Audio players

On BSD/Linux systems there are a plethora of audio players. In streamtuner2 you can configure most of them as target application. Mostly it makes sense to use a single application for all audio formats. But at least the */* media type should be handled by a generic player, like vlc.

Audacious

audacious

audio

XMMS2

xmms2 %m3u

audio

Amarok

amarok -l %pls

audio

Exaile

exaile

audio

mplayer

mplayer %srv

console

VLC

vlc %u

video

Totem

totem %u

video

Media Player

mplayer2.exe %asx

Win32

Some audio players open a second instance when you actually want to switch radios. In this case it's a common workaround to write pkill vlc ; vlc %u instead, which ends the previous player process and starts it anew. For VLC there's however also the --one-instance option, which sometimes works better. (And sometimes not.)

Some applications, like Rhythmbox or Banshee, are primarily playlist managers, not players, and cannot be invoked with a station URL. This makes them less suitable for use with streamtuner2. (Same goes for streamtuner2 itself. It's not a player, but just a playlist browser.)

URL placeholders

Listed audio players get run with a streaming server address (URL). These can either be direct MP3/Ogg servers (http://example.org:7843/) and sometimes playlist files (http://example.org/listen.pls) - depending on the channel directory.

Most audio players automatically handle any station URLs. Some however support just a few formats, or can't handle modern XSPF playlists for instance. Which is why you can control this by adding a placeholder after the configured application name:

Placeholder

Alternatives

URL/Filename type

%pls

%url %u %r

Either a remote .pls resource (fastest), or a local .pls file (if converted)

%m3u

%f %g %m

Provides a local .m3u file for the streaming station

%srv

%d %s

Direct link to first streaming address, e.g. http://72.5.9.33:7500

%xspf

%x

Xiph.org shareable playlist format (for modern players)

%jspf

%j

JSON playlist format (widely unsupported)

%asx

Some obscure Windows playlist format (don't use that)

%smil

Standardized multimedia sequencing lists (which nobody uses either)

Preferrably use the long %abbr names for configuration. The default is %pls if you leave it out. (Most directories already provide PLS files, which avoids any extra conversion by ST2 which sometimes delay playback.)

A few channels (like Jamendo) send custom JSON playlist snippets, which no audio player would understand. Which is why they're always pre-converted.

Most audio players like %pls, yet sometimes the older %m3u format more. Streamripper requires %srv for recording.

Use the newer %xspf format if your player supports it. This format retains the maximum of station infos (such as homepages etc.), and thus often makes for better bookmarking directly in your player.

Other players

Here a few other configuration examples for other players/backends.

MPD

Rocus van Oosten recommends following wrapper script to start playing radio streams via MPD right away: 

MPD_HOST='10.0.0.222' # or your MPD host
export MPD_HOST
mpc clear
mpc load $1
mpc play

Save it as mpc-pls script and configure it in streamtuner as mpc-pls %pls for example.