Which music player do you use and why?

[hafa]

VLC is fine for audio (usually) but it has some serious issues with video playback, especially anything that has subtitles. Unless they are hardcoded, prepare for subtitle hell. Not to mention some real spotty issues with h.264/x.264 playback. Other than that, it is a good all around player. But I tend to never use it in lieu of Media Player Classic-Home Cinema, and Foobar2000 for audio.

Thread title= "Which music player do you use and why?"

As I mentioned, VLC for Music. For video, I prefer WinDVD, as it has excellent support for current Bluray formats, is stable, has great video and audio quality and is inexpensive.

 

[Audioaficionado]

I've heard about people not wanting to upgrade, I am new to Winamp so I started with the latest version but I always wanted to ask what the reason was for people using older Winamp?

I keep updating my Winamp, foobar2000 & VLC players to the newest versions. There will always be refuseniks who for various reasons don't want to update. Reminds me of a guy I know who refuses to update to Win7 'cause he likes XP so well

 

[c627627]

mwe-ha

 

[habbajabba]

I like both foobar and xmplay, Foo cause it just plain works well and I like the input_reverse plugin. What other player has that AND can be installed portably? Xmplay is nice as well as it notifies you of updates to any of it's plugins. Foo has a check for updates button also but it does not notify you whatsoever.

 

[c627627]

I still need to figure out which skin to use but carefully installed Winamp is what I went with for audio.

 

[hafa]

If you forgot to UNCHECK Portable Media Player Support > USB Devices,
then rename pmp_usb.dll and Winamp will no longer be displaying nags every time USB drive is connected.

Nice! Still using Winamp for stand-alone on notebook and this issue was always an annoyance.

 

[Barbapapa]

I used to keep an old version of Winamp but now just use Mediamonkey's player.
MM is the best thing to happen to my music collection, it doesn't matter how good your music is if it's scattered about and hard to select tracks.

My other best-music-windows thing is Volumouse.

 

[c627627]

Took me a while to figure out what Audioaficionado meant for skins. Precise instructions are:

Options > Skins > Winamp > Winamp Modern
then
Options > Color Themes > Good Ol' Winamp
(Color Themes are also available in the lower right corner of Winamp Modern skin.)


to get:




Although I found this one interesting for old timers:

http://www.winamp.com/skin/nucleo-nlog-v2g/81567

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

At least with the Win32 port, I had major pitch problems with VLC.

VLC had major trouble with regulating pitch.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Whenever I've listened to the sound track on VLC videos, the pitch stayed the same even if I increased or slowed the video playback speed. Haven't tried it for only audio files.

 

[me2hat_head]

I used itunes until it took over my computer (plus I no longer need it since I dropped my iPod in the bath) but I now use winamp and, if I'm honest, I don't really like it. I loved the simplicity of itunes and the way it's so easy to navigate. I want something like that but without Ping, the store, bonjour, quicktime, ipod related stuff and all the apple snobbery and endorsing.
Also, why does winamp play all my FRAPS avi's upside down???

 

[Automata]

I used itunes until it took over my computer (plus I no longer need it since I dropped my iPod in the bath) but I now use winamp and, if I'm honest, I don't really like it. I loved the simplicity of itunes and the way it's so easy to navigate. I want something like that but without Ping, the store, bonjour, quicktime, ipod related stuff and all the apple snobbery and endorsing.

Sounds like you need Foobar2000.

 

[c627627]

Winamp's MilkDrop v2.21 Visualization is stunning and unmatched by any other player I tested, especially when connecting the second video card output to a large screen Plasma TV, then moving just the Visualization window to the Plasma screen!


Right Click on Winamp border >Visualization > Start/Stop plug-in

 

[c627627]

Is there a keyboard shortcut to switch to the next MilkDrop random visualization w/o interrupting the current one?

 

[CompuTamer]

I use Windows Media Player 12...

Does everything i need it to, and it's easy to use and it's clean. Had an EQ that works well enough, and it doesn't take long at all to start up on my desktop or my laptop, and it reads the Windows libraries, so i don't have to worry about importing all my music. It just happens automatically.

 

[c627627]

Figured it out:

Start MilkDrop v2.21 Visualization:
Right Click on Winamp border >Visualization > Start/Stop plug-in or press CTRL+SHIFT+K

Click on the Visualization window then press on Space to change the Visualization preset.
Visualization presets change every 10 seconds. Press R to switch between Random and Sequential presets.

Lock the current preset by pressing 'Scroll Lock' key on your keyboard. Press F1 for more options.



If you ever get a visualization error message "Compiled shader uses too many arithmetic instruction slots",
Press M when this happens to bring up the preset edit menu then select "update preset's pixel shader version" > Y > Leave menu using Esc > S to save and Y to confirm.





EDIT: Also, these are useful:

Keyboard Shortcuts:
B Next Track
Z Previous Track
C Pause/Unpause
X Play/Restart/Unpause
V Stop
Shift+V Stop with Fadeout
Ctrl+V Stop after current track

Left Arrow Rewind 5 seconds
Right Arrow Fast-forward 5 seconds
Up Arrow Turn Volume Up
Down Arrow Turn Volume Down

Winamp has many more keyboard shortcuts.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Winamp's MilkDrop v2.21 Visualization is stunning and unmatched by any other player I tested, especially when connecting the second video card output to a large screen Plasma TV, then moving just the Visualization window to the Plasma screen!


Right Click on Winamp border >Visualization > Start/Stop plug-in

Yeah, when I'm listening in my living room, I also feed it to my 47" 1080P LCD. Awesome in a darkened room with a full range audiophile set up.

Actually my 47" LCD is my only monitor for my HTPC & PS3.

 

[Barbapapa]

I just happened to notice the sound is slightly better from my iphone vs. MediaMonkey. Thats with both of them going through my board's Realtek ouput to a nice amp and system, the iphone connected to the pc with its usb cable and playing through itunes.
How can that be? Are they both not merely sending along a digital signal to the amp? I don't have any equaliser type settings used that I know of.

 

[Mpegger]

I just happened to notice the sound is slightly better from my iphone vs. MediaMonkey. Thats with both of them going through my board's Realtek ouput to a nice amp and system, the iphone connected to the pc with its usb cable and playing through itunes.
How can that be? Are they both not merely sending along a digital signal to the amp? I don't have any equaliser type settings used that I know of.

Sound is better from your iphone?

Anything sounds better then a iphone, so there must be something screwy going on there.

But then again, connected the way you are describing, the isheep peripheral is nothing more then a USB drive being accessed by the program of your choice. So yes, the codecs in use by the respective players will affect the output, but I still don't see how itunes could be better then MediaMonkey.

Also, going through a Realtek chip and outputs doesn't bold well for sound quality either.

 

[Daemonkin]

I use Mozilla Songbird. Easy to use and it will let me sync my Evo with my iTunes account.