Stoffi Music Player

I was over Softpedia's website and found an open source music player named Stoffi Music Player.

-https://code.google.com/p/yet-another-music-application/

-https://www.stoffiplayer.com/?ref=header

I like the clean Explorer-like GUI. It gives it a modern look, yet simple, because it's something people are used to use, I'd say.

I haven't tried, yet. Just thought someone would be interested to know about it.

It supports the following formats: aac, ac3, aif, aiff, ape, apl, bwf, flac, m1a, m2a, m4a, mov, mp+, mp1, mp2, mp3, mp3pro, mp4, mpa, mpc, mpeg, mpg, mpp, mus, ofr, ofs, ogg, spx, tta, wav, wv

 

Thanks for the heads up.
The GUI is using Windows Classic scrollbars, buttons, menus and menu highlights which is in contrast to the rest of the modern Win 7 look that it has. I know looks should be least of worries but in this case it is a deal breaker for me. I guess it gives the classic look on those items because it's using .Net. It doesn't generate the play count for songs played even though it has a column for it. Creating a new playlist with fewer songs than the original generated playlist causes you to lose the original fully populated playlist. Jumplist icons are a generic windows file icon. Other than those few personal dis-likes, I like what they are trying to do. Tag etc. editing can be done in the details pane at the bottom. Next song played in a playlist will show a toast tooltip popup down by the system tray.

 

I must confess that I also believe that software GUIs should blend with the OS, to give that native look; almost like making us believe the software belongs to it in the first place. I truly dislike when software developers start creating overly complicated UIs. There are a lot of examples out there, and I always stay away from those.

Regarding the issues you found, maybe you could report them at their place -https://code.google.com/p/yet-another-music-application/issues/list

You need to have a Gmail e-mail, if I'm not mistaken. I've created one just for these kind of situations.

I'm going to ask for them to support FLV format. I couldn't contact them using their contact form; it resulted in some error message.

 

why do u want a music player to support a video format ?

 

Actually, I was thinking to suggest them to provide full media support, including FLV.

I've been wanting to replace VLC Media Player, and I truly would see Stoffi Music Player has the ideal replacement, specially considering I like the blending with the O.S, by providing a Explorer-like UI. The only side down is that it won't support video files.

I don't see why Stoffi couldn't evolve to a full media player, if the developers wish it so. But, if no one suggests it, we will never see it happening.

That's all, just a wish.

 

Ooops, that was to have been included in my previous reply. I would love to see this as well and for some reason thought that it was. If that along with some of the glitches mentioned were fixed, I could see me switching to it. The ability to change the background color/image and GUI customizing would be nice also. The progress track bar up in the tall Aero frame at the top needs to blend in more with the Aero look especially for those who have custom Aero colored msstyle. I would also like to have the details pane at the bottom to be like the tall Aero frame at the top. Vista media player 11 does this and for me, that's as nice a GUI look you can get. The 7 sidebar gadgets window and photo viewer does the same thing.

 

There are many options to change vlc player and u can try skins with the other players to make them blend with the os
i tried stoffi and its still very early for this player
the gui is slow and freezes sumtimes , no preloaded presets for equalizer
there should be a mini player option like aimp

 

I couldn't spot any issues with Aero effects because this old laptop won't support those effects.

But yes, it still has some glitches that should be worked on.

 

Give it time to improve. I did try different skins for VLC, but they do not work 100% as they should; not to mention most require the English version. Not to mention that VLC Media Player suffers from the same issue many other open source and free programs suffer - very poor and half-cooked localized versions. And, to make things worse, VLC Media Player translation platform is just too painful to deal with. I've tried to translate it, but it's just too cumbersome.

Stoffi's translation platform is far easier - you just have to edit a XML file, and any text editor will do. I'll be translating it to my language and will then donate it to the team behind Stoffi.

 

@ Greg S

Have you tried the beta version and see if any of those glitches you talked about has been solved?

-https://www.stoffiplayer.com/downloads/beta/32bit/InstallStoffiBeta.exe

 

I dont know about localization issues since i sue any player in english so never had that problem
did u try any other player like kmp or potplayer ?
i would wait for equalizer presets before trying stoffi again

 

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for the kind words.

Regarding moving Stoffi into video playback it is actually a plan of mine. It is a long term goal though but I think there's tons of cool stuff to do in that area like series recognition (with support for detecting new episodes or continue a Simpson marathon, for example), automatic sub downloads, built in IMDb and so on.

About the skin issue, we have a previous bug report where a patched theme dll caused Stoffi to revert back to classic menus, scrolls, etc. The bug is in .NET (I think) so it will be tough for me to fix.

And equalizer presets are coming. But I'm no audiophil so I need some help in finding good values. But it should arrive before summer.

The freezing during startup is a tougher nut to crack. One plan is to move to SQLite for settings storage since tests have shown that a lot of the freezes are due to the xml storage of .NET. There's also some freezes due to the first network call, I have talked to people at ms looking for a way around that freeze.

All your suggestions are listened to, but I may forget some of the good ones so it's always good to file a report.

I look forward to that translation and hope you guys continue to help me evolve this project.

Have a sunny day!
/Christoffer

 

OMG! We're being observed! Who needs NSA...

Welcome and thank you for considering the suggestions.

 

No but I will, thanks

 

Well good to see someone is poking here to listen to us
will keep an eye on this project
but there are already many good audio and video players out there - u must have sumthng in mind to make this one unique

 

That's true.

But, many are closed source. Many people dislike closed source applications, or they simply like to support open source projects. I like to support with whatever I can, even if just localization. Many other open source media players are simply forks from other projects, and not everyone likes them, nor do they like the original projects. We can't argue tastes, right?

It's always nice to have more alternatives.

When looking at alternatives we must have every possible scenario under situation. For instance, considering that I believe any application should blend with the O.S, if Stoffi evolves in the right direction, then it's a keeper. I won't even look back when replacing VLC Media Player. I'd imagine many more people would prefer a native look to the look of many of the media players out there. Some of them make the applications look like some arcade game or something like that.

In the end of the day, it's all about preferences, right?

 

^^Agreed