When comparing cmus vs MPlayer, the Slant community recommends cmus for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for UNIX-like systems?” cmus is ranked 5th while MPlayer is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose cmus is:
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro CLI only
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
Pro Does not use a lot of memory
Cmus only uses about 15 MB. This is a very small and light media player, which is ideal for people with low end hardware.
Pro Works very well with tags from MusicBrainz database
cmus will factor in additional data from the MusicBrainz database while sorting. For example sort orders for arist or album, and the original release date for an album (in the case of a re-release).
Pro Good library structure
A lot of music players may act more like playlist viewers rather than a music library. cmus sorts by Artist > Year > Album.
Pro Fast
A lot of music players will be slow when starting if they have huge libraries, but CMus starts fast no matter the library size.
Pro Customizable keybindings for a personal experience
You can add keybindings for just about anything - including seeking (forward/backwards 1 minute, for example) which isn't supported by all music players.
Pro No mouse required
cmus does not require a mouse as it runs in the terminal
Pro Open source extensions and scripts
On GitHub you can find the official WIKI where there are a dozen extensions and scripts from color themes to a lyrics viewer and the ability to play YouTube songs.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPlayer needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Easy shortcut keys
Quick skip ahead buttons and other shortcut keys.
Pro No bugs , no lag in the video display
Pro Works via CLI and has multiple frontends to choose from
Some of the more popular frontends include Deepin Media Player, GNOME MPlayer, KPlayer, KMPlayer, Rosa Media Player, SMPlayer and Xt7-Player.
Pro Nice theme available to choose from
Also, the video window is separate from the main window making it less cluttered while playing audio
Cons
Con No album art
cmus does not display album art
Con CLI only
No graphical interface is available for cmus. Everything is done through CLI (command line interface).
Con Difficult to use
Cmus uses odd keyboard shortcuts such as "C" to pause, "E" to add songs to queue, and "4" to edit the queue.