Amarok - Quickstart guide

Amarok has two key concepts, the collection and the playlist. The collection is all music, it's like a library. The playlist is just what it sounds like, only the music that Amarok is or will be playing. The playlist may be defined by you to your liking, it is not fixed by a physical property of the medium like in Audio Cds. You can make the tracks play in the order that you want.

1.  At a glance.

A Blank Amarok window.

1. Click here to show/hide the collection
2. This is the collection (if nothing shows click "Local Collection"). It is a "tree" view, to expand a branch on a tree click the little + sign next to it. Each artist can be "expanded" to show his/her album(s) and those can be expanded to show individual tracks. You may drag anything (artist, album, track) from the collection to the playlist to add it.
3. Sometimes the collection is unwieldy, you may enter search terms here to only show items matching those terms. To restore normal view delete all therms
4. This is the collection, you may add as may tracks here as you want. Drag them around to sort them. Click one and hit 'del' to make it go away. Double click a track to jump to it and start playing immediately.
5. If your playlist is large you may lose tracks. To find them enter keywords here. Again, delete the keywords to restore normal view.
6. These are the playback controls, see the section "Playback Controls" below.
7. This is the "volume" control, see the section "volume" to understand fully how it works.
8. Click here to clear the playlist (this will not delete any files from the hard disc)
9. Undo ...
10. ... and Redo any playlist action such as adding, moving or removing a track from the playlist.

As you can see, there are many other controls but we will focus on these. For more information about how to use the other controls consult the official Amarok website.

2.  The Playlist

The playlist will show any songs that have played, the song that is playing, and any songs that will play. A song will not play unless it is in the playlist. You can add as many items to the playlist as you want and in any order that you want. The playlist plays from top to bottom but you can skip arnound as you like by double clicking a track in it. To...

Add a track

Drag it from the collection to the playlist, you can also add entire albums or artists. In the latter case, the items will be added in the default order. For example: if you drag an album which has an entire symphony on it, the symphony's movements will be in the correct order unless you change them.

Remove a track

Click it and hit 'del' on the keyboard. You can hold 'ctrl' while clicking to select multiple items. This step does not actually remove the file from the hard disc. To clear the playlist completely click

Move a track

Drag it. A colored line will indicate where it will go.

Play a track immediately

Double click it. Amarok will continue playing from that track to the end of the playlist and will skip any earlier tracks.

3.  The Collection

The collection is a directory structure on the hard disc where all the music is stored. It is a central repository accessible to all users. You set Amarok to look for music in this directory during Initial Setup.

To hide or show the collection, click

If your collection is blank click the "Local Collection ## Tracks" widget until it appears.

Each individual item in the collection is arranged in a tree-view, Artists are shown and can be expanded to show their album(s) and these can be expanded to show each individual track. as shown below:

Detail from collection

Aaron Copeland is the artist, "Music History [...]" is the album and "Appalachian Spring" is the track. This album originally contained at least six tracks (the number, if shown indicates the position of the track on the original disc, if any) however only one is in the collection. We chose this one because it is simple.

4.  The Playback Controls.

You do not have to use the playback controls if you don't want to. Many users find them fiddly and they are included mostly out of tradition. You can jump to a track and begin playing it immediately by double clicking it. However, for the record here are the controls, from left to right. They are standard icons which you will recognize.

1. Go back one track.
2. Play/Pause
3. Stop
4. Go forward one track

5.  Amarok, "Volume" and You

Amarok has an individual "volume" slider that lets you change the relative volume of the output. To avoid infinite confusion, please be abundantly clear that this slider does not control the actual volume of the software mixer, only the volume of the output that Amarok sends to the software mixer. Please see Audio Mixing if this is at all unclear to you.

For example: if your software mixer is set to 100% and you are playing a sine-wave tone of 1000Hz normalized to 0.5 dBa in Amarok with its volume set to 50%, output to the soundcard will be 0.25 dBa, even if the software mixer is set to 100%. This is confusing because it is important to know that the software mixer and Amarok's volume control both use arbitrary units of measurement: percentages.

To explain this further, the amplitude of the acoustical energy that emanates from actual speakers flows like this:

Everything to the right overrides the cumulative effect of everything to the left. Since this is an entertainment, not an engineering application it is not important to understand exactly why this is, only that it is. This is also why VU meters are notably absent from the UNIX desktop.

"Volume" is percieved "loudness" which is determined by psychoacoustical factors and by the amplitude of the sound wave that travels through the air. This is influenced by distance, medium and by the amplitude of audio signal to the originating speakers. (The latter being influenced by the factors shown above.)

6.  See also

• Audio Cds (It is currently impossible to play these in Amarok.)
• Audio Mixing
• Audio and Sound
• Wireless Speaker

Categories: Software, AV