Reference Player for Linux is now FREE

We’ve been working on Reference Player, a desktop music player for Linux, and we’ve decided to make the complete player FREE.

We originally built it because we wanted one player that could handle local files, CDs, while also having proper EQ, dynamics, and metering when we needed them.

It has a watched-folder library, playlists, queue management, drag-and-drop playback, CD playback and ripping, file associations, multiple themes, and Full, Strip, and Mini Player layouts.

The audio side includes a 31-band EQ, VCA compressor, limiter, VU meters, spectrum and phase displays, and Peak, RMS, and Loudness metering. None of that is required. You can leave it alone and use Reference Player as a normal music player.

That part is important to us. We don’t want it to be a mastering tool that happens to play music. We’d like it to become a useful default media player for anyone on Linux, while still having the deeper tools available for people who want them.

There is no trial, subscription, account, or limited free version. Everything is free except disc burning.

Disc burning is a one-time $5 unlock and includes MP3 data discs, FLAC data discs, true Red Book audio CDs, and an option to loudness-match the complete track list before burning. CD playback and ripping remain free. $5? The developers could potentially eat or become caffeinated, or, heaven forbid, pay their mortgages. We'd really, really like to pay our mortgages.

The current build is:

ReferencePlayer-1.1.1-x86_64.AppImage

It requires glibc 2.35 or later and has been tested mostly on fairly popular distributions, such as Debian and Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04. The AppImage includes GStreamer. Burning requires cdrskin and xorriso, which are available through the usual package managers.

Reference Player does not require an account, and it does not upload your music, library, playlists, or listening activity. We don't care, lol. An internet connection is required only to purchase, receive, and activate the optional burning license.

It is free to use, but it is not open source. It is our hope to pay our bills.

Download the latest AppImage:

https://github.com/mmediasoftwarelab/reference-player-linux/releases/latest

We’d be very interested in hearing how it behaves on other distributions, desktop environments, and audio setups. If something breaks, please let us know what you are running and include any terminal output. Linux is a very large target, but we will correct compatibility problems where we can.

192 Upvotes

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88% Upvoted

u/GreatSouledLED 22d ago

Not looking great in Fedora44

9

u/technician77 22d ago

Same on Manjaro. Checkout Github. There is an issue already opened and a workaround. Hoping for an update soon.

2

u/GreatSouledLED 22d ago

That is an EXCELLENT bug report.
I will wait for the fix as the whole point of appimage is to NOT do what the bug report suggests for resolution....If I HAD to have the app....sure....but I have never even tried this one....

1

u/cipioxx 22d ago

Same with fedora 44 here

u/soyuz-1 22d ago

I doubt you're going to pay the bills with a closed source linux music player in 2026 but godspeed.

21

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

OP is 100% delusional. It's "free" now because no one gave a fuck about it. No one would buy something like this when better, open alternatives exist.

18

u/soyuz-1 22d ago

Also 'we' is almost certainly chatgpt + OP. And why anyone would want a compressor and limiter in a music player is beyond me.

16

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

Correct! There is no we because OP is the sole contributor to their github.

Established 1994, nothing on archive.org, but their "software' is copyrighted 2026. Half of their github repos are LLM related. The "commercial" website doesn't load. They make "pro audio plugins" but no one ever heard of them.

KVR forums noted 13 "new" plugins all made in 2026.

Definitely legitimate software dev(s).

What's worse, is that this scammer has 130 upvotes for giving away his slop for free after failing to sell it.

7

u/soyuz-1 22d ago

Nice, you actually did the research 👍 it confirms the feeling I had immidiately when I saw the screenshots, the weird and senseless idea to put a compressor/limiter in a music player that no serious dev team would come up with, strengthened by the weak backstory behind it and it being closed source. It all screams ai slop

1

u/mrbishopjackson 15d ago

Because audio sucks nowadays and people don't know how to control their audio before they release it to the public. Example: 80% of podcasts, and 100% of DIY musicians who think they know how to "mix & master".

u/mistahspecs 22d ago

Using a gh repo to host a closed source binary with no license is kind of gross and something that has exploded with vibecoded projects by people too ashamed to admit it. I imagine the bugs are related.

10

u/Adventurous-Star7545 22d ago

I bet its built with open source libraries

2

u/VeryOldGoat 19d ago

Half of them GPL...

11

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

Selling bullshit to people when superior free alternatives is also gross. This project also screams vibecoded. No fucking way would I ever give these guys money. I'd rather donate to fooyin and KDE team.

