Recommendations for music players?

[STU9000]

Hi I've just started using Win 7 again after being a macboy for 4 solid years. Used iTunes a lot, but I don't like it so I'm not going to use it on my new Vaio.

For DJing I will install Virtual Dj which is a very good free mixing application that allows you to drag and drop tracks in one of the two virtual decks, and has a number of very useful basic mixing features. I would thoroughly recommend this application, certainly on the Mac it's been extremely easy to pick up and use and haven't encountered any bugs.

But that is not so good for playing albums, so was wondering if anyone knew any decent third party applications that can handle this, preferably by dragging and dropping from file manager... *aherm* 'scuse my friench I meant windows explorer.:sarc:

I used firebird on mac as it's good for playing FLAC (something that iTunes has yet to get to grips with... ) but it ended up being a pain in the ass, asking me to log in to last.fm and stuff all the time, so I'm ideally looking for something a bit slicker than that.

If anyone says windows media player I'm going to boil my head in syrup.

 

[boohbah]

winamp.
its skinnable and real neat.





ps. i have 4 decks in virtual dj, what version are you running. you can actually have 6

 

[STU9000]

Cheers will give winamp a shot, any others?

I was using the version of VDJ designed for 13" screens, but now I've got a bigger monitor I'm sure I can find space for another couple of decks

 

[boohbah]

ok, if you want to find some decent skins for winamp have a look here

Winamp Skinning - Skin Consortium

 

[whs]

Here is another couple you might want to have a look at:

http://filehippo.com/download_real_alternative/
http://filehippo.com/download_songbird/

 

[dsperber]

If anyone says windows media player I'm going to boil my head in syrup.

If you have a large music file collection (including FLAC), and are looking for very good ALTERNATIVES to Windows Media Player that actually do support FLAC, certainly Winamp is a fine suggestion as has already been mentioned. It's basic functionality is superb, and everybody seems to have settled on their own particular "skin" of choice from the seemingly infinite collection out there.

But most significantly, Winamp is a super-fine music player (that certainly plays FLAC) with lots of functionality... not the least of which is the song-specific EQ ("with a memory, by song title") so that you can have a particular uniquely remembered 10-band EQ setup for each and every song in your collection (or use a common "default" if you don't need a unique EQ preset for a song). Anytime you play that song the remembered EQ preset will be loaded. So every song sounds great... exactly as you want it to when you adjust the EQ during playback (and "save" that as a by-name preset).

I also use a "visualization plug-in" named G-Force Platinum with Winamp, so that I can "watch my music" as well as listen to it with Winamp.

Or, I also highly recommend Jaangle, which is also a terrific music player but is also a terrific "collection organizer", "playlist creator" (for M3U playlist files), etc. Plays all kinds of music (including FLAC), and video for that matter although I only use it for music.

It also has a wonderful highly-customizable (and skinnable) user-interface, automatically retrieves artist bios, photos, record album reviews and tracklists, etc. I have my own collection of high-quality 500x500 album art, and Jaangle utilizes that collection in its album displays.

It is superb for managing and playing from large music collections.

 

[STU9000]

Winamp sounds the tits, like the idea of song specific EQ settings! iTunes still doesn't offer that, I think. Who cares anyway. Namp!

 

[dsperber]

... like the idea of song specific EQ settings!

Yes, this really is a long sought-after and terrific feature. Automated EQ-memory by song.

Don't forget to also try G-Force Platinum. You can't imagine how much "fun" it adds to your music listening, to be able to "see" the music with a visualization that reflects tempo, volume, mood, rhythm, frequency, etc.

If you do install G-Force Platinum I can provide my own "customization" (doesn't everybody always think that their own settings are best???) which produces what I feel is a "livelier and more responsive" visualization result.

There are many parameters available with G-Force that control the durations of various "forces" that operate simultaneously on the visualization, resulting in essentially a random never-duplicated image that is in constant flux (controlled primarily by the mathematical notion of the music itself).

So by altering these additional parameters that control the "forces" you can significantly influence what you see on the screen, how long each "force" persists before a different one comes into play, the duration of each general situation before morphing into something else, etc..

