My review of AB music player. (Why it is great open source music player)

Introduction

This is a sequel to my previous post about open source music players. In my previous post, I talked about how open source projects are mostly underrated. One of the reasons which I stated was low funding of these projects. The post focused on open source music players. The aim of the series was to find out if open source music players are good replacements for proprietary music players. The series was meant to be a comparison of open source music players and proprietary players. But, after the review and comparison of the first music player with my stock music player, I had other thoughts. The series titled suggested that I'll be comparing open source music players with every other proprietary music player. This made the scope too broad.
In this post, I'll not be comparing these music players anymore. I'll only review their features and give my opinions about them. The reviews of these apps might make you consider using them.
I reviewed Retro player in the last post. I'll be reviewing AB music player in this post and Jockey music player in the next.

Post body.

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Music, as I stated in my last post, is ancient. It has been around for a long time. It will have no end unless the world ends. The way we access music pieces will change as technology evolve. But for now, a majority of people on earth are using their mobile phones with the help of a music player software. There are tons of music player software. The type of software used to play music doesn't matter to a lot of people. But, it does to me. I like to do more with a music player than just play music.
AB music player is software that offers more than playing music. According to the initial commit on the project's repository on Github, it suggests that the software is just ten(10) months old. The last commit is last month. This means that the developer is actively maintaining this app and there's more to expect from it. Being an open source software, I didn't really expect a handful of end users. Stats of downloads on google play store suggests otherwise because the app has over 50,000 downloads which is not so bad.
The features of AB music player are really useful, at least, to me.
Without further ado, let's get down to the review of AB music player.

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Review of AB music player.

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To make this review as informative as possible, I'll be reviewing all the features of AB music player. But I'll exclude very basic features that don't really affect the quality of a music player.
Like I always do with every review of an app, I'll split it into two bits. User interface and functionalities.

User Interface.

The User interface of AB music player is not the sleekiest design out there. But, It uses google material design. I have talked about how Google material design is being used in almost every app out there. It is a thing now.
The app has a theme setting which is basically just different color schemes or gradients. There is a solid black color scheme which is my favorite. It serves as night mode. Moreso, there is a tiny list of font choices which includes an option for system font. There is a left sliding menu which contains a list of several options available on the app. Transitions on the app are smooth.
The quality of the user interface is average. Like I said it is not the sleekiest especially if it is compared to the retro music player. But, it still looks great. Further developments on the UI wouldn't be a bad idea. I'll suggest this to the developer on Github.

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Functionalities

AB music player is filled with a good number of functions. The functions on AB music player are;

Shake Control(Gesture).

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AB music player is equipped with this gesture function "Shake Control". This feature as the name implies, allows a user to shake their phone to perform an action. There are three (3) actions the gesture can perform.

• Shake to play next track
• Shake to play/pause the current track
• Shake to play previous track.

There are three options but, only one option can be selected. I use the gesture to play the next track.
The feature has a significant benefit especially when multitasking. I don't have to access the music player to play the next song.
This feature is great. It could have been better if there were three different gestures. That is, shaking left plays next track, right plays the previous track and upwards play/pause the track. Implementation of this function will be serious work though. Furthermore, the sensitivity wasn't so smart. Sometimes I have to shake my phone pretty good to perform the action. I avoid doing this in public so people don't think I'm nuts.
Despite some minor issues with this function, it is a great feature. There isn't much proprietary software that have this feature.

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Sleep timer.

The sleep timer feature is almost available on every music player. This shows that the feature is somewhat important.
This feature for those that don't know, allows users to set a time limit of music playing time. As the name implies, it is beneficial to users who usually like to fall asleep while listening to music. The music player stops when the time limit is reached.
AB music player has the sleep timer feature. The maximum time is 100 minutes which is almost two(2) hours. The maximum I've seen on other music players is 60 minutes (1 hour). I don't always use this feature. I can actually count the number of times I've used a sleep timer. But, the few times I used it, it was helpful because it helped me conserve my battery. Especially in my country where power is a scarce commodity.

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Lyrics

The lyrics feature is a must-have for every music player. Whether open source or proprietary. Many times we sing the wrong lyrics of a song. I'm guilty of this act(singing the wrong lyrics of a song).
AB music player automatically fetches the lyrics of a song as soon as it is played. While this is a good thing, it has a disadvantage. Sometimes it fetches lyrics for a wrong song that has the same artist or track title as the intended track. It is also impossible to manually add the lyrics of a song. But there is a positive in this feature, which is, the way the lyrics are displayed is nice. The lyrics are highlighted in sync with the track. This is the only player aside TTpod that I know of displays lyrics like that. The lyrics text can also be shared.

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Lyrics card

Lyrics card is simply turning portions of a song lyrics and converting it to some sort of picture card. The feature was introduced in the last update. I haven't used it until this review. The developer created a small inapp gif to explain how the feature works. The lyrics card can be modified. By modified I mean that users can change font, background picture and the opacity of the background.
This feature is just aesthetics, but I like it anyway.

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Equalizer

The equalizer is one of the favorite tools of sound engineers. They care a lot about the balance and clarity of sound. I don't really take into consideration the sound production of my phone. But I do like a little feel of bass.
AB music player comes with an equalizer. It has a good number of presets to use. For me, I use the bass boost and that's all. The equalizer is not so important to me but, it is still a good feature to have.

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Lock screen album art

This feature would be great for people who have music albums with amazing art covers. AB music player has this feature but unfortunately for me, this feature doesn't work on my phone. I'm not sure if this is a bug. I did some research online and got some answers about this feature. It doesn't really work on every type of phone. From pictures I've seen online though, this feature is somewhat cool. It converts the album art or cover to the lock screen wallpaper. I've got some great album arts. I had hoped this feature would work for me. On that note, I can't review this feature since it doesn't work for me.

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Search on YouTube.

AB music player is the only music player I know that has this feature. It is not a big deal though. It just allows users to search for the video of a song they are playing directly from the app. This wouldn't work for every song because not every song has a corresponding video on youtube.
These are the main features of the app I know of, used and tried out.

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Summary

In this post, I 've reviewed all the features of AB music player I'm aware of. I excluded basic features like playlist, favourites, and sorting. From my review of each feature, you can tell that AB music player is a great open source music player. It offers more than just playing music. I'm satisfied with the features of the app. But I'm Oliver Twist and will still wish some more features were added. The developer still needs to work on some functions as I experienced some minor bugs. These bugs are already reported on Github and they might be fixed in the next release. Inasmuch as I liked the app, I disliked the fact that it has ads on it. Ads on apps are always annoying.
Conclusively, my experience with the music player was awesome. It is not my default player but I still use it when I want to do more than play music. For an open source project, this app is really worth trying out.

Thanks for reading!

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Links

• Repository: https://github.com/amit-bhandari/AB-Music-Player

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• Resources: The content of this post was created with my knowledge of the project. The content was not ripped from any source.

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• App download link: https://github.com/amit-bhandari/AB-Music-Player

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• Series Backlinks:
  Are open-source music players good enough to replace stock music players and non-open source music players?

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• Github profile: https://github.com/HarryHeights