Re: RFS: mpd - Music Player Daemon, and clients

[Eric Wong <eric@petta-tech.com>]

Apologies if this is a duplicate message, my first reply never showed up
on the list :(

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 02:54:36PM -0800, Eric Wong wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I've been maintaining Debian packages for the Music Player Daemon
> > project for the past month or so, and have finally decided that they're
> > ready for sponsorship and upload into Debian proper.  I have the full
> > support of the upstream authors, and have myself contributed to the
> > upstream development of mpc and mpd.
> 
> BTW, how does it compare to quark, which also has the same client/server
> design, and which i package.

Here's Warren Duke's comprehensive MPD feature list:
(Warren is the main guy behind MPD)

http://mercury.chem.pitt.edu/~shank/mpdfeatures.txt

Here's my personal breakdown:

(note that I'm probably biased, I only started trying quark last night)

MPD: 
	+ fewer dependencies to run and compile
	  (completely independent of X, even to build)
	+ more clients to choose from (quark has no phpMp equivalent)
	+ gapless playback (besides terminally broken MP3s)
	+ crossfading
	+ password, permissions support
	+ _significantly_ lower memory usage (see comparison)
	+ active community of both users and developers (forums, irc)
	* supports common formats (Ogg, MP3, FLAC, wave; AAC not in Deb)
	* designed from the ground up to be a lightweight network daemon
	- missing streaming (planned feature)

quark:
	+ streaming is supported
	+ lower client/daemon latency using FIFOs
	? how good is remote client support over network ?
	? gapless playback (haven't fully tested myself) 
	- charm-quark doesn't support seek
	* stayed in the foreground when I started it, doesn't
	  'daemonize'. Adding '&' obviously works, though

memory usage comparison:

= quark with _one_ FLAC song loaded and playing:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 4180 normalpe  18   0 97236  14m  13m S  0.0  1.5   0:00.24 quark

= mpd with 49 FLAC and WAVE songs in the playlist and playing:

 1937 normalpe  16   0  7316 1976 6908 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.11 mpd
 1957 normalpe  15   0  7316 4008 6908 S  0.0  0.4   0:10.05 mpd
 1958 normalpe  15   0  7376 4192 6908 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.92 mpd

Notes: mpd is multiprocess and uses shared memory. Memory usage output
based on top (probably not the most accurate measurement), quark was
freshly started while MPD had been running and playing for several hours
before. 

Additions/corrections welcome.

-- 
Eric Wong                normalperson@yhbt.net
Petta Technology, Inc      eric@petta-tech.com