Music player application

[Patrick1958]

My main music desktop application is Foobar2000 for wav, flac, cd, on the fly dsd conversion, the occasional dsd (dsf) file, converting between formats and ripping cds.
Reading the various topic on these forums several other applications are mentioned (Jriver, roon, hqplayer etc).
I want to give other applications a try, but before doing so and going through the hassle of installing, de-installing and determining the most suited for my needs i'll ask the opinions of members here

- What is your preferred music player;
- What are the advantages over Foobar;
- Freeware of pay

Thanks in advance.

 

[esm]

 

[Patrick1958]

View attachment 16871

Was my music app before Foobar. With the dsd plugin it will play dsd files but converts them to pcm on output and could not find a setting to output them in dsd format. Very often distortions were noticeable when starting a new dsd file and i needed to toggle the volume slider a bit to get rid of it. Stopped using it for this reason, and my dacs are able to decode dsd so preferred the dac to process the bitstream.

 

[maverickronin]

Foobar is my favorite since it's the most customizable. Also it's one of the few left which doesn't have an album art based interface which I absolutely can't stand.

Jriver is basically foobar + video + less intimidating setup. Similar features for audio processing but the interface isn't customizable.

I know a lot of people here like Roon but I can't stand it. The interface is way too flashy and it costs a ton of money because besides the software it charges you for it's metadata library which I have no use for. On the plus side, it's streaming protocol is supposed to be very good.

 

[esm]

Was my music app before Foobar.

Sorry, that was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion. (Although apparently the brand is coming back soon?) I have nothing useful to add, because I'm a Linux desktop guy; I'm guessing my setup suggestions for mpd, pulseaudio plumbing, etc. won't be all that helpful for you.

 

[sergeauckland]

Most of my playing is from a Squeezebox touch, so the few times I play direct from a PC, I use Squeezeplay, which is basically an SBT emulator, so works the same as the SBT, and can be remotely controlled from the same tablet app (Soundicity) as I use for the SBT itself.

I like things simple.

S

 

[Kal Rubinson]

- What is your preferred music player; JRiver
- What are the advantages over Foobar; I have no idea because, although I did try Foobar once or twice, I was never able to get it working to my satisfaction and I abandoned it.
- Freeware of pay Pay.

 

[TimW]

I switched from Foobar to Roon. At home I listen to music in multiple locations and I was not enjoying having my music stuck on one computer. I am not very savvy with computers so I was not aware of a way to overcome this with Foobar or another free program easily. I tried running the computer 24/7 so that I could access my music at any time but it would crash once in a while. And the remote control app for Android failed to work correctly a lot of the time. I read that Roon could do what I wanted so I tried it out.

Like others will tell you, Roon is great for discovering things about your music and discovering new music. It is a very polished and modern looking program which I like but others may not. I really like how it integrates Tidal streaming and my personal collection, which is a big part of why I wanted Roon. I have tried out a few different music streaming services and found that I like Tidal the most. If you use a different streaming service, or none at all, then Roon is probably not a very compelling option. It is really a very easy to use and informative program though, I love seeing the path of the music from source to endpoint. Seeing the year, sample rate, lyrics, and album reviews easily. And using the built in DSP functions is also very cool. The Roon team is always adding very useful functionality, hopefully remote library access is coming with the next big update.

If you are more knowledgeable about these types of programs you could probably figure out something that has similar capabilities but Roon is the elegant and easy way to go. Biggest problem with it for me is of course the price. $120 a year for Roon plus $240 a year for Tidal just to have a pretty interface for your music is a tough pill to swallow. $500 for a lifetime subscription is also painful. And you should keep in mind that Roon does not include CD ripping software, so you will have to use another program for that.

 

[Ron Party]

jriver here. GUI was much preferred over foobar when I first started using it years ago. Haven't tried foobar in years, though. Tried roon. GUI was pretty, but I found it cumbersome to navigate my very large music collection.

 

[TimW]

Tried roon. GUI was pretty, but I found it cumbersome to navigate my very large music collection.

Yeah Roon is not great for simply scrolling through a list of albums or even artists. It has caused me to use other ways of navigating now.

 

[Duckeenie]

My player of choice is Musicbee it has a great modern skinnable interface while matching most features that Foobar has.

I guess you need to ask yourself the same question in reverse really. What do you feel you are missing by using Foobar?

 

[BillG]

Musicbee (freeware) as a local music and Internet radio player on my PC. I mostly store my music in m4a, mp3, and flac.

Emby (freeware) as a DLNA/UPnP media server on the PC.

Poweramp (paid) as a local music player on my Android devices.

HiFi Cast/BubbleUPnP (paid) as stream players for media served by Emby on the PC and Internet radio on my Android devices.

HiFi Cast is more pleasant looking than BubbleUPnP, includes Internet radio, and a better UX, but BubbleUPnP is more configurable and compatible with Emby.

I've tried Foobar several times in the past, but it's such an eye sore and convoluted to configure - I'm a software engineer and still find it unpleasant to deal with (they really need to get a UX designer on board) - that I couldn't tolerate it for long...

 

[Blumlein 88]

I use lots of things. I'm not too stuck on any one.

Foobar if you are used to it and don't need a more GUI type approach is fine.
Like someone said, Jriver is something like Foobar made easy and video too.
I've not used Roon, tons of people just love it, but it is pricey.

I've not tried it recently, but one I always avoid is iTunes. Mainly because it insisted on taking over anything related to audio or video.

Now I foolishly have Windows, Linux and Mac computers all at times going thru my sound system.

With Windows I stick with Foobar. I've used it for years and it can do so much. If I were starting fresh I might go another way.

On Mac (which I've not had a Mac until the last year), I've mostly just opened stuff in Audacity and listened. One song at a time. I've also used VLC as they have a nice remote control so I can use my phone to control VLC over the local wifi. The interface isn't that great, but it serviceable. I also use it the same way on my Windows and Linux machines.

One I've tried and sort of liked is Tomahawk. It is available for most any platform. Seemed to be one of the better attempts at congregating all sources into one app, that was pretty, nicely thought out and usable. You might take a look at it. It combines streaming, cloud storage, local storage and direct sources. Not the only one to do this, but I liked how it worked. Oops. Looks like they've stop development of this. Too bad.

 

[Sal1950]

All my music playback is done in Linux. A slightly custom version of Clementine is what I run now. Also of late been playing a bit with a Clementine fork called Strawberry, quite minimalist but fine for bit perfect playback of local files.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'll have to look at Strawberry. I've been using DeaDbeef for some simpler playing.

I was just looking at my Linux players, and had forgotten about Cantata. It is more of a music player client for MPD connections or a straight player. Its definitely worth looking into for Linux users. If you try it, be sure to click on the info symbol in the upper right. It will open photos, lyrics and a ton of useful info about the music. I'd had planned on switching over to it, and something must have gotten in the way.

 

[Grave]

I would not use anything but foobar because I like it so much. It can do anything I want it to do.

 

[Sal1950]

I was just looking at my Linux players, and had forgotten about Cantata

I'll take a look at it when I have time. It can be so hard in many distros to work around the bully Pulse and get the bit stream to alsa without resampling.

 

[bennetng]

View attachment 16871

Two important Winamp developers (Peter Pawlowski and Justin Frankel) are now working on foobar and Reaper respectively.

 

[Patrick1958]

I give musicbee a try this weekend.
Keeping an eye on the new release of Winamp.

 

[JJB70]

Foobar for me.