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Topic: Looking for a freeware music player (Read 8667 times) previous topic - next topic
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Looking for a freeware music player

I've looked around and just can't seem to find a freeware player that supports both FLAC's and WMA's.  Does anybody have any idea where I could download such software?

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #4 –
what players DON'T support FLAC and WMA ???

...seriously

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #5 –
Quote from: smithaa02 on
I've looked around and just can't seem to find a freeware player that supports both FLAC's and WMA's.  Does anybody have any idea where I could download such software?


http://mpxplay.cjb.net - a DOS program  (no joke) but afaik it doesn't support the new WMA versions (Lossless, Pro and so - i think it's called WMAv9)

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #7 –
Have you noticed that the biggest companies (i.e. Microsoft and Apple) can't be bothered to support FLAC?

Anyways, 3rd party plugins/components/filters/whatevers are available for WMP and iTunes.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #8 –
@pepoluan
Why would they when they have their own propritry lossless formats. If they wanted an open source standard, they would have used FLAC in the first place. I think it sucks, but thats the way big companies work.

Kristian

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #9 –
Yea, the only reason either of them support MP3 is because it would be their death knell if they refused.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #10 –
Quote from: vinnie97 on
Yea, the only reason either of them support MP3 is because it would be their death knell if they refused.


And SONY can surely assert it

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #11 –
Quote from: kritip on
@pepoluan
Why would they when they have their own propritry lossless formats. If they wanted an open source standard, they would have used FLAC in the first place. I think it sucks, but thats the way big companies work.

Kristian


It's more of a costumer demand issue I think. How many iTunes & WMP users out there have raved about the lack of FLAC support? Same with OGG. Very few people have requested it afaik.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Busemann on
Quote from: kritip on

@pepoluan
Why would they when they have their own propritry lossless formats. If they wanted an open source standard, they would have used FLAC in the first place. I think it sucks, but thats the way big companies work.

Kristian


It's more of a costumer demand issue I think.


Obviously there hasn't been enough demand to force them to support it like there was with MP3, but thats not really the issue.  The real issue is that Apple and MS use their media players to push standards and platforms they have a financial interest in.  Thats why create proprietary standards (WMA, Fairplay, etc) and why they put so much money into projects like WMP in the first place.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Quote from: Busemann on

Quote from: kritip on

@pepoluan
Why would they when they have their own propritry lossless formats. If they wanted an open source standard, they would have used FLAC in the first place. I think it sucks, but thats the way big companies work.

Kristian


It's more of a costumer demand issue I think.


Obviously there hasn't been enough demand to force them to support it like there was with MP3, but thats not really the issue.  The real issue is that Apple and MS use their media players to push standards and platforms they have a financial interest in.  Thats why create proprietary standards (WMA, Fairplay, etc) and why they put so much money into projects like WMP in the first place.


It's not so cut and dry, oh Sir. Yes, both corps have their proprietary DRM layers, but this doesn't prohibit them to implement open standards like OGG Vorbis in addition to AAC/WMA. If enough people used OGG and FLAC, it would be an incentive for Apple and MS to incorporate these into their players, which in turn would lead to more users and higher revenue. Apple (and MS?) have even made it so that people can build support for whatever format they want through a plug-in interface, so there's no good reason there still isn't adequate support for these formats, other than lack of interest.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #14 –
foobar2000[/size]
foobar2000 + EAC + Burrrn = Happiness

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #15 –
Quote from: Busemann on
It's more of a costumer demand issue I think. How many iTunes & WMP users out there have raved about the lack of FLAC support? Same with OGG. Very few people have requested it afaik.

I somewhat agree on WMP, but it's not even nearly so with iTunes, cause the amount of OSX players that natively support both Vorbis and FLAC and can fully outfeature iTunes at the same time is close to zero.
Euphonos could be one of them, but… I guess it's more like vaporware now?

Luckily, this problem doesn't exist in Windows and *nix.
Infrasonic Quartet + Sennheiser HD650 + Microlab Solo 2 mk3. 

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #16 –
wmp and itunes suck anyway. ppl deserve to be pushed aroung by companies if they can't get a decent player.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #17 –
Foobar 2000, use it once and you'll never go back. It's amazing.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #18 –
WMP supports FLAC AFAIK. But you have to install DirectShow filters (OGG splitter and FLAC decoder). It is the same with OGG Vorbis.

And one more player: Apollo. You just have to download plugins for WMA and FLAC.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #19 –
XMPlay! about 300kb size, uses winamp plugins. Un4seen Development
Open Source is the only source!

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #20 –
Thanks to everybody that responded.  I downloaded musikCube and was very impressed.  While the FLAC plugin didn't work off that bat (had to apply a fix from the forums) everything else worked extremely well.  The interface was intuitive and extremely zippy.  The word-wheel search was pretty much instantanious thanks to the built in SQLite database.  I'm used to Windows Media Player taking forever to search through my 3500 tracks (even without work-wheel), so this is a huge.  I was also impressed with the small download size, memory footprint, and the ability to work very well with external harddrives which I have.  It even allows my incoming email chime to come in, unlike Windows Media Player, which is very nice.  Aside from that, it has the ability to switch sound devices (so I could switch to my USB hi-fi outlet) and the ability to shuffle songs which I had to have and weren't available on other programs I downloaded.  Missing was the ability to handle DRM tracks, adjust volume for loud/soft tracks, and the ability to find duplicate tracks (I will have to use godfather for this), but overall I'm pretty satisfied with musikCube.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #21 –
Quote from: xmixahlx on
what players DON'T support FLAC and WMA ???

...seriously
Actually, every single one I've downloaded.  A lot of OSS players like snackamp, spider, and a bunch listed here: http://osswin.sourceforge.net/#mediaplaya didn't have the format support I needed.  I didn't see FLAC/WMA support in many of the commerical downloads as well.  Most that did, had me worried for other reasons (spyware, bad interface, slow).  I could use Windows Media Player to play FLAC's and WMA's, but WMP had too many issues.  It talked to the internet without my permission (100% unacceptable for software in my book), was slow, froze up, would stop my entire play list for DRM songs and refuse to proceed without clicking no for every stupid window that popped up, didn't allow email chimes to come over the speakers, and overhaul lacked the ability to work well with my external harddrive (if I unconnect my hard drive, WMP would complain about all the bad paths when I would shuffle through all my tracks).

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #22 –
You might want to check out Songbird.  It's one of the best kept secrets on the web.  Its a free open-source media player built on the Mozilla Firefox engine and it  also supports MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, and WMA.  Currently there is only support for Windows though.

Looking for a freeware music player

Reply #23 –
Quote from: keytotime on
Foobar 2000, use it once and you'll never go back. It's amazing.

He-he, I tried it and went back.  Not that I don't like it but I still prefer my trusty Winamp with Otachan's mpg123.