I'm looking for a media player with superb sound quality, a library and playlist functions and preferrably an album art function (not really important, though). I also want something that doesn't contain lots of bloatware. Oh yea, and free.

Ideally I'd be using Creative MediaSource, but for whatever reason I didn't get a Creative disc with my computer (which has a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi, one of the cards which is supposed to have MediaSource packaged with it IIRC) so that's not an option.

Windows Media Play doesn't cut the mustard here (poor sound quality, clunky GUI, and it's annoying). iTunes has too much bloat and poor sound quality.

What do you guys use?

You gotta be kidding if you say you can hear differences in digital audio players. Unless you've spent 10 000 dollars on reference monitors and twice that to room acoustic treatment I'm giving the BS stamp.

And let's leave all the compressors, exciters, reverbs and especially EQ out of the discussion, thank you.

Listen to CDs directly via digital input!

You can try Foobar2000... It's the one I use, slim, clean interface (yet very customizable) and gets good reviews every time...

Winamp's done the job for me for longer than I can remeber.

+1 for winamp.

It only covers a tiny little transparent area at the top of my screen, and does absolutely everything I`ve ever needed without a single problem or annoyance.

Why o' why use MediaSource? Its crap!

Foobar2000 is INCREDIBLY customizable, and has better Sound Quality than Winamp. My favourite is XMPlay, though. Both VERY light on system resources, too.

Must say with my X-Fi (XtremeMusic) i can't tell the difference between players or various modes (leave it in Game Mode for convieniance).

Quote from spankmeyer :

You gotta be kidding if you say you can hear differences in digital audio players. Unless you've spent 10 000 dollars on reference monitors and twice that to room acoustic treatment I'm giving the BS stamp.

And let's leave all the compressors, exciters, reverbs and especially EQ out of the discussion, thank you.

Listen to CDs directly via digital input!

If you can't hear the difference between iTunes, Media player and Mediasource then you've got a hearing problem. iTunes and Windows Media Player both have a fuzzy output, while Mediasource has a clearer output. I've got a good soundcard (X-Fi, as I said) and an OK set of speakers. It definately makes a difference.

Quote from Rtsbasic :

Winamp's done the job for me for longer than I can remeber.

Winamp was my first though as I used to use it a few years ago, but IIRC it does not have a library, only playlists. Has this changed?

Quote from Jakg :

Why o' why use MediaSource? Its crap!

From what I've heard the sound quality from MediaSource (with a Creative soundcard) is absolutely superb. I've only listened to it breifly, though, in a quick comparison at a friend's place.

Quote :

Foobar2000 is INCREDIBLY customizable, and has better Sound Quality than Winamp. My favourite is XMPlay, though. Both VERY light on system resources, too.

Must say with my X-Fi (XtremeMusic) i can't tell the difference between players or various modes (leave it in Game Mode for convieniance).

I'll give XMPlay and Foobar2000 a look into, thanks!

[EDIT] WOW! XMPlay definitely has some great sound quality. This is brilliant. Thanks Jak! Is there any way to have the library and playlist windows displayed at the same time? I'd like to just go through the library and drag songs into the playlist if possible. Just quickens everything up.

:wow:

I gotta ring Bob Katz about the new phenomenon sweeping the audio world! Next you can solve why Logic's session output sounds different than the mixdown!

No idea about anything else about XMPlay, i'm afraid. Try right clicking buttons in the Playlist window though, you get lots more options.

Quote from Jakg :

Foobar2000 is INCREDIBLY customizable, and has better Sound Quality than Winamp.

from the official foobar FAQ:
Does foobar2000 sound better than other players? No. Most of “sound quality differences” people “hear” are placebo effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). foobar2000 has sound processing features such as software resampling or 24bit output on new high-end soundcards, but most of other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.


Not a bash on foobar though, I'm a big foobar fan.

Quote from MAGGOT :

Winamp was my first though as I used to use it a few years ago, but IIRC it does not have a library, only playlists. Has this changed?

Winamp has had a media management library for a couple of years now since it hit 5.0. Can't comment on it though, I still organise my music by folders. Old skool Last time I tried importing it all to a library it was all over the place because half the tags are screwed.

Quote from MAGGOT :

[ snip ]

What do you guys use?

MediaMonkey. I see that v3.x was released yesterday. I'm still using 2.x but I like it. Covers categorising in multiple ways, includes album art images, ID3 tag editing, all sorts.

Comes as both a free and paid for Gold version (gold version includes the likes of sync'ing to portable players etc).

Used it for a while (Gold version) and seems to work just fine and sync'd nicely when I ripped some tracks off a CD to put on my bro's boss's iplop.

Free version has a great price tag to see if it does what you want



Regards,

Ian

WMP FTW! It works, is easy to use and sounds good enough, why change? iTunes, on the other hand, is crap and the only reason I would never buy an iPod.

XMPlay = Small, nifty, works better, key binds etc.

WMP = Bloated.

I still use WMP for my videos though...

(in fact, i don't even HAVE WMP on my copy of Vista... vLite ftw!)

Quote from Rtsbasic :

Winamp has had a media management library for a couple of years now since it hit 5.0. Can't comment on it though, I still organise my music by folders. Old skool Last time I tried importing it all to a library it was all over the place because half the tags are screwed.

All of my tags are correct and all are done in the exact same way, so I don't have an issue there. All of my music is sorted in folders, as well (band folder, then album folder which contains the songs), which is why I want a Library function so I can easily grab and drop them into a playlist. Going through all the folders is just a pain, but nice to have it all organized at the same time.

Quote from Ian.H :

MediaMonkey. I see that v3.x was released yesterday. I'm still using 2.x but I like it. Covers categorising in multiple ways, includes album art images, ID3 tag editing, all sorts.

I'll give the free version a look into and see how she handles. Thanks Ian.

I'm using media player classic (it is not MS product), light and good sound quality too. Somehow I get feeling, that MPC sound is bit more bright than with MS MP, I have all settings as default and I use Sony 50€ headphones with Realtek HD audio.

Maybe it is just psychological thing, don't know

I don't have even golden ear, I tend to laugh my arse out to those that spend 5000 to speakers or cables as nobody can't hear difference, was quite surprised when got this new system, there actually is difference between 96k mp3 and 321k mp3

edit:
Xmplay is what I use when listening to SID songs (I hope everyone knows those?) even it should play everything else too.