You may very likely go "full screen" for G-Force, for parties. Just let Winamp play, and let the screen show G-Force.

 

[StalkeR]

I personally suggest AIMP: AIMP - Free Music Player

Also, you can try Foobar2000: foobar2000

 

[gigagiggles]

I've been playing with Songbird these past few days and I wouldn't recommend it.

As a metadata editor, I thought it was a godsend! I had spent an hour quickly altering the genre metadata in the library yesterday. Today, I opened up my AIMP and the genre metadata had not changed at all.

As a web broswer, it uses Firefox. My concern is security. Does it keep up with the rapid Firefox changes? Does it come up with security plugs as Firefox does? And it doesn't even look for or recognize the existing Firefox profile and its add-on's.

As a player, it does not normalize. Different albums are played at different volumes. To have to manually adjust per album is absolutely unacceptable.

Get Artwork? It scans my library every time I click it. And it never accessed the internet via this function to get artwork.

 

[CB]

My favorites for years with most common features.
Free Jetaudio Basic and Free Jetvideo Basic

Just give it a try, who knows you like it.

Kevin

 

[dsperber]

My favorites for years with most common features.
Free Jetaudio Basic and Free Jetvideo Basic

Just give it a try, who knows you like it.

This is certainly what makes for horse racing.

I, myself, was first introduced to Jet Audio when I bought my Cowon J3 music player almost two years ago. I believe Jet Audio is actually Cowon USA. They certainly show up when you buy a J3 online, and the Jet Audio player software is also through them.

Anyway, I was looking for a program like Playlist Creator that could create M3U playlists which would be usable on my J3, and figured for sure the Cowon's own software division would produce the perfect product: Jet Audio.

I was very used to Winamp and Jaangle, and assorted other straightforward and easy-to-use PC software music players and the like, so I'm not exactly unfamiliar with the idea or the various features and common bells and whistles, and how the GUI for Windows programs typically are generally designed.

But I simply didn't like what I felt to be the complex, confusing, and non-inuitive design and multi-window implementation of Jet Audio. As with my experience with trying MediaMonkey, and also Acronis backup (both of which I also simply couldn't get comfortable with or really figure out how to use), I quickly uninstalled Jet Audio.

None of these three products will be used on my own systems, as I just can't figure them out. They are all just too cryptic, too complex, too user-unfriendly, and even too intrusive and far-reaching, and in my opinion there are better and far simpler programs which can be used instead.

YMMV.

 

[STU9000]

winamp.
its skinnable and real neat.
View attachment 200257

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ps. i have 4 decks in virtual dj, what version are you running. you can actually have 6

View attachment 200259

OK got winamp up and running and just playing around with virtual DJ, going to stick with them and if they fulfil my music needs then I'll probably stick with them, but have noted the alternatives for possible use in the future.. thanks to all for the suggestions.

Quick question for boohbah- how do you get the four decks arrangement, is that available on the free version?

 

[dsperber]

OK got winamp up and running

Just out of curiosity, what (if anything) did you settle on (at least for now) as a "skin"? My own usage relies on "Winamp Modern", but there are hundreds to choose from. I like "Winamp Modern" because it produces an optional separate and resizable Album Art window and separate Playlist Editor window. Also, the main Music Player window itself is quite small when it gets auto-launched when double-clicking a music file in Explorer or other programs, if that's how you want to use it as your Windows default music player program for MP3, FLAC, etc.

So what did you select? How did you customize? What features are you exploring? Etc., etc.?


Also, have you tried any other plug-ins, visualizations in particular? Did you give G-Force Platinum a try?

And, have you got the auto-EQ functionality of Winamp activated and in used? This is that "song-specific" EQ per song capability, to allow you to make each and every song sound just as you want when it's played with Winamp.

 

[STU9000]

Oh I haven't looked into any of that yet, just installing the barebones before I created the last back-up recovery on my new vaio.

 

[Coke Robot]

Zune Software! The most amazing music player I've ever used in my life. It makes listening to music an experience...

 

[seekermeister]

Here is one that I only recently have begun to use, and am quickly learning to like very much:

mufin player - The next generation music player