What's the best music player?

RVCA · 02-10-2011, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

For simple casual use, I think Winamp (with modern skin) is good, particularly for those with large libraries as it has a search bar right in the middle of your screen as the primary way of finding stuff in your library (if your library is huge, searching is the way to find your music). You can define your own library views and so on using queries, so it allows for some customization. It also supports a lot of file formats which is nice.

It's easy to rip CDs and so on with it as well. It basically does what you need from a media player and some things you probably don't need as well.

Yeah I was doing a bit of google research and Winamp seems like a candidate. Some other prospects are Media Monkey and Music Bee, but what I don't like about Winamp and Media Monkey is that they both have the option to purchase a better version, which means the free version is probably being a bit skimped on features.

Quote:

The absolute best media player I've had the pleasure of using is Foobar2000, but the problem there is that it requires a lot more from the user before he/she can reap the rewards from using it. The core principle of foobar is that it's customizable; you build your own media player and define yourself what it should do using foobar's simple scripting language as well as plugins. After just installing Foobar, it doesn't look that nice or have that much functionality, but by building your own theme or using someone else's and getting more plugins and so on, you can basically add almost whatever functionality you'd like your media player to have. Hence, it is of course brilliant

Foobar2000 is only for windows computers though!

Now what do you mean "it requires a lot more from the user"? Do I need, like, scripting and computer language knowledge? Or just time? Because I have time.

Guybrush · 02-10-2011, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Yeah I was doing a bit of google research and Winamp seems like a candidate. Some other prospects are Media Monkey and Music Bee, but what I don't like about Winamp and Media Monkey is that they both have the option to purchase a better version, which means the free version is probably being a bit skimped on features.

For Winamp, I think the stuff you're missing will be rather insignificant. For example, I think if you pay for the pro version, you can rip CDs straight to MP3. With the free version, you would have to pick another open source format instead like ogg vorbis (.ogg) and that is, basically, not a problem anyways (oggs are fine).

The free version does everything I would need my Winamp to do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Now what do you mean "it requires a lot more from the user"? Do I need, like, scripting and computer language knowledge? Or just time? Because I have time.

It takes a little time and you would have to learn the scripting language in order to get the most out of foobar. It's so simple, however, that you can basically learn most of it from watching what other people have done (download someone elses foobar theme and have a look) and if you have specific questions on how to do stuff, we have a foobar support thread on this forum.