after the binary from the repo is very limited.
wmaker menu:
Code:
  (
    "C*Muzikisto",
    ("C*Mus-Player", EXEC, Cmus),
    ("Play  |>", EXEC, "cmus-remote -p"),
    ("Stop  <>", EXEC, "cmus-remote -s"),
    ("Pause ||", EXEC, "cmus-remote -u"),
    ("Prev  <<", EXEC, "cmus-remote -r"),
    ("Next  >>", EXEC, "cmus-remote -n"),
    (Quit, EXEC, "screen -X -S cmus quit")
  ),
Cmus wrapper:
Code:
#!/bin/sh

if pidof cmus | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
then
   if wmctrl -lp | awk '/C*Mus-Player/{print $3}' | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
   then
      wmctrl -lp | awk '/C*Mus-Player/{print $3}' | xargs kill
   else
      sh -c 'xterm -g 88x20+400-0 -T "C*Mus-Player" -e "screen -x cmus"'
   fi
else
   sh -c 'xterm -g 88x20+400-0 -T "C*Mus-Player" -e "screen -S cmus cmus"'
fi
Cmus wrapper is best added to the active corner, you can add the following to the user exitscript:
Code:
screen -X -S cmus quit &
because after relogging cmus in screen occupies the entire CPU thread.
 
I can always recommend multimedia/vlc for music... It can play sound, it's got all the advanced controls, it's got a CLI interface, you can even use it as a streaming server on your LAN, it will play anything you throw at it... Yes, even the weird music formats, in addition to the common ones. And it's got visualization plugins if you like!
 
I like using mpd with the wmpdart dockapp for windowmaker. There is a thread here on how to set up mpd, I put an append on the thread about using wmpdart. Should work great on a T420. Very few dependencies, I run a minimal 14.2-RELEASE install with just Xorg and windowmaker, so none of the gnome/kde/xfce libraries are present, no pulse or pipewire installed, mpd seems quite happy talking directly to oss. Enabling bitperfect should work too, although I haven't bothered doing that, it sounds pretty good as it is.


It looks like this. You can see wmpdart dockapp beneath wmix at the bottom of the dock. The name of the currently playing track scrolls across the top of the dockapp, and you can make it display the album cover if you want (I haven't tried that yet). I set up the playlist separately with ncmpc or similar. The dockapp lets you play, pause, forward to next track, change volume, etc. Full details on the github page. It's nice to have the dockapp integration for mpd, the developer has done a nice job, it's good to see someone still developing new dockapps. If you want more details let me know and I'll dig out my notes and config and post it here, the forum mpd howto has most of it anyway.

PS I had to build it locally from the github repo, I don't think there is a port of this dockapp yet. The code works, I haven't seen it crash yet. :)

screenshot_2025-07-01_at_16:35:02.png
 
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