August 19, 2004

Is this the Best? Curious George: I wantsss a good MP3 Player!

I have just got a new laptop, and moved some of my CD collection into MP3s so's I can bring my music to UK without bringing the entire stack of stuff along. I've been using Media Player (don't kill me!) and Winamp, mainly because I am LAZY. But now that I have a clean slate, perhaps it's time to think about what to install as a player. Any advice? Sorry if this has come up before.

posted by Alnedra 20 years ago
  • How fast of a machine do you have?
  • *peeks in Control Panel* It's an Acer, the processor's 1500 MHz, 1.50 GHz and it's got 496 MB of RAM. Is that ok?
  • Uh, iTunes maybe? It's a bit of a pig but it's got (afaik) unbeatable features - one click access to all songs an album, an artist, or a genre in your music collection. It does many obscure file formats via plugins. The interface is better than winamp's microscopic and cryptic interface. (I know, you can skin it, but are there any skins that don't suck?) That's my two cents, but I'd welcome suggestions of alternatives as well.
  • There are numerous good quality players out there. It comes down to what you are looking for. I personally use Foobar2000 but there are good things to be said about QCD, XMPlay, and of course iTunes. Hope you find something you like.
  • I'd definitely vote for iTunes. Simple to use, lots of nice features, and it just works well.
  • I like Winamp specifically for its minimalism. Small interface, small buttons that are only there for the essential features (playlist and shuffle mainly). I like to load up the album I want to listen to, minimize winamp, and forget about it. And it uses such a small amount of RAM for its interface that it is harmless to my other processes.
  • So iTunes isn't just for Macs? Cool! This was really quick, guys, thanks very much! I'm off to download that and winamp as well.
  • Put me down as another Winamp advocate, for all the reasons that LoopyG outlined so well. Fire it up, load it with a hundred songs, hit play and fuggedaboutit for the rest of the day.
  • Side CG: Recommended for MP3 encoding?
  • Am i the only one that uses Musicmatch?
  • I would put in another vote for iTunes, since it looks like your computer can handle it. If you want to have something that doesn't use many resources, I prefer Winamp.
  • FreeRip is what I got for mp3 encoding. Freeware, rips to mp3 or ogg, and so far I like it a lot. But I want to hear what forky has to say . . .
  • As much as I love iTunes, I wouldn't recommend it for 'doze users. I've heard too many horror stories from my Microsoft-addled friends about iTunes screwing up their personal music filing systems, among other things.
  • I much prefer QCD (linked above).
  • I've notice (maybe this is only true of recent revisions) that Windows doesn't rearrange your filing system - annoying for me because I've come to depend on iTunes filing my songs for me. I'm sure there's a preference where you can set this. Anyway, if you don't _have_ a filing system, the auto-filing is a huge benefit. It puts all songs in a folder named after the album in a folder named after the band. Makes uploading an album for a friend to download sooo easy. Not that I would ever do something like that.
  • I second the vote for Foobar2000. It's simple and has support for all the file types I want. I had problems playing .OGGS in iTunes before using 3rd party plugins, but then again my computer sucks.
  • I'd have to put a vote in for the latest winamp. It handles large amounts of mp3's rather quickly, the media library lets you sort through everything and change multiple ID3 tags, you can program your own custom AVS visualization or d/l hundreds. The amount of cool and useful plugins is staggering and allows you to support virtually every audio codec, there's over 6,000 free radio stations and of 100 free internet TV stations in the media library (including my surrealist animation Delaware Based Productions *plug* *plug*) as well as winamp.com's vault of fascist on demand pop songs and videos. There's an extension for firefox so you can control winamp from the bottom of your browser, theres a plugin to work with your video capture cards to watch tv through winamp. Theres a plugin to control winamp with a cel phone. There's probably a plugin for nearly everything because winamp is so darned popular. The only cheese I have is that they want you to pay money to use it as a music cd burner, which I dont use. and dBpowerAmp is a good free fast mp3 ripper/converter.
  • iTunes has some good features, but I can't STAND that stupid brushed metal skin. Come on, Apple -- your stuff used to be much more customizable (or at least not so stupid looking)!
  • middleclasstool: check out this guide for ripping and compressing to mp3. Although it can take forever sometimes, I've had Exact Audio Copy make a perfect rip of cd's that looked like someone had taken a belt-sander to them. Also, Mp3Tag is great for tagging. Oh, and Winamp is the shiznite. I'd pretty much echo what psychobum said. I can't think of anything that Winamp and Mp3Tag together can't do that iTunes can except hog your memory. While foobar2000 had some good aspects to it, it had oddities that ended up making it a little too frustrating to use -- the volume slider problem, for one.
  • I am a huge fan of J.River's MediaCentre v.10. It's exactly what I want in a player. I'm really surprised that more people don't seem to mention it. (this is my first post, by the way)
  • Damn! Thanks to D. Logan and pete_best for that. And yeah, I wanna hear what dear forks has to say, too... Say, this gives me an idea for a Curious George post... hmm...
  • Foobar, definately. Although I have been flirting with iTunes lately.
  • 1. itunes offers other skins, so the brushed metal isn't necessary. But I like it. 2. itunes WANTS to rearrange your music but you don't have to let it. Rather than importing your tunes to itunes, do it manually. If you need assistance with this I can show you how. 3. with the amount of ram you have, itunes shouldn't slow down your system. I have over 25000 mp3's and itunes is a blessing. And it's free. I recommend it.
  • Yes, and I could stare at iTunes' Visualizer for hours... look at the shiny colors...
  • annekenstein, welcome!
  • Another vote for Foobar from me. Although I usually play my mp3s with mplayer in a screen session.
  • I'll throw my voice in with the iTunes fans. You really can't beat that player for features and ease-of-use, and your computer looks like it can handle it. But if you have a bunch of CDs in crummy shape, go with Logan's suggestion, and check out Exact Audio Copy. That program is incredibly good at salvaging otherwise coaster-worthy discs.
  • Another good third-party player is Audion. Flexible, skinnable, multi-platform, and very easy to use. Only issue I had with it was the rip-full-CDs function was a bit flakey. http://www.panic.com/audion/index.html
  • Definitely bookmarking this thread. Many thanks again, Mofites! Y'all certainly know how to help a lady out :)
  • A lady? Where? *ducks*
  • wooo, I oughta...! *waves 100 Ton Hammer*
  • iTunes. Unless you are really nitpicky about how your mp3s are encoded or how they are organized in the filestructure.
  • Alnedra: I obviously wrote that before realizing that you killed people for the Indonesian intelligence services. Please accept my apologies, and kindly don't firebomb my house; I have so much to live for.
  • I'm happy with iTunes too, but I wish it had nested folders for the library, so I can collapse the folders I'm not interested in. I got quite frustrated when searching the library for CD Swap music. Mind you, Winamp doesn't have nested folders either and those are the only two I've used in Windows.