When comparing Amarok vs Exaile, the Slant community recommends Exaile for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” Exaile is ranked 8th while Amarok is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Exaile is:
Exaile comes pre-loaded with a lot of plugins so users can customize the application how they see fit.
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Pros
Pro Loaded with features
Amarok contains the following features:
Built-in equilizer
Built-in lookup of songs and artists (Amarok will display Wikipedia articles or lyrics of songs that it can find.)
Ability to add online playlists or streams, which is great for online radios such as soma or di.fm.
Supported by Cinnamon Desktop media widget.
Built-in iPod and iPhone support.
Built-in MTP and USB support.
Built-in music services for Ampache, gpodder.net, Jamendo, Last.fm, Magnatune, Amazine Music, MP3tunes, and podcasts.
Amarok can configure, add, and import scripts.
Pro Original design
The design of Amarok does not resemble most other music players. It's definitely in a class of its own.
Pro Global keys to move from one song to another, rewind X seconds, advance X seconds, etc
The ability to assign global keys to move from one song to another, rewind X seconds, advance X seconds, etc. Other players do not have that feature.
Pro Search in the playlist while seeing other songs
You can search for songs in the playlist... without adding a filter that prevents you from seeing the other songs. That way you can find e.g. the song that has been played before House of the Rising Sun. Using other players you can not search for songs in the playlist without hiding the songs that are not looked for.
Pro A lot of built-in plugins
Exaile comes pre-loaded with a lot of plugins so users can customize the application how they see fit.
Pro Can handle large libraries
Exaile utilizes a SQLite database to store information. As such, it can handle large music libraries.
Pro Smart Playlists
Has the ability to configure dynamic playlists based on various criteria.
Pro Trimmed down interface
Exaile excels for being a simple-to-use music player that is not filled with a lot of guff.
Pro Equalizer
Exaile has a built-in equalizer.
Cons
Con UI is not the most intuitive
While the design of the UI is different to most other music players, the way it actually functions can feel foreign to many and result in a lot of confusion.
Con Resource hog...
Con No seamless transition between tracks when they're on different files.
Con Doesn't feel very responsive
This is particularly the case with the play/pause button: it feels like there's a delay from when the button is pressed to when the music actually starts/stops.