Hello, I am using mostly DeadBeeF as the music player but sometimes I would also like to use Amarok.
However I cannot, because it just feels so much like WMP (the worst media player of all time).
So I would like to know if any of those features will be ever implemented:

1) CUE sheet support (as in FLAC image+cue, APE image+cue, ...)
2) Configurable output (pure ALSA output, PulseAudio output, ...)
3) An option to actually close Amarok when closing the window instead of sending it to tray
4) Option to set the size of audio buffer (in milliseconds or kilobytes)

Also, I would like to report that the music sometimes stutters during playback, it pauses after starting the playback and resumes after a few seconds.
Also, when I pause the playback, it keeps playing for a few seconds, then pauses (without fadeout), then resumes and immediately fades out.

Anyway, I do not plan to use Amarok much, but I would like to use it sometimes, but my collection is APE+CUE mostly, so right now I cannot anyway,
BTW, I am coming from Windows (still use them about 50% of the time) and am used to the best music player on the planet - foobar2000 (which, unfortunately, has no match on Linux by far ?yet?).

Thanks

Quick answer to your question.

1. Cue sheet support is actually work in progress, sou you will have to wait
2. Amarok doesn't handle the output, it lets Phonon do so, you can change configuration for the output in the Phonon settings in System settings -> Multimedia -> Audio and Video settings
3. Use Ctrl+Q
4. See point 2.

FWIW: when asking questions, it would be really helpful to always state the exact version of Amarok and which KDE release you are using. In the question about stuttering: what phonon backend are you using and which version?

I will move this to the Amarok Help section, as it is in not or only marginally related to usability.

FWIW2: there is an extensive handbook in Amarok, also available online at http://userbase.kde.org/Amarok/Manual. Please refer to it as pretty much everything is explained there

Hi, thanks for the answers. My phonon package version is 4.7.1-1.fc20. I can not find any setting regarding output device nor buffer in the phonon configuration KDE Control Module. Maybe because I have only the gstreamer backend installed? I could not find any other backend than gstreamer and VLC in Fedora repos. Does that mean that now the audio chain when using amarok is like this: Amarok -> Phonon -> GStreamer -> PulseAudio -> ALSA -> SoundCard? Isn't that creating quite a big latency and could be the reason for the audio stutter? I think the best for my liking would be Amarok -> ALSA -> SoundCard or Amarok -> Phonon -> ALSA -> SoundCard... But I cannot find a way to configure it like this (and I don't think it is possible).
Anyway... do you have any ETA for the cue sheet support?

Thanks

The Output Device should be specified in System Settings > Multimedia > Phonon > Device Preference. Ensure the appropriate devices are specified for each category in turn.

Neither the GStreamer or VLC modules allow you to configure them i'm afraid, so you can't change their buffer sizes.

In terms of the audio chain, Phonon is merely a wrapper used by Amarok which allows it to seamlessly switch between multimedia backends such as GStreamer and VLC. The actual chain would be: Amarok (using GStreamer via Phonon) > Pulseaudio > ALSA > Sound Card. Eliminating Pulseaudio isn't recommended at this time, but you could try tweaking it's settings to increase the amount it buffers, at the expense of higher latency.