Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Interface
4. Functionality
5. Plugins
6. Tips and Tricks
7. Summary

0. Introduction

Music has been fascinating for mankind since its very beginning. Ancient tribes constructed first simple istruments and, while primitive sounds cannot be compared to those we can hear today, they were valued and appreciated. Music began to become a substantial part of homo sapiens’ daily life. Many years later, in our times, there is barely any life without music, which we pick and listen to according to our own taste.
Linux users are no different, that is why I decided to dedicate this article to you, so that you could also have a taste of Exaile, the application I find worth looking into.

1. Installation

While Exaile may not be the most popular music player, it is known well enough to have its place in most of the major repositories.

a) Installation under Ubuntu GNU/Linux

First, you need to click “Install and remove applications”, as in the picture below:

In the new window, in the searchbox, type the name of the application you are looking for — Exaile. Then, put a tick next to it and hit Apply.

After the installation file is downloaded, Exaile will be installed automatically.

b) Installation in other distributions

If you would like to install Exaile in a different system, you should run your package manager or some sort of front-end and find it there. APT is an example of a package manager; Synaptic is an APT front-end.

c) Compiling from the source

If you cannot find Exaile in the repositories you are using, you will have to install it manually from the source files. Sources are available here. You should download them to your desktop, then run the terminal and type

cd ~/Desktop
tar xfvz exaile_0.2.13.tar.gz
cd exaile_0.2.13
make
sudo make install

Exaile uses some of Firefox’s functions, so this popular browser also has to be present. There are three non-standard options available, mostly for advanced users who keep libraries and programs outside of default directories, and they are pretty self-explanatory.

Environmental variables accepted by “make install” are:

FIREFOX
Path to Firefox directory, usually:
/usr/lib/firefox

LIBDIR
Libraries directory, which will be added to PREFIX, usually:
/lib

PREFIX
Installation path. Exaile will create files in the subdirectory of a given directory, usually:
/usr/local

In a simple example where Firefox is installed in /usr/lib/xulrunner, you could run “make install” by typing:

% FIREFOX=/usr/lib/xulrunner make install

2. Interface

Exaile’s interface is supposed to resemble Amarok’s look and feel, a program using the Qt library and designed for KDE, and I think you would agree that it does a good job there. Here is a typical Amarok window:

and Exaile’s window:

Amarok was a real pathfinder among music players for Linux, but for many GNOME users, the fact that it is using Qt and therefore makes their systems load two huge libraries, is a problem. Even I avoid that, despite having a lot of volatile memory.
I will now try to describe carrying out some basic tasks in Exaile.

a) Searching your collection

After running Exaile you will find a search box in the upper left corner. It enables you to search your music collection, which I will describe in detail later, by artist, album, genre, etc. Reliability of the search depends on tags of your music files and some (especially genre) may be missing or misleading and cause problems, see below — Molesta is obviously not a heavy metal band.

Search according to author:

according to album:

according to genre:

b) Playlist adjustments

There are generally two ways of adding items to the current playlist. You can either pick and double-click a song from the menu on the left or drag-and-drop the file straight to the list. Here is one of Exaile’s advantages over the default Ubuntu player: in Rhythmbox, double-clicking an album wipes out your playlist and creates a new one, while Exaile will seamlessly enqueue new items. This is a much more comfortable solution.

Another convenience is the ability to adjust items’ order simply by dragging them throughout the list. It is also another advantage over Rhythmbox.

Other options are in the contextual menu available by right-clicking any item:

From here you can make Exaile play the current song once again before proceeding to the next one (”Toggle Queue”) or stop after a certain item (”Toggle: Stop after this track”). I find this option especially useful — for example, if I only want to listen to half of the album (favourite half) I can make one of the items the last one without having to delete the other half.

Move your cursor lower and you will find that even “Remove” has additional options, from simple removing from Playlist or deleting from disk to blacklisting, another interesting function, which lets you avoid loading unliked songs without having to delete them permanently or move around the directory structure. You just need to add them to the blacklist and you will never hear them again, at least in Exaile. To clear the playlist (to start a new one) just click “x” next to the playlist name:

Below is the playback bar.

Search options enables you to search the current playlist. I think the rest of the options are rather self-explanatory.

3. Functions

a) Media library

Collection is the way of organizing your music files, which I mentioned earlier. Managing it could not be any easier and does not require any specific directory structure. All you need to do is add the place(s) where you store your music in the Library Manager (Edit -> Library Manager), as in the picture below:

In the new window hit Add (upper right corner), find the directory, mark it, hit Add (lower right corner for some variety) again and you are done.

