Seeking advice on media players

[KHall]

I'm seeking advice/input/opinions on Media players from the forum. I want a player that will rip audio CD's to my hard drive (and organize the songs in media player library) and be able to transfer those files to a generic mp3 player. It would also be nice to get the player to automatically launch when an audio CD is inserted. I have yet to find one player that can do these (seemingly) simple tasks and I would prefer not to use separate players to accomplish these functions.

Here's a list of the players I've tried and the obstacles I've hit.

1) Rhythmbox--Seems to be a pretty good player. It organizes files well enough, rips CD's just fine (including into mp3 format) and appears to read metadata from the CD's when it's there. My issue with Rhythmbox is that you cannot transfer files within Rhythmbox to any mp3 player. Could I just open the folder with the file tree and accomplish the transfer? Of course, but that defeats the point of using the player for me. This was the default player installed with Mint (I'm using Mint 6 BTW on a Dell inspiron 1525 laptop--and loving it!) and always auto starts when I insert an audio CD.

2) Banshee--I really liked this player at first. It does have a drag n drop ability to transfer songs from the library to a mp3 player with no problems. However, I get the same error message for every audio CD I've tried to rip. "Could not fetch metadata for CD". I get this message even for CD's that Rhythmbox was able to find metadata for. I suspect there is some kind of simple setting that needs to be changed to fix this, but several hours of googling has yielded no clues. I also cannot get Banshee to auto load when an audio CD is inserted, despite selecting the option in preferences to do so. If Rhythmbox is still installed, it will autoload instead. If I uninstall Rhythmbox, then Brasero autoloads instead. This is consistent across all the other players described below.

3) Amarok--Although I've seen lots of comments across forums about Amarok, I can find no evidence that it will rip CD's. This is a deal breaker for me.

4) Exaile--Ripping CD's is a little cumbersome (in my opinion) with this player. A button similar to Rhythmbox that clearly says "extract CD" or something to that effect would be easier to find. As is, this player seems to require that you insert the CD and then select the tracks you want to rip, and then you can find the option to rip the contents by right clicking. Also, the closest I could find to transferring music to the mp3 player was "exporting a playlist". Unfortunately, whatever file format the playlist is, my player doesn't recognize. Again, this makes it useless for me. It does do a good job of recognizing metadata from the CD's.

5) Listen--Again, although I've found a few web forum posts that say the Listen music player will rip audio CD's I've found no indication (or instructions) by using the player that it does so. (See #3)

So...please, tell me what I'm missing. Tell me that there is obviously a check box I'm not checking in the preferences of one of these players that will enable it to do a few seemingly simple tasks. Can I rip files with Rhyhtmbox and then transfer to my mp3 player with Banshee? Sure, but what a hassle. It seems one player should be able to do it all.

Am I missing some other fabulous player you've discovered that does "all" of these tasks? By all means let me know. By my count these are all the players available in the Mint repos....but I will gladly admit I missed one if only you'll point it out to me.

Last, let me say that I've spent several hours trying to figure this out on my own and I haven't just come posting on the forum at the first sign of difficulty. That said, I'm no expert....actually I'm still quite new-ish, but I've made some effort to figure out why certain tasks can't (or aren't) happening in across these various players and just come up empty. So I'm hoping lots of you and your many and varied opinions will weigh in.

Thx,

K

[Husse]

I had a Creative Zen connected an hour ago (and now it's gone ), and don't find any mp3 files on my hard disk.
But if my memory does not let me down completely you can drag drop from Rhythmbox to Nautilus - sort of half of what you want.
And it is a nice application...

[dlkreations]

What MP3 player are you using? If it is an iPod, I believe there is a plugin available for Exaile that you can get from the Preferences window under Plugins.

There is also another media player available, though I am not sure if it is in the repos yet, called SongBird. It pretty much has the same layout as iTunes. I haven't used it much, so I am uncertain if it will do all you need it to. I just checked their website, and according to their roadmap, it will have native cd ripping capabilities in April. You may want to check it out if you're willing to be patient and wait for their next release.

http://www.getsongbird.com/

[Husse]

Merlwiz79 has made a package for Mint of Songbird
http://packages.linuxmint.com/#5community