I'm using Amarok 2.1.1, and it seems there's little it can do right.

First off, I have a problem where Amarok simply stops seeing all information for some tracks. It sees all tags as blank, length as 0:00, bit rate as Unknown, sample rate as 0, and size as 0 B. Some tracks like this have correct length, bit rate, and sample rate, but the score is a very large negative number. This first appeared in Amarok 2.0.2, went away when I deleted all of my config filed, the purged and reinstalled Amarok. Now I'm on Amarok 2.1.1, and the problem is slowly coming back.

Second, I closed and restarted Amarok to see what would happen. A very bad idea. Now several tracks (probably more than two-thirds of my current 190 track playlist) have the wrong album and/or genre, my signature is a testament to this, as 'Forgiven, Not Forgotten' is folk/rock by The Corrs, Anamanaguchi do electronic/rock, and I don't know if I even have any heavy metal in my collection!

Third, whenever tracks play one after the other, they crossfade very nicely. But when Amarok gets to the last track and stops, it just stops suddenly, cutting off about the last three seconds, making me think that it's just cutting off the part where it should be fading out. This problem existed in Amarok 2.0.2 and is persisting in Amarok 2.1.1. Unusually, disabling fadeout doesn't seem to fix this.

Fourth, which I'm not sure is a usability problem or just a bug, every time I close the Amarok window (minimizing to the system tray) the playlist is automatically scrolled right up to the top no matter what track is playing or where I left the playlist scrolled to. This doesn't seem to be intentional, and Amarok 1.4 remember where I'd scrolled to.

Concerning the tag reading and collection problems: you should erase your database located in ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle/, then start Amarok and let it do a complete rescan. Erasing the config files has no influence on this. There are several bugs regarding mysql problems which are fixed in the current 2.2-SVN trunk already, so consider this bug solved.

About crossfading: Amarok doesn't handle sound itself, but lets Phonon handle it. What you describe is likely to be a xine bug, so you should talk to them about that problem. But FYI, a bug has been filed against it already and the xine people are aware of it. Also, keep in mind that crossfading doesn't work with mp3 files, as this is due to the file format, again, not an Amarok problem. I don't remember if Amarok 1.4.x had a workaround for it, but I very much doubt that.

About the playlist scrolling: sincerely, I don't know, as I rarely have that big a playlist that I would have to scroll. FWIW, in the current 2.2-SVN build: when I close it and restart playing, it continues in the track next to the last played, which is the correct behavior.

Mamarok wrote:Concerning the tag reading and collection problems: you should erase your database located in ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/mysqle/, then start Amarok and let it do a complete rescan.

Well that seems to have solved the problem, at the expense of me losing all of my playlists and ratings. For the second time now. So I guess it's time to spend another week rebuilding from scratch. This isn't making my opinion of Amarok any better.

Mamarok wrote:There are several bugs regarding mysql problems which are fixed in the current 2.2-SVN trunk already, so consider this bug solved.

That's very good to hear, as Amarok 2 has proven to be very flakey in this regard, I hope I can finally rely on Amarok 2.2 to keep track of my music properly.

Mamarok wrote:About crossfading: Amarok doesn't handle sound itself, but lets Phonon handle it. What you describe is likely to be a xine bug, so you should talk to them about that problem. But FYI, a bug has been filed against it already and the xine people are aware of it.

It appears there's little I can do about that then, since the GStreamer backend doesn't work at all here.

Mamarok wrote:Also, keep in mind that crossfading doesn't work with mp3 files, as this is due to the file format, again, not an Amarok problem. I don't remember if Amarok 1.4.x had a workaround for it, but I very much doubt that.

I already eliminated that possibility, "Blue Blast - Winning the Rainbow" by The Black Mages is my primary test track for this (because it continues to be loud, pretty much to the end, making it very easy to know if anything's been cut off), and it's an FLAC file.

Mamarok wrote:About the playlist scrolling: sincerely, I don't know, as I rarely have that big a playlist that I would have to scroll. FWIW, in the current 2.2-SVN build: when I close it and restart playing, it continues in the track next to the last played, which is the correct behavior.

Well I don't restart playing, I'm only minimizing to the system tray, so it keeps playing. It seems this is a problem where I'll know when it's solved, because my playlists can quite easily get past 1000 tracks and 72 hours of total play time, so it can get easy to lose my place when Amarok scrolls up to the top by itself.