What music player do you use?

(or reccomend)

By Neilo on March 17, 2012 6:59:02 AM from

Iv'e been using Winamp as my music player for years now and i'm bored with it. So, i'm looking for alternatives. I have iTunes, but i don't care for it, i use it to manage my idevices.
I'm not looking for anything fancy, as long as it plays mp3 and has decent file management.

So, what do you use, or recommend? I'm on win7 if that's a concern.

Thanks!

+127 Karma | 60 Replies

THIS Ofcourse !

I've used Winamp for many years as well. I've always had the paid Pro version. There were times when I got the wandering bug and thought that I would like something different, so I tried alot of other different ones but always came back to Winamp. I just couldn't find anything that rendered better sound or had a better variety of streaming music from Shoutcast radio. I have surround sound wired in my studio now and Winamp just blows everything else away, but then again that's just my own personal experience and I know everyone has their own preferences.

A cassette deck.

I really only listen to music from phonautographs. IMHO, it's all about the feel of the sound.

Here are a couple you can try; MediaMonkey (one of the best), and Aimp, Songbird, etc. Go to either Bing or Google and search for others. iTunes has worked well for me for about ten years now, however, it takes quite a bit of work to get all the files set up to form a good library.

With MediaMonkey you can do it automatically. Also comes with several different skins.

There's a good deal to be said for the old "vacuum tube" technology. I've found I like the sound 'fade' and subtlety more than the 1 or 0 produced digitally.

Of course, that was probably an unconsciously learned bias... one the younger 'digitally mastered' audiences aren't victim to.

I'm with you Doc. Grew up with those vacuum tubes. And vinyl, phonographs that I had to replace the needle on once a month. Tons of fun.

I used to use itunes with CD Art Display (tons of skins available) as a desktop remote. However, recently I switched to spotify and now I can't get away from it. It's great!

Straying slightly from the question, I have become a big fan of the Western Digital Live Hub.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=570

There are models with, and without an internal 1 TB hard drive, and both accept an additional USB drive.

Or, it can take music directly from your home network (IE your primary computer).

When connected to the internet, it automatically updates its firmware.

It enables me to play music and video over my home media system, which is Denon based, instead of my computer.

But sticking strictly to the computer, I use iTunes so I can mess with my iPods.

Xion................

That too.

iTunes on both mac and pc for mp3, I don't know why people says it bloated. It runs fine on my machine, even when playing games and I only got 4gb of ram on either machines. Either than that, the new vlc isn't bad at all.

Quoting Ryat,

reply 3

A cassette deck.

what that

I use WMP I tried winamp but did not see that it did Visualizations

Quoting Disturbedcomputer,

reply 13

I tried winamp but did not see that it did Visualizations

Honestly, I was more confused by winamp than I was on iTunes. Although I used to use WMP just for videos when I had videos on my pc. Although I mostly used windows media center instead, so I can hock it up to my xbox and watch videos on my tv.

Quoting ice27828,

reply 14

Honestly, I was more confused by winamp

that toooo

That is funny. I am far from computer suave as some of you and I do not find winamp confusing at all. As far as visualizations it has many that can be installed. My favorite is the classic spectrum analyzer. Here is an example.

i'm using itunes. can't live without it.

iTunes. I even disable WMP on my machine.

Thanks for the replies all!
I do use iTunes, but mainly for just managing my idevices, as a stand alone player, i just don't care for it.
I tried Xion, and it was too minimalistic for my needs.
I'll try both MediaMonkey and Spotify.

As for other means, i don't listen to music at home except on my PC. i have good speakers (Altec Lansing 5.1) and Winamp does provide for many opions to fine tune your experience. The only other place i listen to music is in my car. Ive spared little expense in that department, and if i could take all that gear and have it in my study, i would!

An oh by the way . . . DFX is a nice add on for improving the sound. There is a free version and a paid version, The paid version is well worth the money.

Quoting Neilo,

reply 19

I'll try both MediaMonkey and Spotify.

If you're going digital, then MediaMonkey is probably the better choice.

Started using Winamp back around 2000. Eventually got a pro license. Now I use a combination of Zune and Winamp. I'll go for Winamp when I want to add vizualizations but stick to Zune otherwise.

To me, creating playlists is a pain. Zune has an function called "smart DJ" that lets you pick a song and create a playlist based on it. Customizable as to how many and whether from your local collection or it can include songs from the Zune service if you have it. I then use a utility called ZPL to convert the playlists to Winamp (not w/Zune Service songs) format and enjoy my visualizations on Winamp. The Zune software doesn't have the equalizer or all the available DSP addons but it has great sound quality (go figure) and the service used to be a great deal when it included 10 free songs (320 cbr) every month for $15 US.

DesktopX Player....duh..

Quoting RedneckDude,

reply 23

DesktopX Player....duh..

We stick 2 our guns hey

JRiver, hands down the best. Well worth the money.

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What music player do you use?

(or reccomend)