Decibel Audio Player Homepage

Performance Comparison of Linux Audio Players

---

Introduction

This benchmark was initially performed to measure how well Decibel Audio Player compares to other well-know Linux audio players. All of them were tested on the same system, which specifications are as follows:

Computer:	Lenovo Thinkpad T60
CPU:	Intel Core2 CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz
RAM:	2 GB
Operating System:	Fully updated Ubuntu 9.04 (as of the 14th of August 2009)
Desktop Environment:	Gnome 2.26.1

Note that only library-based players were selected.

---

Methodology

Three metrics are used: Startup time, RAM usage, and CPU usage. This section describes the exact methodology used to measure these values.

Preparation

1) Install the player
2) Start htop
3) Start the player
4) Create the benchmark library and make sure it is actually loaded

Note: The benchmark library is composed of 9 137 tracks in many different formats (Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC...). Its total size is 59 GB.

Startup Time

5) Close, restart, and close the player
6) Start a stopwatch
7) Start the player
8) When the player is fully loaded, stop the stopwatch
9) Write down the elapsed time

RAM Usage

10) Close and restart the player
11) Write down the resident memory reported by htop for the player's process

CPU Usage

12) Close and restart the player
13) Play the benchmark track
14) When the benchmark track is finished, write down the CPU time reported by htop for the player's process

Note: The benchmark track is a 4.4 MB Ogg Vorbis file (192 kpbs, 4 mn 50 s).

---

Results

Player	Version	Startup Time	RAM Usage	CPU Usage
Amarok	2.0.2	3.3 seconds	73.6 MB	21.78 seconds
Banshee	1.4.3	3.1 seconds	51.5 MB	47.05 seconds
Decibel Audio Player	1.01	1.1 seconds	28.1 MB	36.55 seconds
Exaile	0.2.99.3	3.7 seconds	64.9 MB	47.03 seconds
Listen	0.5	6.5 seconds	115 MB	44.02 seconds
Quod Libet	2.0	3.9 seconds	60.9 MB	40.38 seconds
Rhythmbox	0.12.0	2.5 seconds	39.9 MB	39.09 seconds
Songbird	1.2.0	4.2 seconds	74.5 MB	1 mn 31 seconds

Note: The CPU usage when playing the benchmark track from the command line with GStreamer (using gst-launch) is 35.47 seconds.

---

Thoughts

• Decibel Audio Player has the fastest startup time and the smallest memory footprint.
• Amarok is the clear winner on CPU usage during playback. It uses Xine, so it looks like there is room for improvement in GStreamer.
• Interestingly, not all GStreamer-based players are equal on CPU usage: Exaile needs 10 more seconds than Decibel Audio Player to play the same track.
• Decibel Audio Player is written in Python, but still starts faster and uses less RAM and CPU than Rhythmbox, which is written in C.
• I'm not going to use Songbird on my system.