Best music player?

[josbd]

OK, I am mainly interested in a decent sound, vidz etc come a very poor second to me.

I do kinda like WinAmp, but fancied a change.

I downloaded MusicMatch Jukebox a couple of times, but each time it has resulted in several BSoDs........ I run Win2K, btw. It seems a number of bods with Win2K have experienced the same thing.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to other decent players?

For soundcard I have a Creative Audigy (old original beast) and Creative Inspire 2.1 speakers.

All suggestions would be welcomed!

Cheers!

 

[Nodsu]

Define "best" for starters.

What do you expect from a "good" music player? Music quality? File formats supported? Plugins? Skins? CD ripping? DRM? Annoying advertisments during use? 200MB+ "user friendly" Pregnant Whale edition behemoth or a 1MB minimalist player? Free?

 

[josbd]

Heheh: fair play!

No behemoth, no "user friendly" crap. Free: yup, tho if there is a pay for player with superb sound (that being my major need) then it would be worth considering. Ads I can deal with if I have to.

Skinnable would be good. I don't need loads of "helpful suggestions" as to what other kinda music I would like whilst listening to my own choice either.

As for plugins...... a basic equalizer would be cool.

Hope that helps a little!

 

[poertner_1274]

I suggest turning off your speakers and playing everything through your PC speaker. Everything sounds much clearer that way.......

 

[Nodsu]

The thing about decoding quality is whether you would actually notice anything.. It depends on your speaker setup, your ears, the encoding quality and the kind of music you play. If you can't tell the difference then there is no point to pursue it.

I can confirm that you can get the best MP3 decoding quality from Apollo: https://www.techspot.com/downloads/452-apollo.html
It's a rather basic player with no skins but decent plugin support and an equaliser.

QCD is a Winamp equivalent with much better usability and better plugins/skins system: http://www.quinnware.com
Sound quality is not much though but again, if you can't hear it then it doesn't matter and you can always replace the stock decoder with a plug-in one.

Foobar2000 is another lightweight player: http://www.foobar2000.org
Seems like it is no longer maintained though.

 

[josbd]

I suggest turning off your speakers and playing everything through your PC speaker. Everything sounds much clearer that way.......

:unch: heheheh!

OK, the result: Having checked out a number of players, I have settled on the Apollo. Superb sound, very little attached nonsense, and every plug in I might need. This really is a wonderful little player. Thanks so much for your help!

I might say that another good player is the dB PowerAmp.. tho not a patch on the Apollo.

 

[Bipolar_Gargoyl]

I downloaded Apollo after reading this thread, i can't get it to work. everytime i try to "add directory" it freezes up. Could it be the number of songs i have?

Bipolar

 

[judas]

MediaMonkey

i also liked winamp a lot, but found the organizing very dissapointing. last month i was also looking for a better player and tried Win Media Player 10, Real, iTunes, foobar2000 and a few others and finally i decided to go for MediMonkey...the free version works fine, it accepts winamp plugins and skins and the organizing abilities are wonderful...

i havent tried apollo but will try it soon...so far, mediamonkey is what i use and im loving it.

 

[josbd]

I downloaded Apollo after reading this thread, i can't get it to work. everytime i try to "add directory" it freezes up. Could it be the number of songs i have?

Bipolar

Well, I downloaded 2,800 songs from My Music to Apollo, and it was fine with me. Might be worth completely uninstalling, and doing a fresh reinstall? Persevere, because it really is worth it. The thing is, rather than being a library, it really is a playlist. Now you can, obviously install all of your music and then call it a playlist, but perhaps it would be worth just installing a few albums or trax and seeing whether it works for you? The sound really is worth it: warm, detailed, and involving without becoming tiring. It has the sound of analogue to me, bit like the difference between listening to an LP rather than a CD. But that might just be me being a pretentious git!

Hmm, didnt try media monkey *makes note* I might give that a go, too.

Winamp I like a lot, agree with you about the disorganisation of the player. Real, WMP etc are so bloated and ad laden, I can't be doing with them. I also hate this "if you like this, you will ALSO like this..." coz basically, no I bloody WON'T!!

I looked at Foobar but it seemed unnecessarily complex before I even thought about downloading it (chicken, I know!)

 

[Bipolar_Gargoyl]

welll..... i had 15,000 songs, but i dumped 6,000 so far and i am trying to get it down to 20gigs or less. That is the size of the partion i want to move my files to. Good idea about just trying a few songs first... i miss the simplest things :knock:

Bipolar_Gargoyl

 

[Nodsu]

It may help if you tell Apollo not to extract the ID3 tags from the songs right away. It does that for all local files put into the playlist and I imagine that churning through thousands of them may take some time

 

[judas]

wow---15000!!!!! you should REALLY try musicmonkey i mean it...people that have it (read their forum) aknowledge it more than a player (which it is, and works nice) as a music organizer...playlists, advanced filering, advanced search...auto-playlists with your fav songs, you name it!

i got it not long ago...and it really is beautiful software.

 

[Bipolar_Gargoyl]

Well i am down to 8,600... i have a paid for version of musicmatch, but i am looking for something new. With some of the changes they have made, its not working the way i WANT it to. atleast not in the way it was which is why i bought it. I'll try the "Monkey" ,,lol


Thanks Bipolar

 

[jamboberlin]

what do think of mozillas "Songbird"? has anyone here tried it? maybe even compared to musicmonkey..?
thx