Why yet another audio player?

Good question, the world is not lacking players. The initial idea was to build a player around ffmpeg and alsa - only. As most systems has these available, pMusic will run without any specific dependencies. Also, there is a lack of _small_ audio players that manage huge music collections. pMusic does.

How does it work?

Since pMusic is built of slow libraries (Bash, ffmpeg and gtkdialog), it is not the fastest players out there. This gives some challenges when it comes to gui solutions and speed. One thing to mention is that pMusic is strictly playqueue-based, which means you can only play a song added to playqueue. You can not start a song from ie. the 'Music-Source' field, the Radio-Hits grabber or from the album list in 'Track-info'. The song must be added to the playqueue before played.

There is no tabbed playlists as in some older players. Instead 'everything' can be added to favorites (lists) from the right-click menu.

In contrast to many new players that focus on audio-streaming and the cloud, pMusic offers options to build up you local collection. This includes storing lyrics and albumart found on the web, as well as grabbing tracks from your favorite radio-stations.

pMusic offers a wide range of track info for the playing song. By default this info is not built in the main gui as known in other great players. One of the main targets of pMusic is to be an easy player, and many (most?) users want the player to ... yepp... play. The track info is therefor separated from the rest in an unique module. Still easy reachable, - only one click away. Also, the track info module can be embedded into the main gui as done in the 'Wings' frontend.

How does the rating system work?

Every time you have played a song, a timestamp will be stored to the database. Later when searching the song, pMusic counts the timestamps for the rating. In the favorites overview, only timestamps last month is used to calculate the rating. In the Music Source menu, you can search for rated songs last week, month, or any custom time specification.

What if I want to convert a WAV file to a MP3 file?

Under 'PlayQueue' menu choose 'Export tracks' to convert all songs in playqueue. Activate 'Convert exported tracks' and optionally change stream quality.

How do I burn a playqueue to an audio disc?

pMusic is well matched with the program Pburn. Once you have a playqueue (well under 70 minutes long) of WAV,MP3,OGG,WMA files, then choose menu item 'Burn tracks'. When Pburn is first run, it will ask you where it should store it's temporary files. It will warn you not to select a partition that is formated in FAT(an old Microsoft standard). The other types of file system formatting such as ext2/3 and ntfs are fine. Make sure that there is at least 800mb (minimum) of empty space available on this drive. Choose the 'normalize' option in Pburn since it adds only a small amount of extra time to burn process. Follow instructions and in only a few minutes you will have burnt an audio disk. Keep the disk in a sleeve, out of sunlight, and it should last for many years.

What file operations are possible?

From the right-click menu in the playqueue or sourcelist you find options to 'Rename' 'Copy' or 'Delete'. You will be given a warning when you delete, but be aware that 'Delete' means erasing the source file, so it is gone forever. Copy and Delete also support multiple selection in sourcelist.

Is there an undo feature?

There are 2 different undo/redo features:

The playqueue history stores your list whenever you clear the queue. Like this you can go back in history to see what you played yesterday (or last month). There are 3 ways to go backwards in history. The most convenient way is to click on the left-arrow button or the hotkey (ctrl+Z). There is also a menu item.

You can also go back in you search/browse history by using the arrows beside the search-field. Or by looking at the complete history list (Music sources menu).

How do I change the interface to be something more exciting? A new Theme / Skin.

pMusic can change it's theme i.e. its icons and window color. It's a simple matter of installing an available theme pet and then choosing the theme. It is a preference option. Find more info on the theme page.

Can I rip an audio-CD with pMusic?

Yes, if the playqueue contains tracks from an Audio-CD, and you choose 'Export track' from the 'PlayQueue' menu, pMusic will rip the defined tracks from the Audio-CD. You should also define what format the ripped songs should have. This to avoid getting huge files in raw audio-format.

Can I record an audio stream from the web?

Yes, you can. Start the audio stream and choose 'Export tracks' from the menu. It will split up the radio-stream to music tracks - based on meta-information. This means you will get one mp3/ogg file, with correct naming, for each of the songs the radio station plays.

Doing this with the Radio-Hits grabber, recording will be running in background, and you can use pMusic as normal. See the 'Radio-Hits Grabber' in the 'Music-source' menu for more info."

What are Podcasts?

When you sign up for a podcast, you get regular file downloads automatically, maybe even once a day. As an example Deutsche Welle has a free daily podcast called 'Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten' to help students learning German. Make sure you select mp3 as the file format of the podcast if possible, since this is the most popular song format and very compact. The podcast manager will store downloaded podcasts in given directory. Be aware of that some podcasts is rather big, so you should define the download directory where there is enough free space.

How can I modify a theme?

