Hi, there, I would like to play around with several audio players. I know about most of the main apps, but have only tried them out superficially and would like an article and/or thread that tries to compare by features. Here's the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of...player_software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_player_software)
Can anyone point me to some good audio players (on Windows & Linux) and in a sentence or two explain why you like it. Obviously free is better, but I'd be willing to pay a little bit for something that I am comfortable with.
By default I've been using VLC. It's good and lightweight, but some things are less than ideal (namely with the interface and library management). I used to like WMP, but on my Vista machine it got corrupted somehow, and I decided there was no hope
I haven't tried Winamp in a decade, but I will probably try it.
One thing I liked about Windows Media Player was that you can give ratings to individual tracks, and it would even appear in Windows Explorer. I also would like a better system for generating playlists and having easy access to them. I would like an easy way to access m3u playlists which I have already created.
Is there a feature where you can mark certain tracks as better than others? Is that specific to the player (or OS)? Or is there some way to edit the metadata?
Finally, do people generally prefer to use multipurpose apps like itunes or foobar2000 as their media player? Or do music geeks tend to prefer something that does mainly playing?
Thanks for your input about this vague and overly broad topic!!!
foobar2000. It is only for playing (and some ripping).
Foobar2000 takes care of all my audio playback, tagging and management needs.
I haven't installed any other audio-related application on my computer.
in a sentence or two explain why you like it.
Not as succinct as you requested, but here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=20322) it goes anyway.
HTH.
Alessandro
you'll find a lot of bias towards foobar2000 around these parts.
2012 Windows Audio Player Usage Poll (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=96207)
it certainly covers the things you want. it handles m3u playlists just fine and recently it added support for ratings that are compatible with windows media player which would hopefully mean they show in explorer (but i don't know for sure)
also check out....
2012 Unix Audio Player Usage Poll, "Unix" means Linux, Mac, BSD, etc... (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=96309)
you'll find a lot of bias towards foobar2000 around these parts.
Actually I love Foobar2000 for ripping and conversion, but I haven't really delved too deeply about how to use it as a player....
I want a way to view all the m3u playlists I have already created, and a way to sort my albums/artists to show which of my have more than one tracks associated with it. (About 90-95% of my artists and albums have exactly one track identified with it).
Maybe it's because I can't really figure out how to create a useful filter. http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...00:Query_syntax (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Query_syntax)
If you want to use the thing same thing on all your systems, Clementine is the only multi-platform player I can stand. I don't know whether you'll find its library interface better in the ways you're looking for or not, but it's the main thing that comes to mind you should try. I like it better than VLC, you might not.
There are lots of player choices on Wndows. On Linux I prefer Rhythmbox over Clementine and VLC, but mainly because I like an album-oriented interface.
I use foobar2000 for just about everything audio playback, even now that I'm running Arch Linux as my primary operating system and distribution, although I use RubyRipper for CD ripping. If you do use RubyRipper, I recommend starting with a git source release, or at the very least, observing that the last stable release defaults to prepending pre-gaps to their respective tracks, rather than appending them to the previous track like EAC does by default, and that the command-line interface has no menu option to change that, so you'll need to edit the configuration file if you aren't using the GUI.
(Oh yeah, and as far as foobar2000 is concerned, I keep component source code stored under my home directory, synchronized with git, and shared into a VMWare appliance running Windows 7. It's a bit flaky for some reason, with the compiler throwing internal errors on incremental compilation/linking where it did not when run with the host OS running directly. Weird.)
I use Winamp for general light listening in the background. It is easy to switch between ASIO and windows mixer depending on what output mode you are looking for, if you need exclusive access to get sampling rates matched, etc and most importantly, It can see so thin it takes up less room at the top of the screen than a title bar, so when set always on top it sits there next to the minimise, close buttons of whatever app I am using and I can see the track name, playback controls, progress bar, etc.
Very neat and tidy
For audio management: tagging, embedding art, converting and such... I use foobar2000.
For playback, I like QuodLibet.
I do these two things in separate OSes.
The HTPC crowd seems to like XMMS2 for Mac and Linux media management and playback. On Windows, jRiver Media Center is popular, but it's not cheap (worth the money, though, if you need a really comprehensive solution). They're both video-centric, however, which may be overkill for your needs.
If you don't need media management (although it sounds like you might), others have provided good suggestions. I use fb2k for music playback, and jRiver for everything else even though jRiver has excellent audio support.
Moin,
Or do music geeks tend to prefer something that does mainly playing?
I use AIMP all the time. For all other tasks I like to use "single purpose" apps. One for ripping, one for editing (if needed), and so on.
Tried Amarok and fb2k, but they don't fit my needs. I have 3 playlists, "All", "Assorted" (mostly calm and soothing stuff^^) and WEB (web radios).
I don't like to tag music to playback "Ambient" or "Classical". I listen always in random mode. When I want to hear some paticular songs I
just queue them.
I used to use Winamp a lot until it got so bloated that it took like forever on a decent machine to start. Also it doesn't fit my "single purpose" rule
anymore as it wants to be all in one: player, ripper, videoplayer, cdburner and what not... Only thing I miss is my favourite skin^^ But heck...
It's proprietary but the devs listen if you got some suggestion, request, complaint or bug report.
Regards,
Clobon