When it comes to music players, Linux offers a hugely impressive range to choose from. From evaluating everything out there, I’m still of the opinion that Tauon Music Box is the finest open source solution although fooyin is snapping at its heels. Don’t be put off by Tauon’s slightly idiosyncratic interface. Its interface is actually really impressive.
And it’s got every feature under the sun (I need) without any bloat. Things like gapless playback, CUE sheets support, streaming, topchart generator, downloading cover art, and so much more, it’s perfectly designed for audiophiles who have a large music collection.
As the software reaches its 10th anniversary, the developer has decided to rename the software to Tauon. Most of the user base has been calling it that already though, but it’s a good move.
At the same time, the developer has released a new edition with the following changes:
- Tauon now uses libgme to enable native support for the following video game music formats:
- AY (ZX Spectrum/Amstrad CPC)
- GBS (Nintendo Game Boy)
- GYM (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
- HES (NEC TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine)
- KSS (MSX Home Computer/other Z80 systems)
- NSF/NSFE (Nintendo NES/Famicom)
- SAP (Atari systems using POKEY sound chip)
- SPC (Super Nintendo/Super Famicom)
- VGM/VGZ (Sega Master System/Mark III, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive,BBC Micro)
- Added a new high contrast dark theme.
- Improved cover fetching for Discord reliability.
- Improved encoding detection for CUE sheets.
- Tweaked how album in the gallery view art split, with a new added gallery setting “Merge multi disc albums”.
While fooyin lacks a lot of features I’d like, its already my default music player. But I can see why many audiophiles will prefer Tauon. Its domain name is as crazy as its interface though.