Which music player do you use and why?

Which [Windows] music player do you use and why?


EDIT: We're talking about Windows software, not standalone.


I used Creative Media Source because sometime in the last century it was better than Windows Media Player and I never switched but now I have to because it gives me the "An error has occurred while playing back" unfixable bug every once in a while.


I hear Winamp is updated frequently, what do you use and why do you think it is better, please post reason.







EDIT Mar 25 2011: My final decision: Latest Winamp 5.61, its MilkDrop v2.21 Visualization option is stunning.



Also chose the old timer skin: http://www.winamp.com/skin/nucleo-nlog-v2g/81567


New versions of Winamp do not contain Visualization presets which have been reported as buggy. However, they do not remove them from previous installations. If upgrading from a previous version, before starting the setup, delete this folder:
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\Milkdrop2\presets



Winamp 5.666 Build 3516


New versions of Winamp do not contain Visualization presets which have been reported as buggy. However, they do not remove them from previous installations. If upgrading from a previous version, before starting the setup, delete this folder:
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\Milkdrop2\presets

Even though versions higher than DirectX 9 are installed on Windows Vista/7, there are still DirectX 9 components that need to be updated on those operating systems. This is also required to be done for Winamp Visualizations to work:
DirectX End-User Runtime: dxwebsetup.exe
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en

Winamp 5.63 is the last version of Winamp to work with Windows 2000.


Do not install software bundled with Winamp. Only Winamp, and no additional software will be installed if you DO NOT ACCEPT LICENSE TERMS OF ANY SOFTWARE YOU ARE PROMPTED TO INSTALL OTHER THAN WINAMP WITH THESE SETUP FILES.

Double click on
winamp566_lite.exe
or
winamp566_full.exe

to install the program.

UNCHECK: Agent ; then under Multimedia Engine, expand Video Playback and only CHECK: Flash Video flv.; then under Winamp Library, UNCHECK: Auto-Tagger and Online Media ;

Also UNCHECK: Portable Media Player Support and everything under it or you will get nags every time you insert a removable USB drive or connect an Android phone.

UNCHECK: Winamp Detector Plug-in


Next > Install.

Before launching Winamp, copy Skins folder contents to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp
or
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Skins

and

To install support for additional file types, custom install the included Winamp_Essentials_6_7_8_9_10_11_12.exe.
UNCHECK: Playback Enhancements and Media Library Enhancements


Right click on Winamp border > Options > Double Size (if it's there) and close unnecessary windows.
Right click on Song Name and UNCHECK: Autoscroll songname

Right Click on Winamp border > Options > Preferences... > General Preferences > [drop-down menu] Not Connected to the internet
UNCHECK: Check for new versions of Winamp at startup

> General Preferences > (under File Types) Shell Options > DESELECT the two options for Add to Winamp's Bookmark list

Playlist > Font size 22

See Media Library > Podcast Directory and History

> Skins > [select skin]


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

Click on MilkDrop2 in the task bar then use Space Bar or H to go to the next Visualization preset. Use Backspace to go to the previous preset.
Visualization presets change every 10 seconds. Press R to switch between Random and Sequential presets.

Press S to Save preset (or quickly display its name.)

Press L to load a specific preset. Press 'Scroll Lock' key on your keyboard to lock in the current preset so it doesn't change. Press F1 for more options.

Press F2 to display song name, P for playlist and U to toggle shuffle.


To setup the Visualization to show up on your second monitor in full screen mode when you double click on the Visualization window:
Right Click on Winamp border > Options > Preferences... > Visualization > MilkDrop > Configure button > Common Settings TAB > Next to FULLSCREEN settings, select the other Display Adapter and its Display Mode resolution > OK

Options > Preferences... > (Under General Preferences) Global Hotkeys > Click on the second 'Enabled' from top > next to Action, click on the drop down menu and select Visualization: Toggle on/off > Next to Hotkey press on the keyboard key you do don't use very often such as CTRL + ` > Add > Close

CTRL + ` will make the Visualization turn on/off now. [Do not set it to any regular key like the Space Bar because that would make it turn on/off all the time.]





When starting Winamp for the first time, UNCHECK: Video Files under File Associations.
Under Audio Associations, UNCHECK: mp4 and wma.

Next > UNCHECK: Yes, allow anonymous usage statistics (recommended). > Finish.




Change mp3, wav, flac, cda icons

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.


