what is the best out and out media player

[jimbo45]

Hi all

Two BIG problem with Windows Media player.

1) Can't play FLAC - at least not with a lot of "tweaking". -- I am not a fan of hideously "compressed" mp3 files - nasty artifacts etc. FLAC although compressed is a LOSSLESS compresstion (rather like a digital camera RAW file - highly compressed - but LOSSLESS - the image program like photojob converts this into your printable and viewable picture).

2) Database organisation for media files is HORRIBLE.

I tend to use Winamp for playing and ripping CD's to FLAC (still old fashioned enoughto have CD's - I don't like compressed downloaded music - especially when its riddled with DRM so you have problems on where you play it.

The winamp ripper makes decent playlists - which I keep in a link to a mySQL database -- note not the actual file but just the link. This means I can have multimedia stored on ANY disk / portable device etc etc.

Every so often I just run a perl script to update the MySQL db with any playlists I've moved, deleted - updated.

MediaMonkey is another good one - I have tried it and its fine but I don't need several different players.

The latest VLC is great for Video -- HD content will certainly appear in beta before long - but why in any case would I be bothered with HD on a computer -- for that quality movie what's wrong with a nice large Plasma TV with a good drink in your hand.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[JayLovesKases]

for movies i use kmplayer, similar to vlc, it's free and plays near-enough everything without needing (but can use if required) external codecs.

agreed. i've come across 3 different file types vlc didn't play but km player did. 2 were differently encoded mkvs and some flv files don't play with vlc either. so if it's about being able to play anything i'd say kmplayer. but apparently the picture quality in kmplayer isn't as good as on other players. so i've read and now noticed myself.

 

[k7ninja]

I have foobar2000 and Winamp. Foobar is easy to add encoders to, to rip into mp3 or FLAC for free, and Winamp is easier to arrange a library in. I usually just play my videos in Winamp as well. The only issue I've had with that is in fullscreen mode, changing the volume from the keyboard doesn't work.
I've used Divx player, but it is actually much slower than winamp. The same video will jerk in divx, and lay smoothly in winamp. And I have iTunes on my XP laptop for my iPod and I hate it lol.

 

[harpua]

Still using the latest RC version of AIMP2 for audio. I think it's very cool. The app also notifies you when there is a new RC version available and it is being aggressively developed.

One can use winamp plugins too if you copy the right .dll from your winamp install over to the AIMP2 program folder.

I think winamp users might find it interesting.

Hard to capture the player well in screen shots but the first screen shot shows the player (default skin with VU meter visualization) and playlist mgr attached below, second is the DSP mgr, third is the EQ that flies out from the side of the player. And finally, another of many skins (the one with the girl). (Adding the one with the girl messed up the original order a bit.)

The main advantages​

• Support for a large number of music formats:
  MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC / MP+, AAC, AC3, Ogg, FLAC,APE, WavPack, Speex, WAV, CDA, WMA, S3M, XM, MOD, IT, MO3, MTM, UMX
• The great functionality and intuitive interface
• 18-band EQ and built-in sound effects
  Reverb, Flanger, Chorus, Pitch, Tempo, Echo, Speed
• 32-bit audio processing
  to achieve the best quality
• Work with multiple playlists at once
• Support of modules for functionality enhancement
  You can add new utilities and expand existing, connect such plugins as Input, Gen, DSP from Winamp
• Shutting down the computer
  You can sleep under favorite music, setting the timer to switch off the computer.
• Online radio
  Listen and save!
• Creation of bookmarks and playback queue
• Hot keys
  Set up local and global hotkeys to your taste!
• Multilingual interface
• Multiuser mode
  Several users are working with one computer? No problem.
• Full Unicode support
• File search
  Search files on all open playlists
• Flexible program settings
• Small size of program distribution
• Audio Converter
  Allows you to convert music from a variety of formats to wma, mp3, wav, ogg
• Audio Grabber
  You can convert AudioCD (CDA) in MP3, OGG, WAV or WMA
• Soung recording
  Allows you to write the sound from any audio device in the system and save in mp3, ogg, wav and wma format
• Tag Editor
  You can easily edit tags of audio files, rename group of files, sort out by required template or apply tags' values to a group of files.
• Audio Library
  Represents the organizer of music files, which will allow you to easily sort your music, mark listened audios.

