When comparing Clementine vs DeaDBeeF, the Slant community recommends DeaDBeeF for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” DeaDBeeF is ranked 2nd while Clementine is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose DeaDBeeF is:
DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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 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
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...