AIMP vs Clementine
When comparing AIMP vs Clementine, the Slant community recommends Clementine for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” Clementine is ranked 6th while AIMP is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Clementine is:
Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Multiple audio codec compatible
AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.
Pro Useful audio library
AIMP can play, manage, and filter music stored in the whole computer or specified folders. It is able to read metadata from music files' tags and perform real-time searching out of it.
Pro Internal updater
AIMP updates using its built-in updater, so you don't have to visit AIMP's website and download the whole installer every time a new version is available.
Pro Lightweight skinning
Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer.
Pro 18 band equalizer + 22 presets + preamp
AIMP has an 18 band equalizer (which is manually customizable), plus 22 presets by default [user can add his/her custom presets]. It also includes a +15/-15 dB preamplification.
Pro Multiple other features
AIMP has many more features including: dither, anticlipping, customizable hotkeys/shortcuts, customizable player's user agent string, access to Favorites audio files and playlists, rating for tracks, tracklist export, optional temporary information bar with track info every time a track begins, volume normalization, ReplayGain support, volume fading between tracks, and more.
Pro Mini Player support
AIMP can be maximized, restored, sent to the tray, or switched to Mini Player for your convenience.
Pro Among the best audio quality for Windows audio players
AIMP uses the BASS library, which provides one of the best audio quality of all currently available music players for Windows.
Pro Multiple playlist management
AIMP can manage multiple playlists by a tab system, similar to web browsers.
Pro Tag Editor + Audio Converter can carry out a multitude of tasks
AIMP has two tools for further music management.
Tag Editor lets you add album art to audio files, fix metadata to individual files or to all files included in a folder, rename filenames, complete tags from filenames and viceversa, and more.
Audio Converter lets you convert an audio file into another format (for instance, from FLAC to M4A). You can choose quality parameters, renaming of files, and output paths for converted files. Audio conversion supports multiple core encoding, so if your CPU has four cores, you can convert audio using 1, 2, 3, or 4 cores.
Pro Supports audiophile-level playback quality
Other music players usually require separate plugins for this, but AIMP comes by default with the modern WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) audio output support thus providing purest sound output unadultered by the Windows mixer (in WASAPI Exclusive mode) out of the box.
Pro Delete files from player
Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player.
Pro Multiple languages available
AIMP is available in 36 languages, including: Russian, English, Arabic, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), French, German, Italian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), and more.
Pro Built-in scheduler
AIMP has a scheduler which lets you stop playback, close the program, or turn off your computer at a specified time/period.
Pro Waveform seekbar
AIMP's seekbar features a waveform display of the entire audio file for easier navigation within the sound file. For example you can easily see where are the silences which is especially useful for podcasts and talked content.
Pro Icon sets available for download
The user can download icon sets for different audio formats.
Pro Allows for radio capture
AIMP can grab internet radios' audios and save them to drive, in real-time. You can save the streaming in its original format, or choose the codec manually [AAC, OGG Vorbis, OPUS, etc] and its bit rate. You can even save its CUE log and split files, if desired.
Pro DSP manager allows for sound effects
AIMP has a digital sound processor manager which lets you apply sound effects to the output audio in real-time. These effects include: echo, reverberation, Flanger, Chorus, bass, enhancer, speed, tempo, and pitch. It also has a voice remover feature for stereo audio files.
Pro Support for several WinAmp's plugins
AIMP supports several plugins originally designed for WinAmp. However, it also supports new plugins designed for AIMP itself. From visual plugins to extra codec support, YouTube playlists playback, Soundcloud playback, or spectrum analysing, these are a selection of supported plugins.
Pro Easy to use
Handsome design
Pro Tag editing
Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries.
Pro Intuitive and fast to set up
Clementine is easy to get up and running with lyrics, equalizer, online info, etc., within minutes after installation.
Pro Sensible UI
A fork of the 1.X line of Amarok, Clementine favours usability over design trends.
