When comparing Tauon Music Box vs MPV, the Slant community recommends Tauon Music Box for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” Tauon Music Box is ranked 4th while MPV is ranked 20th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight and works well on RPi4
Pro Can change the views to be discreet
Pro Has subsonic / airsonic support built right in
Pro Easily able to edit gstreamer command
If you want to get your BT Headphones working.
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files.
Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window.
This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
Pro Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
Pro Extremely responsive
Pro Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
Pro Fast
Cons
Con Does not support playlist files
Con Packaging
Only available through the AUR, flatpak, SlackBuilds (unofficial) and NixPkgs (unofficial).
Con Can't make app always on top
Con Minimal theme support
Con Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.