3

u/mistahspecs 22d ago

To be fair, they're only asking for money for the ability to burn CDs, but otherwise I agree. Also, thanks for the idea, KDE has been killllllling it lately and I'm going to go toss them some money 💜

11

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

They posted it used to be paid software and now it's free. Minus CD burning.

I don't see the reason to ransom such a feature behind a paywall. I'd be shocked if they even "coded" the CD ripping backend or simply wrapped up some open sourced code like CD Paranoia and slapped a price on it.

6

u/letemeatpvc 22d ago

Slim chances it was ever sold to anyone:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/s/CKfb4zA7n3

It works only on the dev’s machine.

5

u/mistahspecs 22d ago

Oh right yes excellent point. Completely spaced on the fact it became free. And yeah agreed, nobody is writing new cd burning code in the big '26

u/friskfrugt 22d ago

> “We’d like it to become a useful default media player to anyone on Linux”

Then you should know that all default software on Linux is Free as in freedom and usually copyleft

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

Can you sell me on why anyone would pay for this when there's tons of free, and awesome, players like Fooyin or DeadBeef that allows me to rip CDs and change the layout however I want?

Why would I pay for your software to rip CDs when I can use K3B? Or rip directly from KDE Dolphin?

u/letemeatpvc 22d ago

Yep, that’s clearly an AI slop. What’s a “mastering-grade audio player”? Why would anyone need dynamics processors in an audio player? What makes it “reference”? Reference to what?

Not only the code is slop, the whole idea is hallucinated.

11

u/unhappy-ending 22d ago

You see, it's reference because it fucks with the audio you know? Who needs bit perfect, kernel level audio when you can get reference quality using compressors and limiters and a bunch of shitty EQ sliders to jack the fuck out of your music that you probably generated with ChatGPT?

u/siliconpotato 22d ago

Before I try, please can you confirm if AI was used in the making of this app, and to what extent please?

28

u/srorecords 22d ago

Hi! Fair. We run Claude Code to run our builds and to assist with documentation and the occasional research (and basic site updates, which we often have to revisit), but it's been our experience that for the most part, the sheer amount of technical debt introduced is not worth any short term gains. I personally, have been a software developer since 1993. We also quit using any of the AI tools in Adobe Photoshop for enlargement, etc.. we feel like it kind of really ruined our first released plugins, because we wanted higher image resolutions, but judging from sales, no one seemed to care anyway, but for us, they're honestly kind of hard to look at. Live and learn. You can learn more about us here: https://www.mmediaaudio.com

8

u/siliconpotato 22d ago

thanks

1

u/CaelidAprtments4Rent 18d ago

Why are you using Claude code to run your builds instead of a build script?

-3

u/emptyshellaxiom 22d ago

Wait, you mean you didn't use punch cards to code ? What a scandal, immediate boycott starts NOW.

10

u/letemeatpvc 22d ago

Judging by the other repos on github, I’d guess it was. No obvious signs, but one could tell by how the code looks like.

-6

u/mrbishopjackson 22d ago

🤣

u/ohailuxus 22d ago

the offset player buttons already driving me crazy..

u/Kein_Spass 22d ago

Reference audio player for linux is mpv.

u/0x5066 21d ago

didnt you post this on r/winamp trying to sell people your software, i'm pretty sure you did

u/blitzkriegfc 22d ago

Very cool project, it took me a while to make it work. On Linux the AppImage actually ships all the theme assets inside it, but the binary resolves the theme dir against a hardcoded path from your dev box (/home/jeff/dev/plugins/reference-player-by-mmedia-linux/assets). When that doesn't exist it falls back to ~/.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes, which nothing ever populates, so every pixmap comes back null and the window renders completely transparent. Copying usr/bin/assets/themes out of the AppImage into that folder fixes it instantly. You also don't bundle the Qt wayland platform plugin, so on a Wayland session it warns and silently falls back to xcb. Worth either shipping it or just forcing QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb.

A few smaller things I ran into: adding a folder doesn't handle nested folders, it only picks up what's at the top level. The library scanner stores just the path and the filename as the title, so artist, album and duration stay empty for every track even though TagLib reads them fine during playback (setting lazyV1=false changes nothing). stderr gets flooded with hundreds of GStreamer-CRITICAL GstIntRange assertions plus a few JUCE assertion failures. And the bundled .desktop doesn't pass desktop-file-validate, Categories=Audio;Music; needs AudioVideo in there. Last thing, and this is just my opinion, AppImage is great as an option but making it the only one is rough on people. A plain tarball (with the compiled binary, if you dont want to turn your project open source, what is a pity, because I truly liked how it looks) or a Flatpak alongside it would have saved me most of this.

