Re: EMMS best practice, tag editing and fetching lyrics

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

On 05/22/12 02:12 AM, Johnny wrote:
> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> On Mon, May 21 2012, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>
>>>> I am (again) attempting to convert to using EMMS as a front end for
>>>> mpd instead of using ncmpcp, but am struggling to get a good setup and
>>>> efficient usage, and hence wonder how emacs users play their
>>>> music files? 
>>>
>>> BTW, there are 2 more front ends in Emacs: mpc.el (bundled with Emacs
>>> since Emacs-23 or so) and ampc.el (available in GNU ELPA).
>>>
>>> I'm the author of mpc.el and from the points you mention, I'd guess
>>> mpc.el won't suit you (it doesn't even attempt to give you any kind of
>>> tag-writing ability, it rather focuses on providing a browser to find
>>> the music you want to play).
>>
>> Also Mingus! But, likewise, not particularly good for either of the OP's
>> needs. No lyrics support, and tag editing that depends on an external
>> library that I wasn't able to compile on my machine.
>>
>> But, for completeness' sake…
>
> Thanks for the completions, I may look into these at some point. I am a
> bit puzzled by the lack of documentation for emms and have not yet
> realised whether it is the best way to go in emacs for playing music
> (/media). I have managed to get a decent set up but not entirely
> content. I got the tag editor working by customising the
> 'emms-tag-editor-tagfile-functions' [1]to use 'id3tag' instead of the
> (seemingly obsolete? from 2006) 'mp3info'. This is maybe the main place
> where emacs shines, in addition to searching and adding to the
> playlist. 
>
> Lyrics seem possible, but quite complex to set up for fetching from the
> net, so I will be satisfied with usimg emms and ncmpcpp in parallell
> (and ario for a graphical front end for visitors who don't like the
> cli) to interface mpd.
>
> Any further opinions on setting up mpd through emacs will be
> appreciated! 

I started off with EMMS and was happy with it at first, but eventually
ditched it because:

1. I was only using it for music, none of the other multimedia things.
2. I had 32 lines of customization, just to listen to music.
3. It got out of sync with mpd. I control mpd through emacs, the command
   line, and my window manager, and I found that emms wouldn't notice
   when I changed the playlist or playstate through a different
   interface. That sort of defeated the purpose! (I would be curious to
   hear if this happens to you as well.)

I'm liking Mingus: it only does music, which is all I want, and it stays
aware of the global state of mpd (a 'g' is usually all it takes). I
don't like the browsing interface as well as EMMS (it's too tied to the
filesystem structure of your music library), but with ido-mode on it's
not bad at all.

E

> Cheers!
>
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  The customisation I added in init.el is:
>      ,----
>      |  (setq emms-tag-editor-tagfile-functions
>      | '(("mp3" "id3tag"
>      |    ((info-artist      . "a")
>      |     (info-title       . "s")
>      |     (info-album       . "A")
>      |     (info-tracknumber . "t")
>      |     (info-year        . "y")
>      |     (info-genre       . "g")
>      |     (info-note        . "c")))
>      |   ("ogg" . emms-tag-editor-tag-ogg)
>      |   ("flac" . emms-tag-editor-tag-flac))
>      | )
>      `----
> -- 
> Johnny