What's the best music player?
 

Last night my iTunes library was perfectly fine. Unbeknownst to me, Windows decided to install some updates overnight (which really shouldn't have been an issue anyway), and iTunes went and wiped my entire library database file. The mp3 files are still intact in their folders, but I just lost all of my ratings, playcounts, etc etc etc. So fuck iTunes, I'm just going to get a new media player and start from scratch (unless someone knows how to fix this).

So I was wondering, what are the best music (I guess 'media' player would be more accurate but I really don't give a damn about using it to play anything but music) players for Windows out there? It needs to be able to sync with an iPod classic and it should be able to scrobble with Last Fm.

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.

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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.


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!

I had no idea winamp still existed...

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

Oh, neat. So Foobar is a bit like Firefox in that you can just pick and choose what plugins you want to add? What are some good Foobar plugins?

Yes, a bit like firefox in that respect only Foobar out of the box is not a very functional media player like firefox is a functional browser. You have to do stuff to it before it does what you want. As for plugins, first off, I like foo_ui_columns which is basically a different way from the default to build up your foobar's graphical user interface. To understand what it is, you'll have to check it out.

Some other ones that I like are :

• foo_discogs - Fetches album info from the discogs database (which I like)
• foo_fileops - Let's you rename/move/copy files according to custom scripts. This is included in the installation, but you have to make sure you check it off in the installation options.
• foo_audioscrobbler - Scrobbles plays to last.fm
• foo_quicktag - Gives you a submenu when you right click where you can choose to add values to certain file tags, f.ex Album Type -> Studio Album, Studio EP, Best of Album, etc. You can define yourself what this menu should include and what tags they should write to.
• foo_quicksearch - Gives a highly customizable searchbar which is my preferred way of finding my music
• foo_uie_library_tree - Gives you a panel with a library tree which you can customize in various ways and also gives you autoplaylist support (f.ex a playlist which is always updated with all songs above a certain rating)
• foo_uie_biography - Gives you a panel with artist biography from last.fm, but what I like the most is that it can fetch artist pictures and album art for you automatically (without prompts/dialogues) if those things are missing

There are also plugins that will give you visualizations, album art browsers (like in itunes), lyrics and various ways to tag your files from a number of databases and so on. :)

Ok cool! I think I'm going to install Foobar and fiddle around with it for a bit. Thanks tore.

Winamp has become a bit more unstable over the years, but as long as you stick to wav & mp3 it's fine. FLAC works quite nice too. It's got a brilliant library :)

foobar2000, end of discussion. I used WinAmp for a while and although it's a pretty good music player it does have some user interface features that bug me.

Add Soft Playlists to that. It generates Last.fm related playlists and can even generate playlists of similar song based on a selected song like iTunes Genius.

I'm sure foobar can be good, but it's not easy to use 'out of the box'.

Ah!!! That sucks so bad, I can't imagine having to go back and getting all the artwork and such. But do playcounts and ratings really matter? I know there is something you can do to set it all manually, but that'll be a pain in the ass.
iTunes can suck sometimes but it's the only thing to use with the new iPod Touch : (

Haha, weren't you the one who became angry when I told you an iPod isn't all that brilliant :D.
You can change your name, but you can't hide :D

I don't care what you say, any piece of technology that holds thousands of songs, let's me go on YouTube and Surf the Web, has Netflix, MusicID, Maps, GPS, Mail, Camera, MSWord, streaming music, last.fm, Radio, free texting services, and Thousands of games in less than a pound is ****ing fantastic!!!

lap-top :D.

Did I mention it fits in your damn pocket?

I've used iTunes for the longest time and before that used WMP. I am not big on either of them but I use iTunes nonetheless. I'm wondering though since we're on the topic, how difficult would it be to get Foobar up and going and halfway decent. Also, will it work with my iPod I have the 160GB classic.

Mobile Phone :D.

iPhone yes.

I don't really like apple. The company, that is. Their machinery is allright
But what's the point of an mp3 player that can do all that when your phone can too?
(not an iPhone for me because of the iTunes issue. It's a fine phone otherwise :))

If you don't want to pay the $500 price tag, or the contracts and monthly payments, than iPod Touch is the way to go. It can do everything the smart phones can do, yes there is even an app to make phone calls. Best part is, you only pay once, and it so convenient to have in your mp3 player.

Yeah it sucks. I think about half the album artwork got wiped, which is everything I didn't manually insert artwork for.