You should see the difference in the Library Manager window:

Applying the changes should result in closing the Manager window and scanning newly added directories. Information will be displayed in the status bar:

It is possible to make Exaile scan your collection on a regular basis (autoscan function). To set it just go to “Preferences” (Edit -> Preferences) and then to “Library” (General -> Library), as in the picture below:

I recommend you use autoscan, but it may be a bit tough on older hardware, so you can disable it by putting “0″ as the interval and rescan collection manually, when you need to (Tools -> Rescan).

b) Playlists

Playlists are supported; what’s more, they are created automatically. You can access the playlist through the “Playlist” tab:

Exaile comes with some Built In playlists, like Top 100 with your 100 favourite songs (to be determined by using Exaile to play them), Most Played, with certain rating and so on.

I think I can safely assume that the ability to create one’s own playlists is more important, though. You can do it by right-clicking the Custom Playlist folder and selecting “Add Playlist” from the menu, as in the picture below:

In the new window type the name of a new playlist and hit “OK”.

There is also another way. If you already have an item in the default playlist, library, or in the search results you can right-click it, and from the contextual menu described above, choose Add to Playlist -> New Playlist. This will create the new playlist containing the selected item:

You should be able to find the newly created list in Playlists and load it:

Now you can add items to this list straight from the right-click contextual menu — like you did at first, as the name of your list will appear in the “Add to Playlist” submenu — or just drag them in. If you want to add many items, instead of moving them one by one, you may select all (Ctrl + A) or more than one but not all (Ctrl + left-click) and then add a whole group.

c) CD-Audio

Exaile will not play CDs automatically, so it will not interrupt your current playlist, but it is of course possible to listen to music straight from an audio CD (File -> Open Disc):

Exaile will display a new playlist with files from the CD:

In case you have more than one optical drive and cannot run the disc, you have to either insert the CD into another drive or tell Exaile which drive to use. This can be set in the Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced tab by putting the path to the preferred device in the CD Device input box. Usually, switching from

/dev/cdrom

to

/dev/cdrom1

should do the trick. If you do not know the path, try looking for it in the /dev directory.

d) Last.fm Support

As befits a modern music player, Exaile offers Last.fm support. Configuration is simple — all you need is to enter your login and password (Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Last.fm) and you are good to go.

As we all know, Last.fm gathers information about music we listen to. Exaile kindly informs you when it makes a connection to Last.fm and transfers data:

e) OSD

The OSD (On-screen display) is a little window you can see every time a new song is being played. In order to make configuration changes to it, you need to go to the Notification menu (Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Notification).

Most of the options are self-explanatory, though it is worth mentioning that the OSD can be freely positioned and will remain in the area we move it to, without having to insert coordinates. You can put any text you wish in the “Display Text” field:

The OSD is there to make our work at the computer more pleasant and display useful information about a particular song and that is why there are a couple of tags we can use:

Title: {title}
Length: {length}
Artist: {artist}
Album: {album}
Bit rate: {bitrate}
Genre: {genre}
Year: {year}
Rating: {rating}
Volume: {volume}

The code above will result in:

I encourage you to create your own configuration that would meet your needs.

f) Title information

Basic information about the file and song can be reached through “Information” in the right-click contextual menu of every item:

Here, by switching between tabs, you can find out additional information about the performing artist and album or download lyrics. Exaile uses Firefox to display some of the data here. I will cover this aspect in the fifth point.

Displayed lyrics are downloaded from lirycwiki.org and for it to work correctly you will need proper tags in your music file. While most of the titles are labeled correctly, there are some exceptions, like rips of old discs, too old to be tagged properly. It might also happen that you download mp3 files from an unknown source or created by some kids unaware of what MP3tag is. In such rare cases you will have to enter the labels by yourself, otherwise lyrics search may not work. Exaile offers help with that, in the same right-click contextual menu you will find “Edit Track Information” option, which opens a window similar to the one presented below:

where you should enter all the necessary information.

g) Internet radio stations

Exaile can also be used to listen to Internet radio stations. In order to connect, you need to enter its URL (File -> Open URL). Internet radio stations usually do not give addresses of their servers, but publish files “that connects to the server” instead. All you need to do is download this file, open it with any text editor, copy the server address, paste it in the “Open URL” window and hit “OK”.
Contents of demonstration Internet radio station’s file with selected first address of the first server:

h) Visualizations

I find this element worth mentioning, as it is quite spectacular. To turn it on and see for yourself just click “Show Visualizations” (View -> Show Visualizations):

4. Plugins

In these several paragraphs I will describe, in my opinion, the most interesting plugins for Exaile.

Main plugin configuration utility can be reached through Edit -> Plugins:

There are no plugins installed by default, which I find reasonable, since everyone needs different functions and there is nothing more annoying than an application that comes with thousands of unnecessary plugins preinstalled.