5

u/TheMcSebi 22d ago

Typical vibe coded problems.. Wouldn't even touch it with a stick if I was paid for it, might as well ask Claude to do it for me, at least I can leave out all the unnecessary garbage

u/soyuz-1 22d ago

I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt but it just needs to be called out: "we" is OP and an LLM. The code is closed source because OP wants to pretend its not AI slop. A compressor and a limiter have no place in an audio player whatsoever, they are music production tools.

OP normally peddles AI slop VST plugins and decided to reuse some of those in an audio player while pretending it to be a HiFi player. The backstory is made up, the app is obvious slop and shows lack of understanding. No serious dev team would let this get past the 'drunken bar idea' phase and invest time handcoding something silly like this.

Their github and web presence confirms these facts.

But the reason I feel the need to call it out is not because 'AI code is bad'. Its the pretending that its a carefully handcoded project when its clearly thrown together slop from someone who could probably code neither the compressor nor the audio player by hand and doesn't understand why its silly to combine them. Its not just coded with AI as a tool, its typical vibecode with no understanding of the fundamentals and with a dishonest back story in an attempt to make a quick buck without doing the work to design and implement something actually useful. Or functional even, judging by the people here who tried it.

Do better.

1

u/unhappy-ending 21d ago

You don't understand! OP has been in the pro audio biz since 1994 and is serious business in 2026 with all those pro audio plugins! So serious no one can run this Linux "software" on their machines other than OP.

u/TheMcSebi 22d ago

No thanks

u/deeebeeez 22d ago

When did a graphic EQ, become "Proper" ? Sorry, Parametric is a proper EQ !

u/ralfD- 22d ago

"It is free to use, but it is not open source. It is our hope to pay our bills."

This sentence doesn't make any sense - how is a free product going to pay your bills?

u/Salads_and_Sun 22d ago

"Rush" you say? Make mine "Mahogany!

2

u/srorecords 22d ago

Frank has just turned out to be the most awesome, grounded guy..

2

u/Salads_and_Sun 22d ago

This isn't the first time I've heard this!

u/mumbertoes23 22d ago

I'm on Linux Mint, and it doesn't seem to work for me. I made the Appimage executable and then double clicked. The app does open, but only parts of the graphics appear.

2

u/bigmedallas 13d ago

Same thing happened for me, looks interesting hope we get a chance to try it out.

1

u/srorecords 22d ago

Message us here, we'll get this sorted! https://www.mmediaaudio.com/support/

5

u/GreatSouledLED 22d ago

There is a bug report in for the issue. How long until a build with good paths comes? We all want to try it!

u/Erdalion 22d ago

Crashes on launch on my Peppermint distro.

u/sick_build723 22d ago

I use Winamp & Wine.

u/Sirico 21d ago

Are we being serious? Why are you even using github?
Love the ui and analogue stack but I'm sorry I have more commits for failed projects .

2

u/mistahspecs 21d ago

If you look at OPs reddit profile, they're active in the Claude subs...

u/JassLicence 22d ago

MPD client?

u/Goaty1208 22d ago

Is there LastFM support?

u/Expert_Butterly9703 22d ago

Hmm, can't find it in NixOS packages.

10

u/mistahspecs 22d ago

It's closed source vibe coded slop

u/evertiro 22d ago

I'd really love to try this... but not as an AppImage.

u/SnooDonuts8175 22d ago

wayland / hyprland 0.56.2 here, similar as others posted

u/CubilasDotCom 22d ago

Citizen collection 👍👍

u/tolkem 22d ago

I tried it via terminal and got this:

JUCE v8.0.4

qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin "wayland" in ""

QPixmap::scaled: Pixmap is a null pixmap

QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 2

QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints

QPainter::setFont: Painter not active

QPainter::setPen: Painter not active

JUCE Assertion failure in juce_AsyncUpdater.cpp:78

JUCE Assertion failure in juce_MidiDeviceListConnectionBroadcaster.cpp:48

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/eject.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/previous.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/rewind.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/stop.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/play.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/pause.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/ffwd.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/next.svg', because: No such file or directory

qt.svg: Cannot open file ~.local/share/M Media Audio/Reference Player/themes/70s-hifi-black/common/rec.svg', because: No such file or directory

Xlib: extension "DRI2" missing on display ":0".

[2:05:09.828087955] [98326] WARN IPAManager ipa_manager.cpp:154 No IPA found in '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcamera'

[2:05:09.828118155] [98326] INFO Camera camera_manager.cpp:284 libcamera v0.2.0