Best music player for windows?

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Shadowprice

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I've been using Mac computers for the past few years, so I've used iTunes. While iTunes is pretty solid and I have no problems with it, the windows version just doesn't seem as crisp as the Mac version naturally.

What would you recommend to play for music on Windows? I've been out of practice for awhile so I could use some help.

Will it also play iTunes based music files? I've purchased from music on there before from acquiring various gift cards and just buying a few songs here and there. Or will they not be compatible?
 
Try Songbird. I used to use the 1.0 version a while ago and it was pretty horrible. But I recently started using it again, and the 1.71b nightly is really good.

You should also try Foobar2000+ and WinAmp. I personally don't like winamp, but many people do, and if it weren't for the lack of video playback support I'd be using Foobar right now,
 
If you want something that can act/look like iTunes while not actually using iTunes, try DoubleTwist if you get a chance. You may like it, may not, only one way to know. As far as anything playing your purchased content, well, you're going to have to use iTunes for that - the DRM encryption on those files (.m4p) are going to prevent you from listening/watching them on anything else.

There's no such thing as a "best music player" overall, but you can most certainly find the best one for you.

Suggestions:

DoubleTwist as mentioned (basically an iTunes clone/ripoff, does transcoding of media content fairly well)
foobar2000 (huge community, well supported, very basic by default but totally customizable)
MPlayer (multiple platform support, usually with SMPlayer as the GUI front end)
Windows Media Player (it's not perfect but it does work when needed)
Zune v4.0 (don't have to own a Zune to use it, works damned well, very cool program overall but does take some getting used to if you're coming from iTunes)
WinAMP (the king of the hill for a long time but, it just ain't what it used to be but the old versions still work just fine)

and a ton of others are out there as well, including Songbird as just mentioned in the post above.
 
Windows Media Player? I don't see a reason to download anything when it's built into your OS. You can create play list, view the music library by artist or albums, automatically update the name in the library of the mp3's/album art (doesn't apply it to the mp3's though), etc, etc etc.
 
Yeah, why download superior software when you can just use the abysmal trash that comes with the OS? ;)
 
phide said:
Yeah, why download superior software when you can just use the abysmal trash that comes with the OS? ;)
Click to expand...

Cheers to that :D

Foobar2000 as already mentioned, one of your best bets. Gapless 32bit decoding, very customizable and probably the most audiophile player out there.
 
phide said:
Yeah, why download superior software when you can just use the abysmal trash that comes with the OS? ;)
Click to expand...

lol, true.

foobar is great. AIMP is pretty damned good also, kinda like a mix between winamp and foobar.
 
foobar2000 - if you play around with it, and the official + unofficial "components," it becomes an advanced, but deceptively simple-looking player.

It's the utorrent of music players, but more customizable.
 
Windows Media Player? I don't see a reason to download anything when it's built into your OS. You can create play list, view the music library by artist or albums, automatically update the name in the library of the mp3's/album art (doesn't apply it to the mp3's though), etc, etc etc.
Click to expand...
What web browser do you use?
 
phide said:
Yeah, why download superior software when you can just use the abysmal trash that comes with the OS? ;)
Click to expand...

I really fail to see what is wrong with the newer WMP on Windows 7 or iTunes on OS X. I used to hate WMP prior to the version that came with 7, and (while very good on OS X) iTunes runs pretty poorly one Windows... but now? They seem fine to me.
 
It boils down to whether you're trying to manage a library or if you're just playing a track here or there.

Library -> Media Monkey
Just playing a single track -> VLC (fast loading/lean player)
 
I agree with the above poster, but with one difference. I use MediaMonkey to manage my music, and handle playback if I am going to listen for a while, or play music while I'm off doing something else. If I am just listening to one song, I leave it play in WMP as the default. No reason not too, to be honest, because it is already there and works well.
 
Media Monkey was my absolute favorite until I decided to get a second display dedicated to having my music on full-time. Then I realized how ugly it was (yes, I tried many skins). Discovered the Zune software and have never looked back. Easily the slickest music player/library organizer I have ever used. Miles ahead of iTunes.
 
criccio said:
Discovered the Zune software and have never looked back. Easily the slickest music player/library organizer I have ever used. Miles ahead of iTunes.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's pretty slick at rewriting ID3 tags at its own discretion, mishandling podcast downloads and not supporting ID3v2.4 :)
 
phide said:
Yeah, it's pretty slick at rewriting ID3 tags at its own discretion, mishandling podcast downloads and not supporting ID3v2.4 :)
Click to expand...

