Balena Sound

Free
Proprietary
Self-Hosted

Balena Sound Alternatives

17
Options
Considered
2022-05-19
Last
Updated

#1 Volumio

Free
Open Source
Android
iPhone
Self-Hosted
Github

Volumio is an open-source music player application that aims to fully integrate mpd (music player daemon) into the popular Raspberry Pi platform. It is designed and formulated for high-quality music playback. The application helps you easily and effortlessly create a cheap, high-quality Hi-Fi system that supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec).

It has an automatic USB media connection, a web interface (user interface) for setup and playback, a web server for CoverArt delivery, improved NAS compatibility and setup wizards, support for Airplay and airport playback, and the ability to play web radio. Most Wi-Fi dongles are compatible by default, and Wi-Fi network setup is done through the web interface.

#2 RuneAudio

Free
Proprietary
Linux
Online

RuneAudio is a software that runs on your Raspberry Pi and makes it into a high-end music player with support for lossless (FLAC, WAV, AIFF, and more) and lossy (MP3, Vorbis, Opus) music formats. It is an open source, audiophile-grade music server software, a next-generation music player, and a high fidelity digital audio playback system. It’s aimed at the high-end audiophile community, but free and simple enough to run on just about any computer. The program delivers high-performance music playback, combined with a stunning great look at a

Its design focuses on getting the best sound possible out of your system. Support for many different hardware platforms and audio formats are included as well as support for AirPlay and DLNA. The module is an audiophile music player for the Raspberry Pi that can play a wide range of lossless audio formats including MP3, FLAC, and WAV. It supports network streaming from Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, and others as well as local storage, line-in, and analog RCA outputs.

#3 Pi MusicBox

Free
Proprietary
Linux
Mac
Windows
Online

Pi MusicBox is a revolutionary new platform that has been built to simplify the way independent artists and music entrepreneurs can integrate the music players like SoundCloud, Webradio, Podcasts, Spotify, Google Music, etc. The platform has been designed by an artist who has spent time in the trenches and understands what it takes to be a successful independent musician, whilst constantly battling the big sharks of the music industry.

The result is a highly simplified and easy-to-use music box that provides what you need to be successful online. With Pi MusicBox, you launch your artist career with everything you need to succeed in the digital age with a high-quality artist website, digital distribution, streaming services, and even your own dedicated plugins from which you can start the program. Users can love music and think everyone should have the chance to hear music playback of the highest standards. The module is a scalable server solution tailored to the Raspberry Pi platform and optimized for music streaming.

#4 Roon (Music Player)

Paid
Proprietary
Android
iPhone
iPad
Online
Tablet

Roon (Music Player) is an ideal choice for musicians where they can enjoy the diverse symphonies and melodic patterns via all-in-one-place like discovering old & new music, high-quality tracks, and other digital metadata support. The module focuses on a new division of the company that focuses on developing personalization based on machine learning and AI. Roon Labs aims to develop a machine learning personalization system that uses millions of data points to deliver the most personalized listening experience on earth.

A smart AI analyzes your music collection and discovers new albums, songs, and artists that you’ll love. It also remembers your listening history and hometown so you can quickly find great music without typing any track or artist names. Roon is the ultimate music streaming and management platform for the music lover who transcends the boundaries of technology. It is compatible with every digital music service and vinyl record. Its powerful recommendation engine combined with next-generation design makes it one of the most enjoyable ways to experience, manage and share music.

#5 Jajuk

Free
Open Source
Linux
Mac
Windows
Online
Github

Jajuk is a multi-platform free and open-source software project that was originally developed as an advanced jukebox application, allowing users to easily organize huge collections of music files. Supports a wide variety of audio file formats. Since the engine is the most important piece of software, it is very important to mention here that it has an automatic rating system, automatic file indexing, device synchronization, support for custom properties, support for disabled devices, audio CD scanning capabilities. and collection reporting.

Jajuk’s graphical user interface (GUI) is easy to use and straightforward, it includes dockable views and perspectives, keyboard shortcuts, appearance support, multi-language support, a Wikipedia view for showing artist discography, collection statistics, and charts.

#6 GOM Audio

Free
Proprietary
Windows
Android
Tablet
Online

GOM Audio is an intuitive and versatile music player application that enables you to play music tracks from CDs and other formats in high quality. It has some interesting effects and useful features such as multi-speed playback, pitch control, and equalizer.

The platform delivers the highest quality sound specially optimized for a variety of environments. In addition to delivering superior sound, it also has a “Sync Lyrics” feature for audio playback, so you can listen to your music while following the lyrics. If lyrics are not available online, you can enter your lyrics using Sync Lyrics Editor and then download them. What’s more, through the GOM Pod Service, you can stream or download popular podcasts.

#7 Amarok

Free
Open Source
Linux
Windows
Online
FreeBSD

Amarok is an open-source, cross-platform project that provides users with sophisticated and powerful music playback software specifically designed for use in the popular and award-winning KDE desktop environment. The app has a graphical interface similar to iTunes that allows users to quickly and easily drag and drop music files to listen to them and create playlists. It can store music files in an embedded MySQL or SQLite database.

It supports multiple backends, including GStreamer, xine, aRts, MAS and NMM, 10-band EQ, automatic lyric loading, crossfading, K3b integration, audio scrobbler support, automatic playback statistics generation, audio streaming, and automatic album cover downloads.

#8 Foobar2000

Free
Proprietary
Mac
Windows
Android
iPhone
Tablet
iPad
Online

Foobar2000 is a powerful music play application that enables you to enjoy your most liked songs in the best quality and manage your playlists. Many applications can process media files and turn them into a fun pastime. This application is considered one of them that is trying to simplify and shorten many features to improve compatibility with as many configurations as possible.

