When comparing MediaMonkey vs DeaDBeeF, the Slant community recommends MediaMonkey for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Windows?” MediaMonkey is ranked 6th while DeaDBeeF is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose MediaMonkey is:
You can organize music by over 40 different criteria, including common criteria such as title, artist, and album, as well as items like track volume, lyricist, and parental rating. You can even use custom labels by which to organize and you can set how you want to prioritize the criteria. Media Monkey can also rename large batches of files based on set rules.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Exceptional cataloging options
You can organize music by over 40 different criteria, including common criteria such as title, artist, and album, as well as items like track volume, lyricist, and parental rating. You can even use custom labels by which to organize and you can set how you want to prioritize the criteria. Media Monkey can also rename large batches of files based on set rules.
Pro Helps remove duplicates from the library
MediaMonkey can find duplicate files and songs, helping the user to remove any unnecessary items from the library.
Pro Can pull metadata from the web
Pro Works with almost any UPnP or DLNA enabled media player
MediaMonkey can stream the library to most UPnP or DLNA enabled devices. This allows you to, for example, stream to your Blu-Ray player.
Pro Powerful file renaming system
Pro Advanced automatic auto-dj
MediaMonkey has a built-in auto-dj feature, appropriately called Party Mode, that can automatically play tracks based on set criteria.
Pro Can convert audio and video files
MediaMonkey can convert all common audio formats and some video formats. Supported files include .mp3, .ogg, .aac, and .flac.
Pro Supports most tagging formats
Pro Format agnostic
MediaMonkey supports everything from lossy MP3 files to lossless FLAC files.
Pro Has a decent companion Android app which can sync with / connect to PC server
Pro Can build smart playlists with automatic filters
For example:
- 4+ stars jazz songs
- Top played recent songs
- Best rated classic rock
- Unplayed recently added songs
- Build your own "smart" radio station, etc.
Pro A lot of plugins
DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options.
Pro Lightweight
DeadBeef uses few system resources, making it great for low end systems and for those requiring a media player that uses as few resources as possible.
Pro Extremely customizable
DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones.
Pro Uses GTK2 or GTK3
Users are able to choose a GTK2 or GTK3 build of the application to use within DeaDBeeF.
Pro ALSA plugin allows bit-perfect pipeline to DAC
Pro Supports single-album CUE files
Pro Smooth and easy
Pro Offers a ReplayGain scanner out-of-the-box
Cons
Con Not really "multi-user" friendly
Example: If you have a family, not everyone has same tastes or star ratings. You CAN achieve a somewhat multi-user experience, but it's overly complex and clunky.
Con Really buggy at times
- Biggest annoyance: Often get database errors (data corruption?). Usually, you'll end up clicking "cancel" in some dumb cryptic error prompt and/or restart app.
- Android sync isn't a breeze.
- Multiple instances sometimes open up (due to unknown cause) can cause the corruption / database issues. You should backup often just in case.
Con Accuracy of automatically pulled meta data can be spotty
In cases where a song is a part of multiple albums, or there's a re-release with slight changes (such as track numbers, bonus songs, etc.), MediaMonkey can get confused and apply wrong titles to songs based on their track numbers. It then ends up mislabeling content that has already been labeled correctly. There's also no way to manually set what album to base the auto-tagging on in order to work around this.
Con shuffle mode doesn't play an entire huge playlist (over 25 days)
Con GTK-App
So there is basically no integration into non-GTK desktops.
Con Terrible GUI
stop reinventing (ugly) guis. play music and get out of my way.
Con Fails when opening a CUE file
Doesn't work even after 30 minutes of tweaking. Not as good as Audacious.
Con Ubuntu's sound menu buttons don't work
DeaDBeeF shows up in the sound menu; however, clicking the next/previous buttons doesn't do anything.
Con Not as many options as other players
When it comes to options DeaDBeef may not have as many as other more prominent music playing applications.
Con Clunky
I've seen people showing lyrics - but I can't figure out how to make that work.
It's very difficult to use the 'design' function (unlike Guayadeque) to re-arrange and design the interface beyond something like a music list and artwork...