Open Cubic Player: So much awesome all at once

Screenshots like this make me as giddy as a schoolgirl.

That’s Open Cubic Player, in its ocp-curses flavor, which might just be my new favorite music application. I know, that’s brash, but it’s true.

Even in the strict text-mode operation, this thing has everything.

Visualizer? Yes. Surround sound mode? Yes. Panning? Yes. Speed and pitch controls? Check and check. Hardware audio controls? Yes. Peak level indicator? Yes. File browser? Yes. Onboard help pages? Check. Amplifier support and filter options? Yes. Fast file search? Got it.

It would be easier to just list the things ocp doesn’t have.

But even then I’d have to capitulate, because this thing has a graphical mode too. Look at this.

  

It’s like … it’s like … it’s like a run-of-the-mill console music player, exposed to an accidental overdose of gamma radiation. 😯

Anyway, if you’re keen on running Xorg, in spite of my best efforts to dissuade you, ocp will keep you entertained for quite a while.

Now I will admit that there’s a little bit of a learning curve attached to this. I had to take about an hour to skim through the help pages, to get some very basic things done.

And some of the controls are in odd places. Watch that .ocp/ocp.ini file, because some important stuff happens in there.

And of course, something with this much graphical pizzazz eats processor power. This machine, at an otherwise acceptable 500Mhz, is riding around 80 percent taxed while ocp is running against the framebuffer.

But it’s not often that an application reaches out and grabs me by the throat though. ocp sure did.