What do y'all recommend for playing flac files? I know about Foobar, but I'm not crazy about it. Technically good, but the interface leaves a lot to be desired, even if you spend hours playing with plugins. Ideally I'd like something more along the lines of Amarok, which is awesome, but only runs on linux, which doesn't like this PC (Chaintech AV-710 under linux is...iffy, never have gotten SPDIF to work). Any recommendations? Must be able to handle a fairly decent size library (~300 albums in FLAC).

In my sig, there is one mentioned called as Native Instruments BeatPort SYNC (Powered by TRAKTOR 3). Native ASIO support, no plug-ins, simple interface, etc..

jiitee

I would highly recommend J River Media Center, I have been using this media player for years and I love it. You have to get a plugin in order to play FLAC files, it's on the plugin page and it's easy to find/install. Once it is installed it's fully compatible with flac files. J River Media Center is also ASIO native, so no need to configure anything there.

Have a look at Media monkey . It will certainly handle 300 Flac albums no problem and I personally find the interface very user friendly...You can also easily transcode from Flac to other formats/bitrates automatically when your loading up your DAP(s) with music. I know a lot of Foobar users seem to use it purely for this feature alone...

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The only problem with MediaMonkey is that it's not ASIO native, which is a let down for me, it looks like a good player however.

Perhaps JetAudio 7 would work?

nvm....

BeatPort SYNC sounds great, I know it should be the same but I really feel it sounds better than Foobar and Asio4ALL. Only problem is I cant seem to list the music by album. Thanks for the tip!

Winamp. I've used almost every audio player in the last 12 years and this one is as close to perfect as I've seen. You will need Dynamic Library, Shibach's ASIO output and also his MP3 decoder plugin to see it at its best though.

Can we get some links to the winamp plugin's? I cant seem to find them.

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By adding a column for album data (Release) and then by sorting 1st by the track # and then by Release, you should get all albums for selected Artist sorted by Release (Album) and track count. You can add/remove columns by right_mouse_clicking the column naming row on track view window.

Actually, I mostly use the explorer there (my library is organized by Artist\Album) and sometimes saved play lists so this hasn't be an issue to me ...

jiitee

X2 on MediaMonkey. I have 10k+ flac files and it works great. album art, skins, the works. X2 on Winamp also but it doesn't do album art on flac files. You need the Asio4all plug in for both of these

If your using Vista or the sidebar with XP, there is a great gadget that shows album art for Winamp, Foobar, MediaMonkey.

jiiteepee.......I installed BeatPort and tried it out for a while, and found something odd, I think.

Must the user reset the sample rate to the native rate of the file to avoid invoking a resampler within BeatPort?

I have a number of 24/96 hi-rez downloads, and it appeared as if BeatPort didn't automatically set its output rate to match that of the input file. Likewise, when I went back to play CD rips at 44.1k, the displayed sample rate in BeatPort stayed at 96k. For some reason, when I first started BeatPort, my 0404 USB control panel icon in systray disappeared, so I didn't have that independent confirmation of the sample rate.

I had to start the 0404 USB control panel manually, and when I restarted BeatPort, it seemed to work as it always had--it didn't disappear this time around, and it always showed the same sample rate as the BeatPort Audio Panel. I couldn't find any documentation on that issue.

The other issue is that as a long-time Foobar user, I am used to seeing elasped time on the cut, not the time remaining. Apparently one must upgrade to the paid version of the player to see any other time display, correct?

Hmm.. I have not used BPP SYNC much with 0404 USB yet but, AFAIK, if you're in ASIO mode, it's always needed to set the SR in BPP manually and that setting should then change the output SR to the same automatically in 0404 Control panel.

When you use DS driver mode, SR won't change in E-MU panel as it does w/ ASIO.

I have not tried how's it with Asio4All but I guess it's the same as ASIO.

jiitee

Thanks for the info, I really like this program. Sounds best so far.