Which media player for music files ?

[Bsmooth]

I've always liked playing around with ripping CD's and using Audacity. Switched to Win 10 awhile ago and was wondering what you use for a music media player.
Win 10 had some groove music player and I just didn't really like it.
I've heard Foobar is good but can be somewhat difficult to setup. I basically just want a music player that plays the files as well as possible and uses the best bit combo to get the best sound..
I want to rip all my CD's to a USB drive at some point too, not that I'm retired I'll have more time to play around and give it my best.

 

[KeithPhantom]

I'll recommend just setting up Foobar and then forget and just listen. It will be a one-time setup, then there's no need to touch the settings. Another "media player" (it is more than that) is Roon. It is a great investment because it is perfect to manage a large library and has the best hardware support for dedicated music hardware; it also has DSP support and bit-perfect rendering.

 

[JanesJr1]

I'll recommend just setting up Foobar and then forget and just listen. It will be a one-time setup, then there's no need to touch the settings. Another "media player" (it is more than that) is Roon. It is a great investment because it is perfect to manage a large library and has the best hardware support for dedicated music hardware; it also has DSP support and bit-perfect rendering.

With Roon, can you avoid MQA?

 

[jae]

Windows?

playback = foobar
ripping = EAC
tagging = mp3tag

Foobar technically will do all these functions quite well, but the other software will give you a better experience for the ripping and mass tagging. Getting foobar exactly how you want it will take some time as others have suggested, but it's worth it. Alternatives to foobar are deadbeef, musicbee, strawberry. Roon is great if you want to pay for it and be apart of that whole ecosystem, and want streaming services built in.

 

[Anonamemouse]

Windows?

Playback: Winamp
Ripping: DbPoweramp
Tagging: Tag&Rename

 

[Kal Rubinson]

With Roon, can you avoid MQA?

Yes. Just turn it off.

Windows?
Playback: Jriver
Ripping: DbPoweramp
Tagging: mp3tag

 

[KeithPhantom]

With Roon, can you avoid MQA?

Yeah, you can. You can just turn it off in the decoding section of the DAC settings. Also, you can use Qobuz and that will completely avoid MQA.

 

[muslhead]

My choices mirror Kal's

Playback: Jriver
Ripping: DbPoweramp
Tagging: mp3tag

 

[blse59]

I've always liked playing around with ripping CD's and using Audacity. Switched to Win 10 awhile ago and was wondering what you use for a music media player.
Win 10 had some groove music player and I just didn't really like it.
I've heard Foobar is good but can be somewhat difficult to setup. I basically just want a music player that plays the files as well as possible and uses the best bit combo to get the best sound..
I want to rip all my CD's to a USB drive at some point too, not that I'm retired I'll have more time to play around and give it my best.

Foobar by far is the simplest easiest quality music player. If you ever used Winamp back in the day and remembered how easy that was, Foobar is basically the same thing.

 

[Anonamemouse]

Foobar by far is the simplest easiest quality music player. If you ever used Winamp back in the day and remembered how easy that was, Foobar is basically the same thing.

Winamp is back and actually working on a new player.

Discover the best artists in the Fanzone - Winamp

Embrace your inner fan, subscribe to your favorite artists to get Winamp-exclusive content.

www.winamp.com

 

[BeerBear]

Foobar by far is the simplest easiest quality music player.

I love Foobar, but the simplest easiest? Nah. It packs a lot of functionality, which can confuse people (but it's great if you want it).

If you want a really easy to use audio player try Boom, which is made by the same guy that made Foobar.

Winamp is back and actually working on a new player.

Discover the best artists in the Fanzone - Winamp

Embrace your inner fan, subscribe to your favorite artists to get Winamp-exclusive content.

www.winamp.com

If that ultraslow bloated website is any indication, it won't be anything like the original Winamp.

 

[Vacceo]

I use VLC, as it is free, super simple and can play pretty much anything.