To see what plugins are available, switch to the “Available Plugins” tab:

To install a plugin put a tick next to it and hit Install/Upgrade:

a) Desktop Cover

It is a very interesting plugin and everyone who cares about the look of their desktop will find it useful. Its main function is to display a cover of the album you are listening to directly on your desktop:

Besides installation, the plugin also requires switching on and some configuration. Go to the “Installed Plugins” tab, find it on the list, put a tick next to it and hit “Configure”. A window like this should open:

Here you can do some basic configuration. By manual positioning you can set where exactly you want the cover to appear on the Desktop; the default setting is to display it right in the centre. Gravity lets you set which side of the screen the cover will be leaning toward: northwest is the upper left corner, southeast is the lower right and so forth. Sizing is, obviously, responsible for the size of the displayed cover. Everything is explained clearly in the picture below:

b) Did you know

This plugin offers a more pleasant and a bit simplified way of giving information on the artist, right from Wikipedia. If you regularly find yourself listening to new genres and bands, music you get from friends perhaps, and would like to know more about the performer you should definitely check out this plugin. It requires no configuration, it will only add a small “i” icon just above the volume control, which when clicked brings up a window like this:

c) Resume playback

Another interesting plugin, also very simple and requiring no configuration with a very straightforward function — it remembers the last song at the exact moment you stopped listening before turning Exaile off. When you run it again, you can listen from that moment on.

d) Serpentine Plugin

This plugin enables you to burn quickly the music from the current playlist. Just click the cd icon (like the Did You Know icon, it is placed above the volume control) and all the songs will be transferred to Serpentine (in a new window) from where Serpentine takes over.

You must have Serpentine installed to use this plugin. Otherwise (it is installed in Ubuntu by default) you will get an error:

e) Sound Juicer

With this plugin you can import music to your library. It is not the most useful plugin, as it only starts Sound Juicer with no input data as to where your music is located for example, so you will have to set it in Sound Juicer itself. To run this plugin go to File -> Import Disc.

Obviously, you cannot use this plugin without Sound Juicer.

5. Tips and Tricks

a) Running Exaile and its connections with Firefox

Exaile has the ability to display various information about performers using Wikipedia. To grab the data it uses Firefox. This fact can be confirmed by analysing the main executable file, which is a shell script:


#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/share/exaile
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib/firefox
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/firefox
exec python exaile.py “$@”


As you can see, it changes the current directory to /usr/share/exaile and exports two variables defining Firefox’s location, the binary files Exaile needs. This way Exaile can be used like an Internet browser, very limited, but still a browser.

Last line runs the program itself, a python script, as .py indicates.

b) Equalizer

Default equalizer settings are stored in a root-owned file /usr/share/exaile/equalizer.ini, while personal settings for each user may be found in ~/.exaile/settings.ini. It is also the file which should be edited if any changes are necessary. The equalizer settings begin with:

[equalizer]

Below this tag you can find, among other things, what preset has been used previously. This setting is kept so that you dp not have to change it every time.

last-preset = Techno

You can change its value to overwrite the default setting. It is a simple way to impress a girl, just edit is as presented below:

killall exaile
nano ~/.exaile/settings.ini
exaile

In Nano change the value of last-preset and it will be remembered.

If you wish to add something to the equalizer, simply write a new line below the last-preset, for example:

eqpreset_kocham_swoją_mamę = ['Kocham swoją mamę', 0.4, 0.2, 0.1, 0.2, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]"

Syntax is as follows:

eqpreset_name

Here you give your addition a name, mostly for your own convenience (and possibly that of the person that will be editing the file later), so you do not need anything fancy.

= ['Name displayed in the Equalizer window',

This is a name visible in Exaile’s GUI, in its Equalizer window to be exact. The following numbers determine the slider’s position: 0.0 is a state of balance, 1.0 is the highest value and -1.0 the lowest.

c) Other tricks concerning settings.ini

There are some more additions that can be made to ~/.exaile/settings.ini. I will try to present the most intereresting.

search_paths = ['/home/byisk/music','/home/byisk/mp3s']

These two values in between single quotation marks (’) are paths for Library Manager. All files in these locations will be imported to your Collection.

cd_device = /dev/cdrom

Here you can specify the path to your CD drive, which you would like to use for listening to Audio CDs. Advanced users may want to create symlinks, eg. /dev/abc, and change the target file according to requirements.

All those changes can be done from the GUI.

d) Directories used by Exaile

~/.exaile/covers stores album covers for our collection.

~/.exaile/saved contains the playlist0000.m3u file, which is not a saved playlist but a list of currently loaded songs with paths. It is being overwritten once in a while, so it is not always up-to-date.

6. Summary

I think that Exaile is a really great application and I regret that it is still rather unpopular in Poland. This program is being used by a large number of users according to its rating in Ubuntu’s “Install and remove applications”

I encourage everyone to use this program, which, in my opinion, beats all other audio players for GNOME.