So I tinkered around with foobar and media monkey. Now I'm going to try musicbee. Who knew media player shopping would be so difficult...

I mean, you probably have a phone anyway.
I'm not criticizing the device, I just wonder, with the things phones can do nowadays, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy one device (a phone) that can do all this instead of a phone and an iPod touch?
I'm not really much into these things, so it's a serious question ;).

Don't forget winamp :)

You could easily set up a foobar install to download all the album art for you when you play those albums. Also, I don't really like storing information in database files, preferring to use file tags whenever possible. For example, in my library, ratings are written to the files so they appear even if I switch between different computers etc. (my library is on an external HD).

Album art should be stored as an image file, I think. I usually keep them named something like folder.jpg in my own library.

I get that part, I to to school with a bunch of rich kids, some with both an iPhone and an iPod touch (not joking). Me, I don't have a phone, because I would have to pay the bill, so no thanks, I'll stick to my reliable iPod Touch.

You don't have a phone. That makes sense.
Altough I would choose to pay bills instead of giving all that money to an iPod, but hey :D.
I love my phone :D.

Back ontopic now, I was just wondering.

VLC is what I use now-a-days. Has almost every format out of the box, and my library is so big it's hard to navigate with Rhythmbox anymore.

This may have already been mentioned, but can I use Foobar on my MacBook Pro?

I'm pretty sure Foobar is windows only.

VLC rocks, but it hasn't got a library has it?
Or am I missing something?

Darn. I have a laptop with Windows 7 but I keep the majority of my music on the Mac.

I don't know if anyone cares but I decided to stick with MusicBee.

-It has all the compatibility features that I need. Flac, Mp3, etc.
-It converts and rips better than iTunes could ever hope to
-It has built-in Last FM compability. I can turn scrobbling on/off from within the media player itself. Not only that, but I got it to sync all of the playcounts from my Last FM profile. (Well, most of them)
-It looks similar to iTunes in layout and isn't too difficult to navigate. It's user friendly.
-Auto tagging and all that good stuff is included
-It's still in Beta, which is exciting for some reason
I do plan to keep Foobar though, as I could see myself tinkering with that in the future.

iTunes is a real good one if you keep your ways good with him. AlbumArt is so important for me, and i love the design of iTunes.

He said he didn't like iTunes though! :laughing:

my favorite is songbird! its easy and you can rate songs outta of 5 star, so then it will play them more often etc if you randomize it, also it adds the higher rated songs to a "highly rated folder" love it.

iTunes is crap crap crap and I didn't realize it until I stopped using it

Seriously, to anyone out there using iTunes, get a better music player. It will change your LIFE

What is it that you dislike about iTunes specifically? I just ask because I hear a lot of people say how much they hate it but I've never had any problems with it. I've never really tried a different play though so I'm curious if there's something I'm missing here.

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Am I the only one who uses this? It does it's job well. it plays music, and it scrobbles, so I could care less if it doesn't have a built in web browser or an arcade. just as long as it plays music.

First and foremost, it has problems syncing my IPOD of all things. I bought a new 160gb classic so that I could put my entire library on it. But about half the times I'd try to connect and update the stupid thing, iTunes would freeze up for a good 10 minutes before starting to update. That, or it flat out wouldn't recognize my iPod. And I had this problem with an earlier iPod, so unless Apple is releases mass amounts of defective iPods, iTunes is just a POS when it comes to operating with the hardware it's designed for.

Next, it lacks a lot of basic features that other music players have these days. Two important ones are file formatting and auto tagging. iTunes doesn't even recognize FLAC for chrissakes. MusicBee not only recognizes it, but it can convert almost every major music file type into almost every other major music file type. And auto tagging is a feature that would have saved me hours and hours if iTunes had it. You select an album or song and click "auto tag" which searches a database on the internet and automatically fixes all the tags for an album.

Lastly, iTunes is really restrictive. You're given minimal options to customize your experience. All the other music players I tried have WAY more features to tinker with and fine-tune the experience to exactly how you want it.

Interesting! I've never had the issues you describe in the first paragraph but I can certainly see the appeal of the things you mention in the second paragraph. It would be nice if iTunes recognized FLAC but then MusicBee doesn't recognize AIFF, which is a filetype I use somewhat often, so I guess that's kind of a trade off. The auto tagging thing does sound nice though.

As far as the third paragraph goes, what are some examples of things that you're able to customize in other players?