 

[ElQuia]

A little recap of mine guys: my multimedia battery is as follows:

I'm on 7 x64, before I was on Vista x64.
1. Sharks codecs packs. I must say that BEFORE shark I was a fan of "install what you use", but since (on vista and now on 7) I started using sharks packs I havn't had ANY problems because of the pack.
2. AUDIO: JRiver Media Center on my main PC, JRiver Media Jukebox (free) on the netbook and my wife´s and children PC's. JRiver plays any audio format. I have a lot of FLAC and WavPack lossless files. It´s also very good for tagging, but I prefer Tag&Rename for massive tagging.
3. DVD & Video Files: Till now for quality: PowerDVD, both video and sound quality are awesome. BUT: does not play mkv :sarc:. So I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema x64 (http://xvidvideo.ru/) for those. Also MPC can play ANY format
4.For Quick Browsing INSIDE Total Commander 7.50 I use the media show plugin. This plug can play any format the system (via codec pack) can play and in total commanders quick view mode (ctrl+q) it lets you quickly preview and browse and manage any video or audio media files.

I´m toying around with mplayer (SMPlayer or MPUI interfaces) but I dont have a veredict yet :shock:. The idea is to see if I can replace mediashow inside total commander, using the mplayer4tc plugin. Because mediashow is quite out dated and on win7 it plays ok, but shows black borders on the player commands. That plug seems not to be mantained. BUT the player4tc plug is quite old also so.... I'll see.

Hope all this is useful for somebody

 

[Pug]

Winamp for Music

Gom Player for Video's

if the player can't play the Video it goes off an searches for the Codec

 

[Lucretius]

Windows Media Player 12.

 

[sisi]

I use kmplayer to watch movies , and use vlc to play flv files.

 

[Dinesh]

VLC media player.

 

[dartstryker]

The perfect player just simply doesn't exist.

For audio files, all players have one problem in common: they don't let you tag and modify the Now Playing playlist directly.
WMP used to let you do it, with the Now Playing automatic playlist and the advanced edit options, but obviously - since it was actually a clever solution - they've taken it out in WMP12.
batch editing is almost impossible, and in general its media library capabilities are prehistorical.

Winamp doesn't have a decent dynamic library, and it doesn't even show ratings for the songs you're playing. it's pretty hopeless.

Don't know about mediamonkey, the old version was appalling but they must've improved it in the past few years.

Itunes.... ....never mind, just stay safe and don't buy an ipod

I just wish someone would come out with a good plugin for winamp, it's certainly got the best potential.
WMP has fallen back a long way by removing the edit options and the now playing feature... which is unfortunate, since the program is fast and well integrated in Win7.

 

[Sefyu]

I heard people really love Foobar, I haven't tried tho.

 

[harpua]

The perfect player just simply doesn't exist.

For audio files, all players have one problem in common: they don't let you tag and modify the Now Playing playlist directly.

I believe Aimp2 latest RC does allow this.

WMP used to let you do it, with the Now Playing automatic playlist and the advanced edit options, but obviously - since it was actually a clever solution - they've taken it out in WMP12.
batch editing is almost impossible, and in general its media library capabilities are prehistorical.

Winamp doesn't have a decent dynamic library, and it doesn't even show ratings for the songs you're playing. it's pretty hopeless.
Aimp2 shows ratings in the system tray if you hover over the icon.
Don't know about mediamonkey, the old version was appalling but they must've improved it in the past few years.

Itunes.... ....never mind, just stay safe and don't buy an ipod

I just wish someone would come out with a good plugin for winamp, it's certainly got the best potential.
WMP has fallen back a long way by removing the edit options and the now playing feature... which is unfortunate, since the program is fast and well integrated in Win7.

Check out Aimp2 rc, if you haven't already.