There is no rocket science behind the interface. Deployment is almost instantaneous, after which all you have to do is familiarize yourself with the available functions, but the adaptation is far from difficult or time-consuming. The necessary playback options are on the top toolbar, and the rest of the space is for file management. More technically speaking, the application uses impressively few system resources and hard disk space.

#9 Dopamine

Free
Open Source
Windows
Online

Dopamine is an intuitive and lightweight application that enables you to play music from your local disk and find the albums, artists or track you want to listen to without any problem. While choosing a music player is usually a personal choice, there are some features that no app in this category can do without. From helping you organize your playlists to finding the right track effortlessly, there are a few options you shouldn’t miss in an app in this category.

The utility has an attractive interface that displays a list of songs, albums, genres, artists, and playlists in alphabetical order. Therefore, if you want to listen to a song that is in your head, but you can only vaguely remember the name or artist, you can find the track by searching the lists for the corresponding letter.

#10 GNOME Music

Free
Open Source
Linux
Online

GNOME Music is an open-source project developed for the GNOME desktop environment. It provides users with a simple yet modern graphical music player application. The app is part of the new redesigned GNOME desktop environment as well as a replacement for the Rhythmbox audio playback application. It complies with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG).

It allows users to listen to local and online / cloud collections, audio files located on connected devices, music shared by friends, or audiobooks. Moreover, it allows users to share music, download music, and play files from DLNA media servers.

#11 Mufin Player

Free
Proprietary
Windows
Online

Mufin player is a music service for your Windows PC. It is another attempt at an alternative to iTunes. Its unique advantage is a similarity tool that analyzes your library to create music playlists that are conceptually related to each other.

Creating playlists in mufin player seems to be much better than the Genius feature in iTunes as it looks at the music itself, not just metadata. The downside is that the initial scan of your library can take quite a while if you have a large music collection. Because of this, importing with the mufin player also takes a little longer.

#12 Imploded Software

Freemium
Proprietary
Online
Windows
iPhone

Imploded Software is a modern application that is suitable for music lovers and users who want to neatly organize their music collections in the most original and specific way. The program’s graphical interface is easy to navigate and offers increased flexibility. Since the application allows you to add large amounts of data, the entire collection or individual files. In addition, you can prioritize album images for specific tasks, add information to the SQLite database (and more), and customize the addition of specific music formats.

Supported content includes MPEG and MPEG +, MP4, FLAC, WAVE, OGG, WMA, AAC, APE, WavPack, AIFF. The platform’s main function is to allow users to add their own music, play it, and easily browse large series of files through the addition of custom tags and filtered search. In addition, the application has built-in functionality that greatly simplifies finding and removing duplicates, merging and splitting files, performing various methods of analyzing their contents, synchronizing files, etc.

#13 Swinsian

Paid
Proprietary
Mac
Online

Swinsian is a sophisticated music player application that enables you to work with music, edit tags and find tracks with a user-friendly and streamlined interface. The platform supports many audio files like MP3, M4A, AAC, WMA, OGG, FLAC, WAV, Opus, AC3, AIFF, and APE. Plus, Swinsian helps you import your iTunes library and create smart playlists with just a couple of clicks.

The layout of the flexible interface can be easily changed to suit your preferences, while the column browser, track inspector, and art grid offer you different ways to browse your music. It is also possible to turn on the “Mini-window” mode and control the player from a small and practical interface.

#14 Exaile

Free
Open Source
Linux
Windows
Online
Github
FreeBSD

Exaile is a music player that boasts all the features you’d expect in a great app, but it’s not nearly as popular. It has nothing to do with the quality of the app, so we decided to take a closer look and decide whether to recommend it.

The Linux platform floats in music players, not to mention media players. There are so many of them, many of them are very good, which makes them difficult to track. Some of these players have been around for a long time, like Amarok or Rhythmbox, but new ones are available, which means there is still room for improvement, and some developers think they can do their job better.

#15 OpenPHT

Free
Open Source
Linux
Mac
Windows
Online
Github

OpenPHT is a community fork of Plex Home Theater. Please note that this is a Plex XBMC home theater tree. Currently, the platform can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your media files from anywhere.

The platform works very well as a standard media player for your computer, it has been designed to be the perfect companion for your HTPC. Support for an almost endless array of remote controls and when combined with it. The platform’s beautiful interface and powerful skins engine make it very natural to users and is the perfect home theater solution.

#16 Flookey

Discontinued
Free
Proprietary
Windows
Online

Flookey is an intelligent personal music manager for your PC. It not only makes recommendations based on advanced objective and subjective criteria but also constantly learns about your personal musical preferences. When you just let Flookey work (effectively using it as an automatic DJ), simply listening to a song or skipping the past will help Flookey learn about you, allowing him to continually and automatically improve the sentences he generates.

You can also get more involved in controlling Flookey by highlighting a song (or songs) and pressing the Boost button. The platform provides suggestions based on multiple levels of music analysis and learns which factors are most important to you. Thus, it not only integrates and improves upon these previous recommendation processes but also adds a whole new acoustic level and personalizes its functionality for you.

#17 Zune Software

Discontinued
Free
Proprietary
Windows
Online
Phone
Chrome

Microsoft Zune is a media management application with playback, market, and social media features that enable users to enjoy high-quality audio and video. While this software was originally designed to be used with Zune devices for sync purposes, it is intended not only for that purpose but as a versatile media explorer.

Although production of the Zune line of devices was stopped in October 2011, the media manager continued to exist and receive updates until the end of 2012, when support for the player was discontinued. However, the software is still available for download to provide users with the ability to sync their Windows Phone 7 devices.