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 play URL by other apps. This makes them less suitable for use with streamtuner2. (Same goes for streamtuner2 of course. It's not a player, just a playlist tool.)

URL placeholders

Any listed application can be invoked with a different kind of URL or filename. Most are rather flexible, but some depend on specific playlist file types or URLs. 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.

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

Leave it to the default %pls to avoid Streamtuner2 doing unneeded extra conversions (just delays playback).