When comparing Cantata vs MPV, the Slant community recommends MPV for most people. In the question“What are the best media managers for Linux?” MPV is ranked 2nd while Cantata is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose MPV is:
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Fast
Since it is a front-end for mpd, queries within Cantata are lightning fast.
Pro Full-featured
Not only can it help manage a music collection but Cantata also features easily configurable dynamic playlists and support for a variety of audio-streaming sites and digital devices. Furthermore, it supports last.fm scrobbling out of the box (not common with mpd front-ends).
Pro Excellent for large libraries
Pro Excellent at tagging/renaming files
Cantata can guess tags from what's already in your music directories and it can rename files so to match tag info (if that's what you want).
Pro Easy copy to mobile
The user simply needs to right-click in order to copy an album to their phone.
Pro Artist image view for scrolling.
Pro Good lyrics support
Ok lyric support. Many songs missing and slow to load.
Pro Support for ratings
Cantata is one of the few mpd front-ends that permits ratings to be stored and queried.
Pro Customisable keyboard shortcuts
You may setup Cantata practically in any aspect to match your keyboard preferences.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
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 No longer developed.
Con MPD client = tricky to setupì
MPD is known to be troublesome to get it working properly. It may be really frustrating to make it work properly thus you may find Cantata not playing your music files. Otherwise it's a great music player.
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.