Re: [Banshee-List] Banshee versus Clementine versus any other audio software

[Bertrand Lorentz <bertrand lorentz gmail com>]

Thank you for your feedback, my comments below

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 5:06 AM, Martin G <ebisumartin gmail com> wrote:
[snip]
> It seems as though these projects are hampered by what is a common
> issue in open source, which is that it is fun and exciting to work on
> new algorithms to make new types of clever playlists, or to develop
> support for a new music file format or playlist, but it's boring as
> watching paint dry to debug and spend time hunting down some bug in
> basic functionality. So features increase while stability improves by
> only minor increments.

I disagree, hunting down a bug can be quite interesting while tracking
the issue down and rewarding when you manage to fix it.
But for this to be the case, several conditions have to be fulfilled:
- You need to know that the problem exists
(http://banshee.fm/contribute/file-bugs/)
- You need to be able to reproduce it consistently and reliably.
- The fix has to be in some part you can actually fix

Then there's also a cost/benefit factor : it might not be the best use
of a developer's time to spend tens of hours tracking down a bug that
only affects a tiny fraction of the users or only happens under rare
conditions.

But in a way you're right: if someone writes a patch adding a new
feature that doesn't introduce visible regressions, it would be
counter-productive for the project to reject it and say "go fix some
bugs instead"...

[snip]
> Just for reference, below is a list of the pros and cons that prevent
> me from committing to either Banshee or Clementine. All of them relate
> to features that exist, but they just aren't reliable, or one exists
> in one application but not the other. In other words, I'm not hoping
> for some esoteric feature, I just would like what's available to work,
> and work in one place

I hope you see and understand the inconsistency of your position: if a
feature exists in application A but not in application B, adding it to
application B is still a new feature and can cause instability,
regressions, etc...

> I like Banshee because:
> It reasonably reliable (though not 100%) for transferring music and
> playlists to my Android (which is my main portable MP3)
> The interface for sorting playlists and rating songs is workable.
> There is a decent remote app for my Android phone so I can control it
> over the LAN.
>
> I don't like Banshee because:
> It does not reliably load streaming internet audio. (Some links do not
> work, some take several tries to load)

This is a tricky set of issues, because of all the elements in play :
streaming server issues, network connection, codecs available on the
client, media engine on the client, etc...

> No crossfading
> It does not come with sets of pre-bookmarked internet radio streams

Those two are interesting examples of the cost/benefit factor: we
could implement them ourselves, but it might not be a good idea in the
long term.

We could do our own custom implementation of crossfading, but it would
be significant amount of work, outside of the area of expertise for
most of us. And all that work would become obsolete when GStreamer
implements crossfading itself.

We used to have our own list of internet radios, but I think it was
difficult to maintain and update it. I don't think it's our job to
select radio stations :)
See this bug for some more details, and how distributions can provide
default radio stations :
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=548197


-- 
Bertrand Lorentz