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. If that doesn't help, press F4 to display the name of the preset and remove it from folder C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\Milkdrop2\presets


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


Visualization FUNCTION KEYS
F1: show help screen
F2: show song title
F3: show song length
F4: show preset name
F5: show fps (frames per second)
F6: show rating of current preset
F7: re-read custom message file (milk_msg.ini) from disk
F8: jump to new directory (for presets)
F9: toggle stereo 3D on/off

Winamp has many more keyboard shortcuts.

Im a fan of WMP. Simply right-click the album you want to play and click on "play with windows media player". I don't use playlists as this method is simple and quick for me. Never had a playback fail yet. I do use Sharky's codec package tho.

Mmmm, WinAmp? I thought development has stopped on that program years back now? I might give it another try as I used it back in the Pentium II & III days

Foobar2000. In my opinion, blows any other player away without question. It is a very "simple" design, but keeps the program extremely useful. I don't like "frills" on my media player, I want it to play media.

The only caveat is that it isn't available on Linux.

thideras said:

Foobar2000. In my opinion, blows any other player away without question.

Click to expand...

Can you explain why in more detail?

Do any of them "sound" better because of output settings perhaps, do they "look" better?

c627627 said:

Can you explain why in more detail?

Do any of them "sound" better because of output settings perhaps, do they "look" better?

Click to expand...

I couldn't possibly convince myself that it sounds better as I can't tell.

Looks? I prefer it over other programs.



Show me a program that simple with this much on the screen at one time and I'll swap. 30mb footprint while playing uncompressed FLAC, cpu is 0%. You can search on the upper left corner (in my setup) for anything you'd like. It keeps updated with your library; so as soon as you add a song, it is available in Foobar.

Why do most of them have the Play, Pause and Stop buttons so small? I never understood that.


That is important so you can use them quickly.

WMP its already installed on my PC I dont have OGG or FLAC (Though I do have those codecs installeD) so none of that is really an issue for me.

Quality is just fine through either of the HT Receivers I have setup.

I used Windows Media Player for the longest time. I switched to iTunes simply becuase I got an iPhone. I know it's not required to use it for my music, but figured if I have to have it on my computer, might as well use it.

The only gripe I dislike about iTunes, is it won't actively monitor my music folder, and update my library when I add some new tunes.

Been using winamp for the longest.

I use WMP mostly, but lack of FLAC support is probably going to drive me away.. codecs don't help FLAC on WMP..

I use an old version of Winamp, before Real and AOL messed with it. v2.7 from 1/19/2001
Yeah it's old, but it works just fine in Win7 Pro x64 without a hitch.
It's only 2.2M and there's still plenty of skins available.
And don't forget shoutcast.com when you're tired of playing with playlists..streaming that doesn't skip at all even on my country 3G internet.

My entire collection is MP3's, not one FLAC.

psionic98 said:

I use WMP mostly, but lack of FLAC support is probably going to drive me away.. codecs don't help FLAC on WMP..

Click to expand...

Sort of is... just not full featured yet. Its plays it though.

First google link

The actually added WMP support on the FLAC homepage as well...link

I use Foobar 2000 for the most part. Winamp has some nice preset equalizer settings though.

i use vlc for all media and winamp for streaming music

I use Foobar200 for the pretty much the same reason thideras does. I used Winamp but thought most of the skins made it look to cluttered where foobar has a more basic layout.

I pretty much use WMP and VLC for all media. VLC for videos and WMP for music. WMP is already there and has a nice library to use. VLC doesn't require me to download any extra codecs for the things I watch.

MediaMonkey paid version here. I love it. Its a simple player with lots of functionality, and the playlist and management functions are the best around, especially when dealing with various portables and external memory devices with different capacities. I use both mp3 and FLAC in my collection, and have a couple of different players with 4GiB, 8GiB, 16GiB and 30GB capacities. I can easily setup each individual device with different encoding options when syncing playlists and musics to each one, so they all contain the same music, just in various qualities for the space available.

Music management is by far the best with MediaMonkey as well. You can keep it as simple as you want, or go all out with organizing your music the way you want. Its one of the few players around that can embed album art directly into the media file in a standard fashion so its readable by other players (all my players that can, will display the album art just fine).

And the playback buttons are nice a large, plus the layout is adjustable to your liking.

Yes, they do appear to be nice and large. It's somewhat of a big selling point it to me so I'm probably going to be looking at something that sounds as good as anything [remember this is for wav, mp3 and flac sound only] and has

1. Nice big buttons
2. Has a right click menu option to que up an audio file I right click on.
3. Ability to save Playlists to a custom location.


If it's not too much trouble, can you post screen shots of your recommended players please.

Winamp & foobar2000

Why both, Audio?