Overview

Mplayer is a media file player which can decode nearly every media file out there. It can also use countless output drivers (like vpdau or pulseaudio) Most of the time mplayer is in the background when you use frontends like gnome-mplayer, smplayer or gmusicbrowser. Those frontend bring their own set of parameters with them but you still can set up mplayer with it's config file (~/.mplayer/config). The vastness of those options scare most people away but with a little bit of help you can set up mplayer as you have never seen a media player before.

General options

Default options which i found useful

 [default]
 ao=pulse
 lavdopts=threads=8
 dr=1
 use-filedir-conf=1
 noquiet=1
 msglevel=all=5
 noslices=1
 double=yes
 framedrop=0
 hardframedrop=0
 vsync=1
 ac=ffmpeg,ffmp3,mad,mp3acm,mpg321,
 ao=pulse
 srate=48000
 format=s16le
 channels=6
 cache=8192
 cache-min=50
 softvol=yes
 volstep=2
 volume=50
 softvol-max=50
 vo=vdpau

Per file/protocol option

Another great feature of mplayer is that it can use different settings according to your media file (extension or protocol) Here's an example for mp3 files

 [extension.mp3]
 profile-desc="for .mp3 files"
 af=surround=15,center=4,channels=6,sub=60:5
 ac=ffmp3,mad,nmp3acm,mpg321,a52,
 af-adv=force=5
 lavdopts=threads=4

The notable thing is the audio filter line (af=), This line

 af=surround=15,center=4,channels=6,sub=60:5

decodes matrix encoded surround sound like Dolby Surround. You need a 5.1 speaker set for that to work.

Here's the section for mkv files. Using the above line here would mess up the already 5.1 encoded sound.

 [extension.mkv]
 profile-desc="for .mkv files"
 cache=81920