 

[t41]

I use kmplayer for videos, and it plays .flv files for me just fine

Use winamp, along with CDArt display, or jriver media player, media monkey is also very good.
I use orangecd for my music library along with winamp for the most part. I must say that if your music is properly tagged most any player that's been listed in this thread will work fine.

Surpised to see no-one mention neuview - here it makes a huge difference in viewing avi files if they are in need of some extra help. I sometimes use it to watch some downloaded TV shows on my 24" dell monitor and it makes the picture almost twice as clean.

music players - ones I've tried in past
winamp
media monkey
orangecd
Aimp2
Xeon
Jet-Audio
Helium
foobar2000
windows media player
mp3toys
musikcube
albumplayer

harpua and belveder - try that neuview see what you guys think,

 

[dartstryker]

The perfect player just simply doesn't exist.

For audio files, all players have one problem in common: they don't let you tag and modify the Now Playing playlist directly.

I believe Aimp2 latest RC does allow this.

WMP used to let you do it, with the Now Playing automatic playlist and the advanced edit options, but obviously - since it was actually a clever solution - they've taken it out in WMP12.
batch editing is almost impossible, and in general its media library capabilities are prehistorical.

Winamp doesn't have a decent dynamic library, and it doesn't even show ratings for the songs you're playing. it's pretty hopeless.
Aimp2 shows ratings in the system tray if you hover over the icon.
Don't know about mediamonkey, the old version was appalling but they must've improved it in the past few years.

Itunes.... ....never mind, just stay safe and don't buy an ipod

I just wish someone would come out with a good plugin for winamp, it's certainly got the best potential.
WMP has fallen back a long way by removing the edit options and the now playing feature... which is unfortunate, since the program is fast and well integrated in Win7.

Check out Aimp2 rc, if you haven't already.

I hadn't tried it yet, but it does not have the option I'm looking for.
Basically, it's simply an automatic "current playlist" that one can edit from the Audio Library.

WMP had it (but now they've got rid of it together with the advanced tag editor), winamp doesn't seem to, and neither does Aimp2 (unless I've missed something).

...maybe mediamonkey?

I dunno, it just seems such an obvious feature to include... if you want to edit some info, chances are you're also listening to it right? so why not have the feature? :sarc:

 

[dartstryker]

tried Mediamonkey.
It's definitely the best player out there for audio.
It has the most complete media library, it supports most winamp plugins, and especially adopts scripting.
if anyone, like me, isn't 100% happy with the player he's using, I would definitely advise to try out mediamonkey.

 

[WDAexodus]

Winamp for my audio, and Windows Media Player for video, because with a codec pack installed, it plays pretty much everything.

What CODEC pack you use?

 

[Teerex]

Jet Audio has had player control buttons in Aero Peek for some time now, and they work great.

 

[lyotosx7]

Windows Media Player is the best.

 

[ShadyGirl420]

For movies i use BS Player

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
"Horses for Courses" I think the Brits say.

I like VLC myself as it can play almost anything I want these days.

I use Winamp for Ripping CD's to FLAC -- not actually for playing the music as I stream it.

I've found however I'm bothering less and less with Multimedia on a computer since I now use a dedicated "Music server" with Hi-FI studio quality speakers and 24 bit sampling @ 96 khz (better than CD quality - 16 Bit @ 44.1 Khz) for streaming music all over the property

If I'm on a desktop I don't need to play music any more -- and Computer speakers are usually geared more for Games or DVD movies rather than very high quality music - especially when the source is LOSSLESS FLAC / WAV at very high bit rates.

Even for Video - I prefer to watch on a large HD screen rather than on a computer.

I'm currently "modding" the music server to serve Video content as well so the issue of multi-media on a computer becomes less and less of an issue for me.

Now if I'm travelling -- I do a lot of free lance assignments -- then using a Laptop in a hotel - then VLC is fine for playing standard DVD's -- on a 10 inch or so screen on a typical laptop the visual difference in quality between a standard amd a Blu Ray DVD isn't worth it.


I think with more and more people coming around to the idea of dedicated Music and Video servers the Multimedia issue on computers will be a non issue -- at least in areas where you have a decent reliable FAST broadband connection.


Cheers
jimbo