So far I have been using Windows Media Player 10, but I just wondered what people think is the best audio player to use?.
I would like some nice playlist generation functionallity, sorta like, files I haven't played in a while etc etc etc.
Any suggestions?

Dan,

Foobar is brilliant for quality, and it's quite easy to use. If you do decide to give this a try, go into google and type in foobar equalixer presets and download them, they provide even better audio quality.

Dan, for what you have listed, iTunes would actually work well, you can create "Smart Playlists" that you set the conditions and it auto-fills them, and it works lovelyly that way. I personally don't use them, but the Smart Playlists (and Smart Folders in OSX if you need an example to how they work) are excellent.

Also Nathan, Equalizer presets are not the "CRUZ KONTROL" way to get quality, they are just making music sound how you like it to sound. I personally use a Flat Equalizer, with a rather decent set of inner earbuds, and music sounds great.

Windows - Winamp

Linux - Xmms

I use Foobar. Love it. Mainly because it's the only one I've found a decent crossfeed plugin for. It doesn't have the fancy playlist functionality but you can have playlists in separate tabs which is very convenient I find.

Personally, I'd use AmaroK in Linux, or even use a playlist and use play (atleast in ubuntu, is a symbolic link to mpg123, command line players FTW!)

Also Anton, crossfade... isn't that what iToonz does well?

Doh, typo - crossfeed. :doh:

Quality is not universal in programs, it also depends on your hardware; different software is better with different hardware.

For instance, on the newer Creative sound cards (Sound Blaster, X-Fi, etc) the Creative player offers the best quality (I forget what it's called right now) but on a different brand of card a different player may give better quality.

That being said, the best way to get quality is to have quality files to begin with; when ripping a CD use 320kbps or higher. The 'standard' amongst downloaded music is 128, which sounds utter shite compared to 320 and up. Also, have high quality speakers/headphones to get the good sound. The software is the least important part of the audio experience.

MAGGOT, I sang the praises of FLAC for ages until someone told me to do a blindfold test and see if I can tell it apart from 192kbps mp3 ripped from those same FLAC files. I tried various genres and I could not tell it apart. And that's on Sennheiser HD-595s. The compression on properly ripped mp3 using the lame encoder is very transparent indeed.

Definately foobar - does exactly what it tells - plays music + some little nifty plugins etc. which I don't use. Winamp fans will start talking about organizing their music - I don't find it useful at all, Artist/Album/CD/Song is allways good enough for me.

And axus is right - 192 kbs MP3 is good enough for a PC - when listening music from CDs and a decent set, then higher quality is usually better (that's depending on the music tough)

Oh, and WMP is one of the worst things avaiable, I'm not absolutely sure about audio, but VIDEO is really horrible with that thing.

Quote from MAGGOT :

For instance, on the newer Creative sound cards (Sound Blaster, X-Fi, etc) the Creative player offers the best quality (I forget what it's called right now) but on a different brand of card a different player may give better quality.

Creative MediaSource? If so i might just give it a whirl.

It depends heavily what you want. I use Winamp, Foobar2000 and Deliplayer2.

Foobar is simpler than winamp (imho), but i don't really find Winamp harder to use or any slower which some people claim. If you want to make plugins, skip foobar and use Winamp (foobar plugin instructions are total mess compared to winamp). Playlists in winamp are very good and if you emphasize that feature I would go after Winamp.

If you want to play lot of different formats, especially old formats, Deliplayer2 must be the best. For example it plays all kind of old Amiga formats used in games

EDIT: That's for music, I use different programs for video (like VLC Media player).

I've used The Core Media Player (http://www.tcmp.org/) for a long time.

Winamp Lite here. Suits me fine but then I don't listen to music in the 'normal' way.

Can any off those "shuffle" all my music?, even though I have them in a single MP3 folder, they are divided by artist and album in folders, and I would like a player that could shuffle ALL my music (like WMP can)

Drag your mp3 folder into the Winamp playlist window, hit shuffle, away you go

I use Musickube.

OT: could someone tell me a good ATRAC3 to MP3 converter,please?

Thanks

winamp - just ´cause i´m too lazy to change to a different player.
worked well all the years for me, fulfilled my needs.

Quote from danowat :

Can any off those "shuffle" all my music?, even though I have them in a single MP3 folder, they are divided by artist and album in folders, and I would like a player that could shuffle ALL my music (like WMP can)

If your willing to go to the "hassle" of adding them all to a playlist, XMPlay will do it fine, with VERY little CPU/RAM usage - less of a media organiser, more of a media player - suits me down to the ground!

Quote from Jakg :

Creative MediaSource? If so i might just give it a whirl.

Thats the one.

Foobar. But it's not really a program for everyone, "out of the box" is quite crappy (GUI is visually crappy at least) but after you tweak, tweak and tweak it don't want to use anything else.

Musicmatch Jukebox... older version which came with my old mp3 player. .. got stuck with that one, easy to use, libary features etc.

Foobar2000 all the way.

Quote from deggis :

Foobar. But it's not really a program for everyone, "out of the box" is quite crappy (GUI is visually crappy at least) but after you tweak, tweak and tweak it don't want to use anything else.

The user interface is what I like most about it!

Quote from MAGGOT :

The 'standard' amongst downloaded music is 128.

scene rules changed to 192 years ago which is more than good enough for 99% of all listeners that wont be able to tell it apart from any non lossy codec

to the original question ... i use winamp ... and i did ever since the days when mp3s were something fresh new and exciting (and gerhaeuser was still living in poverty)

I tried out lots of music players back in the day, but I generally just use Windows Media Player 11 now, it works fine for me.