Thats your experience. :)

To be fair, if iTunes supported a proper library function where it scans your music folder for new files and auto-adds them I would use it. Until that BASIC functionality is added, its useless for me. From what I remember of iTunes, you can have it automatically copy music to the music folder when you add it via the GUI, or just add it to the Library and keep the files where they are. Thats retarded either way. The first way, you'll end up with a copy of your music in two different places. The second method is just dumb because it takes two steps to do something that all other players can do in one; move the music manually THEN add it to the library via the GUI....

Just dumb.

Its not hard to have a "Automatically scan music folder for new music" option.
 
FooBar2000 handles my music and VLC handles my video. And in agreement with the OP, iTunes on windows just doesn't seem as crisp, I know exactly what you mean.
 
i've used winamp since forever with mpc-hc. i never liked the built in media player cuz of the resource hogging it used to do. iono about now tho, mpc works quite well for my videos.

i wonder though, anyone have an idea of how the named players mentioned above stack against each other in terms of hogging resources? while my current rig could care less about this, im thinking of setting up a file server/htpc and im curious about performance opinions of those of you who've tried many players...
 
Foobar 2000 is the way to go, I'm suprised there's people still out there that don't know this yet!
Foobar is to music as Photoshop is to graphic design.
 
criccio said:
Thats your experience. :)

To be fair, if iTunes supported a proper library function where it scans your music folder for new files and auto-adds them I would use it. Until that BASIC functionality is added, its useless for me. From what I remember of iTunes, you can have it automatically copy music to the music folder when you add it via the GUI, or just add it to the Library and keep the files where they are. Thats retarded either way. The first way, you'll end up with a copy of your music in two different places. The second method is just dumb because it takes two steps to do something that all other players can do in one; move the music manually THEN add it to the library via the GUI....

Just dumb.

Its not hard to have a "Automatically scan music folder for new music" option.
Click to expand...

Uhmmm... you set the option to copy music files to the Library folder when imported, and you import the files/folders, done. Everything is moved into one folder (iTunes) and everything is under that. If you go the additional step to consolidate it'll even create separate folders at that point for all the different media types (podcasts, pictures, etc etc).

But if you don't have an iPod/iPhone, iTunes is a bit silly to be using for a media player or media library tool anyway... ;)

And yes, it would be somewhat nice to just drop stuff into a folder and have it added automagically but, as I do all my tagging by hand and album artwork as well, I'd really get sick of that pretty fast, especially with iTunes. My rather complicated process at this point is:

- pull audio from a huge collection of DVD5 backups, all in FLAC, all ripped from my 2100+ CD collection (now safely in storage)
- use foobar2000 check to make sure no ReplayGain info is present in the files, do a cursory scan for the basic info/tags: title, artist, album, year, genre, track number, the rest I could care less about
- convert to LAME V4 for portable use, sounds just damned fine to me, files are about average (~5MB = ~5 minute song), gets more on the 16GB iPod touch I have
- feed to Tag & Rename to fix little issues (I prefer capitalization of the first letter, and track number(space)title is my preferred file name format, 2 digit track numbers, etc), verify everything is solid
- MP3Gain the entire set(s) to 92 dB - yes I realize 89 dB is the standard, but today's "Loudness Wars" have ruined that for music of all kinds by maxing shit out at 100 dB and higher (ouch!), so 92 db is a great compromise while adding just a bit more umph to the volume, and of course it's entirely reversible anytime I want if needed without damage to the file
- import the set(s) to iTunes which is set to manage info, and once imported add artwork manually (had issues embedding the artwork directly into the mp3 files with Tag & Rename so, best to let iTunes just do the folder.jpg crap or whatever)
- sync files to iPod touch, done

Complicated, yes, worth it in the long run, definitely as I don't intend to do this transcoding again for years to come. ;) All these mp3 files are getting backed up to DVD5 just like their FLAC sources were after being created from the original CDs. Got about 14 done in the past 3 days, got 57 DVDs to go... :D
 
Bahamut said:
Uhmmm... you set the option to copy music files to the Library folder when imported, and you import the files/folders, done. Everything is moved into one folder (iTunes) and everything is under that. If you go the additional step to consolidate it'll even create separate folders at that point for all the different media types (podcasts, pictures, etc etc).
Click to expand...

Then you are left with the originals that you imported that you have to then delete. Kind of dumb if i'm honest.
 
Yah, I never said iTunes was perfect...

But, if all the content was in a single directory I mean, what, a click, delete, done, right? Amiright? :D I would say it's a precautionary measure so you can verify the import was successful before wiping out who knows how much content. I've done that in the past with files that get imported by some software and the originals were deleted at the end of it - but in that process, something went awry (damned Murphy's Law, shit) and then suddenly I'd lost like 13GB of mp3 files and the ones that got imported had their ID3 tags stripped clean - every single last one of 'em.

That wasn't something I was ever going to do twice, that's for sure.
 
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