If you have not downloaded any themes then "/user/local/pmusic/themes" directory will be empty: If you have, there will be a directory for each theme. In this directory you will find many .svg files which are the icons that make up the GTK GUI of pMusic. You can have pMusic running so you can compare these icons the their respective on-screen positions in the app. Now you can open your favourite image editor and edit these icons to your heart's desire, making sure to back-up your original theme and saving the new icons you create in a new directory inside "/usr/local/pmusic/themes". Be sure to save the icons with the identical name as the original.

You will also find two text files in the theme directory. You can leave the "themerc" file alone but you can edit the "gtkrc" file. One nifty thing you can do is change the font. Find a font you would like pMusic to have and be sure it is installed correctly in "/usr/share/fonts/default/TTF". The "gtkrc" file contains something like "font_name = DejaVu Sans 12" or "font_name = D3 Euronism 9", where "DejaVu Sans" or "D3 Euronism" is the font name and "12" or "9" is the size of the font. Alter these and save the file. There are lots of other things you can edit in this file, colors and such, just experiment, but remember to back-up before you do so you don't lose any of your hard work if something goes wrong.

Save all your changes and name your new directory to a theme name of your choice. Restart pMusic and go to File/Preferences where a window will appear offering you the theme options. If you have done everything correctly then your theme will appear in the list. Select it, restart pMusic and again, if all is well, your new theme will appear.

Why doesn't pMusic play this/that file-format?

pMusic supports many audio-formats, but it is depending of the converter 'ffmpeg' to work. Most distros contains ffmpeg, but it differs how it is compiled, and what formats it supports. If you are sure your ffmpeg supports input of an audio-format, but you still can't get pMusic to play it. - Please give a note!

To see a complete list of supported formats; run 'pmusic -h' in terminal.

Can I trim pMusic to run smooth on my old pc?

Yes, you can. After built your playqueue:

• Click on the pmusic-icon in the tray will hide the gui. Navigate in playqueue with the right-click menu.
• The 'Low-Powered' frontend is designed for less cpu usage. See preferences.
• You can start the playqueue with the pMusic backend from a terminal (pmusic -b playqueue.m3u). This uses the pmusic-engine, but no gui.

To minimize the cpu usage, it is also recommended to deactivate 'Normalizing' (preferences) and all soundfilter plugins
Note that you can build your own frontend with a minimum set of features.

How can I activate the equalizer?

pMusic uses the application 'Pequalizer' for software-based equalizing. You need "pequalizer" and it's dependencies installed. The dependencies are "alsaequal" and "caps", a ladspa plugin. Check the Puppy Package Manager if your Puppy is not shipped with Pequalizer. Visit the Pequalizer manual page for more information.

If pEqualizer is not present for you, there is still another alternative. - The 'Poor mans equalizer' plugin.

Are there any known bugs?

Please check the pMusic homepage for this.

How can I 'Add file to playqueue' rather than 'Play file' when clicking in filebrowser?

By default, pMusic plays (clear existing playqueue) song. But if pMusic is already running, clicking an audiofile in a filebrowser, it will add the song as last track in playqueue.

How can I set pMusic as the default audioplayer?

To set pMusic as the default player you must edit the tiny file /usr/local/bin/defaultaudioplayer. This might points to another audio player. Let it instead point to /usr/local/bin/pmusic. Also, don't forget to "set run action" in ROX-filer to /usr/local/bin/pmusic on the m3u playlists you create in pmusic if it is not set already. Then all you have to do is click the playlist file in ROX filer and it will load automatically.

Can I use the terminal or external code to manage pMusic?

pMusic provides different switches for adding / playing music. pMusic can also be ran as a backend (witout gui) with the -b switch. In additon to this you can send a signal to a running pMusic. - 'pmusic -s next' will start next song in playqueue. See 'pmusic -h' for a complete list of switches.

How can I control pMusic by hotkeys?

A good way is to use xbindkeys to activate the media-keys on your keyboard. The bindings is defined in the file $HOME/.xbindkeysrc. Here follows example-code for some bindings.

#media_play
"pmusic -s pause"
m:0x0 + c:162
NoSymbol

#media_stop
"pmusic -s stop"
m:0x0 + c:164
NoSymbol

#media_forward
"pmusic -s next"
m:0x0 + c:153
NoSymbol

#media_back
"pmusic -s prev"
m:0x0 + c:144
NoSymbol


In case no xbinkeys available, most window managers supports hot-keys as well. The main difference is that hot-keys managed by window manager requires the actual program to be the active window. The following code in $HOME/.jwm/jwmrc-personal plays next/previous song by ALT+right/left, and increases/decreases volume by ALT+up/down.

<Key mask="A" key="Up">exec:/usr/local/pmusic/pmusic -s volup</Key>
<Key mask="A" key="Down">exec:/usr/local/pmusic/pmusic -s voldown</Key>
<Key mask="A" key="Right">exec:/usr/local/pmusic/pmusic -s next</Key>
<Key mask="A" key="Left">exec:/usr/local/pmusic/pmusic -s prev</Key>