 

[blse59]

I love Foobar, but the simplest easiest? Nah. It packs a lot of functionality, which can confuse people (but it's great if you want it).

If you want a really easy to use audio player try Boom, which is made by the same guy that made Foobar.

Yes, because literally you just double-click the setup file to install. Then you double-click the audio file to play. It can't be more simple than that. The player interface is spartan, lightweight and barebones.

 

[jae]

Yes, because literally you just double-click the setup file to install. Then you double-click the audio file to play. It can't be more simple than that. The player interface is spartan, lightweight and barebones.

That's the nice thing about foobar, the setup can be as simple or complex as you want. I personally like a very simple/minimal UI, but require all the complexities, plugins, and customisation of foobar. I only really listen to music as albums or parts of albums, so it works well for me to retain a simple UI:

On the top you can see the playback buttons- I rarely use them as they are mapped to hotkeys on my keyboard but they are there just in case. Adjacent to that I have three drop down menus, the first is to select playback order (repeat, random, shuffle etc), the second is to choose between my DSP presets, which are useful for easily swapping between tunings for my different headphones, applying crossfeed, using speakers, bass cutoff for night time listening, etc. There is even an option in that dropdown to stream my music directly to a shoutcast/icecast server to broadcast my own online radio station to friends who want to listen to what I'm listening to. The third dropdown allows me to easily choose my device output for foobar without actually changing my windows default output device, and allows me to choose between ASIO/exclusive or wsapi without much fuss. I also have a upnp plugin so I can select a local or remote device for casting/receiving a datastream. The bar to the right of that is a search bar, and the results pop up in tabs below (bar looks a bit odd right now because I'm experimenting with a new component). Using a waveform trackbar under that makes it very easy to go to specific parts of a tune without guessing too much. I also really like the Windows integrated toolbar.

Many music players have some or many of these features, but none are as customizable or complete. My particular setup is crude and utilitarian, but there are lots of beautiful styles and images people integrate into foobar themes to make it look completely different.

 

[freemansteve]

I rip CDs using Fre::ac on a PC. It uses LAME 3.10 for making MP3s or FLAC encoder 1.3.3 (et al) which are pretty good.

Play music on my PC using Foobar2000 - which works out of the box, unless you want to customize and then it gets clunky. I have zero interest in gadgets, like daft, swirly graphics.

I edit music using Audacity (inc my own recording). And CUEtools where needed.

I play video on PC using VLC - it's easy and plays everything, but it's no good for music as it does not support gapless playback.

Same tools on Android devices.

For better sound (non-PC), I stream FLAC and MP3 from a NAS/RAID/DLNA to my Evo 75.

Good video tools include MKVToolNix, MKVCleaver, TAudiConverter (inc. the excellent Fraunhofer codecs) and Handbrake.

 

[Neddy]

Hah, no opinions here, eh?

On my gaming desktop I use MusicBee for Playback, Ripping and Tagging - simple, intuitive UI, and consistently reliable.
For the big 7.1 music/AV system I use JRIver, but it drives me nuts with constant begging for upgrades and changes in behavior - but does handle nearly any complexity you can think of (but need to research heavily first).
(I also use JRemote on the iphone to route playlists from JR to bluetooth speakers elsewhere in the house - works well, actually.)
(AFAIK, 'custom' tags don't 'cross' from MB to JR libraries, tho).
For simple quick playback I still use MPC-HC for vid and music files.
Lots of other simple ones out there, too, as mentioned.

 

[JaccoW]

• Exact Audio Copy to rip CDs
  • I like it slightly better than Fre:ac or MusicBee for ripping, especially since it works better with damaged disks
• Fre:ac to convert files
• MusicBee to manage my (160GB) library or to play it
  • Automatically checks for added/removed files, pretty UI
• Foobar2000 to convert SACD or DSD files
• Tagscanner to mass-edit the tags of my files
• MPC-HC for video playback