Deadbeef

Version: Web: http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net

The cottage industry around the development of new music players for Linux continues, and this time we’ll take a look at a Deadbeef. The name may sound strange, but it’s just a magic hex number that spells a word, in this case 0xDEADBEEF.

Visually, the player looks neat and compact, it has playback and volume controls on the top and a playlist area below it, welcoming a user to drag and drop music there. There are some interesting features that make Deadbeef distinctive, which you may want to try. First, it automatically splits CUE files to tracks and enables gapless playback for FLAC, APE, TTA, Ogg Vorbis, Wavpack, WAV, MPAC and ALAC formats. Unlike many other players that cut off silence at the start and end positions to achieve the gapless effect, Deadbeef plays the exact number of samples that are stated in files. This is useful for audiophiles who rip CDs into files and need accurate playback everywhere. Another outstanding feature is that Deadbeef neither depends on GStreamer nor systemwide FFmpeg nor MPlayer libraries, instead it’s bundled with its own set of decoders and would make a good variant for minimalistic Linux installs.

The Deadbeef interface is quite modest, but the playlist area supports tabs and allows you to keep several playlists open at a time. Apart from 16-band equaliser, which can be enabled under the Playback menu,

“Splits CUE files to tracks and enables gapless playback.”