Pro Very good folder organization
Organizes your music folder based on the tags of your library.
Pro Remote app for Android
There is a very good remote app for Android. The app lets you do a lot: from the usual volume controls to checking the lyrics on your phone. You can even download the songs from Clementine onto your phone.
Pro Supports a lot of online services
Clementine includes support for services such as Ampache, Google Play Music, Spotify, and many internet radio stations such as Jamendo and Icecast. It's also possible to search all available sources (local and online) at once, as well as mixed content playlists.
Pro Built-in equalizer for custom sound
There is a built-in equalizer with many presets from genre-specific rock, pop, and party, to experiences such as large hall and live. You can also tweak it yourself and name your own preset.
Pro Creates playlists based on past music you listened to
Clementine gathers the user's listening data to use for smart playlists. Clementine uses your listening history to play music similar to the music you play most - which typically is music you will like but maybe haven't discovered yet.
Pro Built-in format conversion
Users can format any of their music files to a different format with Clementine's built-in format conversion tool.
Pro Can display song lyrics
Fetches lyrics from several lyric providers.
Pro Looks good and is really responsive
Unlike some other players in this list, Clementine doesn't seem to go unresponsive in the Ubuntu 16.04 system and looks really good with options for Visualization too.
Pro Decent library management
Clementine allows the user to move and organize audio files easily. Some examples include the following:
- It's easy to find a specific album song (find artist, select album, select song).
- It's easy to add songs to a playlist and queue the songs.
- It's easy to rename files from their metadata (artist, album, song number, etc).
- It's easy to add cover images.
- There are options to find duplicates, untagged songs, etc.
Cons
Con Not open source
AIMP is not libre / open source software, so development is closed and lead by the AIMP staff only.
Con Buggy, bloated and obfuscated options
Seems to hang when adding a large number of files.
Con Cluttered and confusing interface
The interface is very busy and not intuitive so it can take awhile to become familiar with it. The skins don't conform to specific design standards so they often have different behaviors. You can read more about it here.
Con AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English
AIMP's "Help" included in the software itself is only available in Russian and English.
Con Russian content
Supporting this is also supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Con BEWARE FRAUD, MALWARE, TROJAN, BACKDOOR
Download only from the actual aimp site
Con Slow development
Very little development work has been going on for a while as of mid-2017. Nobody is responding to bug reports.
Con Resource exhaustive
Clementine uses up to two orders of magnitude more CPU than VLC and takes up about 180 MB of memory, plus additional memory for spawned processes (tag-readers), while VLC uses 80 MB with no other processes.
Con Doesn't allow gapless playback
Con Bit perfect output no longer configurable
Audiophiles want to play their expensive HD albums.
Con Too bloated by default with things like LastFM that can't be removed
When you install it, you get ton of internet radios and services plugins, that you can't remove, only turn off. There is also useless stuff like artist info that doesn't work and stuff.
Con Not customizable
It doesn't allow you to modify its interface by dragging toolbars around etc.
Con Horrible user interface and confusing layout
Con Ugly
Con Goes crazy with CPU and RAM
Takes its toll on your system's CPU and RAM.
Con Default settings aren't great
Although this is subjective, you might have to do some tweaking before you like it.
Con Ugly ressource hog with no features and buggy without hotfix
And yet Nr. 1 recommended because of nerds being accustomed.
Con Slow to start in Gnome/Cinnamon
It takes about the same time to start as an IDE or Photoshop.
Con Not a lot of documentation
Clementine does not offer a lot of documentation, which can make discovering its features a bit difficult.
Con Buggy
Clementine is probably the most fully featured music player for Linux, however it has its own issues. It crashes and experiences occasional memory leaks that can slow down your system.
Con Database regularly messes up
Con Sometimes messes up taskbar
Con Last.fm support is broken
Con Cannot choose which tag profile to use
I use Tag2 (ID3:2.4) which doesn't seem to be the default tag used and I can't see a way to choose this.
Con No way to search on filename
