Clementine Review

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Intuitive interface
  • (5 more, see all...)

Winamp has been the community's favorite audio player for a very long time. In the light of its upcoming retirement, users shall be scouting the web for an alternative freebie dedicated to music playback.

An audio player intuitive enough to be used by beginners and rich enough to please die-hard fans is Clementine. Inspired from early Amarok, this free and open-source application has been around for almost 4 years, combining features such as library management, playback from multiple sources (including online radio and uploads to file hosting services), as well as audio export to external devices and automatic format conversion.

The setup operation is done quickly and painlessly. The interface is represented by a window split into multiple panels, with a few buttons on the left side, providing quick access to a search tool, music library, files, playlists, web-based radios and file hosting websites, external devices, along with artist and song information.

The first step is populating the library with some songs. Clementine identifies all supported file types from selected directories and adds them to the music library. These include MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA, MKA and PLS.

Songs are grouped together into albums and artists, and filed alphabetically under the artist's initial. Those without tags are put together in a "Various artists" category. The library can be updated or fully rescanned for modified folders (ratings and play counts are preserved).

Tags can be edited manually or by letting Clementine fetch data from MusicBrainz, while ratings can be assigned. It is possible to change cover art by loading a file from the disk or URL, save it to file, as well as search for more covers on Last.fm and Amazon.

As far as display options are concerned, the app can be set to show only duplicates, untagged items, or tracks added in the current week or based on another time frame. Library grouping rules are subject to change (e.g. first level is file type instead of artist).

When it comes to online sources, it is possible to play Digitally Imported, Sky.fm and Icecast's radio channels, play stream from Last.fm (only paid subscribers) and scrobble tracks, load music from Google Drive, Dropbox, SkyDrive, Grooveshark or Spotify accounts, search for music on Soundcloud, and so on. Their websites can be opened in the default browser. A real-time search function is provided for the music library and online sources.
Selected items can be appended to the current playlist, replace it entirely, or opened in a new one. Clementine supports tabbed playlists which help users easily explore songs in different collections, similar to toggling multiple pages in web browsers. These can be renamed as well as saved to file with the M3U, M3U8, XSPF, PLS, ASX, ASXINI, CUE or WPL format. Those marked with a star sign by the user are considered favorites and added to the "Playlists" area for quick access.

Meanwhile, playlists can be shuffled and emptied of duplicates, selected items can be opened in Explorer or removed from the disk, while repeat or shuffle mode can be enabled for the current track, album, or playlist.

Smart playlists are available. The application intelligently gathers data about each song and enables users to play fifty random tracks, a dynamic random mix, least favorite tracks (by reviewing the play count), and newest songs, to name a few. They can be completely customized by creating very specific rules (e.g. only play songs with the highest rating), while new smart playlists can be created.

Displayed song information includes track number, title, artist, album, length, file name (without path), and source (e.g. track, radio). Music-craving users who just need to know everything about a new discovery may view artist and song background along with lyrics from various sources, such as Last.fm.

Files can be reorganized by specifying naming rules, such as ignoring the word "the" in artist names, replacing spaces with underscores, and setting a restriction to ASCII characters. Particular tag fields can be taken into account for the naming pattern as well (e.g. album, artist's initial). Changes are previewed on the bottom part of the screen. The new files shall be saved in the same directory as the source, while the original files can be either kept or deleted.
Similar to Winamp, Clementine features a simple queue manager, thus enabling users to play a handful of songs in the given order. Items can be added and removed from the queue via the context menu or by triggering a hotkey.

A format conversion tool turns audio tracks into FLAC, MP4, MP3, WAV, WMA or OGG (Flac, Opus, Vorbis or Speex). Advanced users may fiddle with the output settings when it comes to quality, bit rate, profile, block type, and other parameters.

Clementine offers device support for iPod classic and touch, iPhone 3G/3GS and USB mass storage. Music can be copied to these devices from the playlist context menu, with or without automatic transcoding. In other words, Clementine will try to find out the audio formats supported by the selected device, and automatically convert them for compatible playback. Having iTunes installed is not actually mandatory, since only the "Apple Mobile Device Support" file is necessary and can be extracted from the iTunes setup pack.

Audio CDs can be played as well, while podcasts can be downloaded from preset locations, custom URLs or iTunes Store. Other tools include an equalizer (preset and custom profiles), numerous visualizations, and extras (e.g. background rain sound powered by RainyMood.com).

Account details and other settings for Internet providers can be edited from the "Preferences" panel, including the volume level for the background streams (extras), since they are not affected by the main volume control. Moreover, the notification type for track changes can be selected between OSD, native desktop notification, and pop-up from the system tray, or disabled altogether. It is also possible to pick the sources to include in the search results and the results order, customize the UI appearance, as well as choose websites to look into when searching for lyrics, among many others.

The Good

Clementine is multilingual and cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). It uses low CPU and RAM, supports hotkeys which can be remapped, minimizes to the system tray on close, and resumes playback on start. Undoing and redoing actions is possible, a feature useful when adding 500 songs to a shuffled playlist by mistake, for instance. All options and commands are customizable.

The app can be controlled remotely from an Android device, Wii remote, MPRIS or command line. Its highlights are represented by the ability to play music from online radios or file hosting services, as well as to copy files to external devices directly, with automatic conversion.

The Bad

Help documentation is not available, making it difficult for the user to discover all of Clementine's capabilities, especially since a lot of them are accessible only through the context menu of various elements, such as playlist tabs.

External device support does not extend to later iOS devices, such as iPhone 4S/5. The quality of the visualizations is not very good. Although it is possible to make a selection of multiple folders when creating the music library, the tool is not able to add multiple directories at the same time.

A key feature that would have been greatly appreciated by the community is the integration of Clementine accounts for synchronization across multiple PCs when it comes to program settings and online sources.

The Truth

Considering its myriad of features and configuration properties, Clementine is definitely an audio player worth taking into account as the go-to application for music playback, one that would live up to Winamp's name and surpass it.

user interface 5
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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