Best Music Player for PC?!?

uLilith or WMP11/WMPC with Reclock.

After that, Foobar2000.

There's nothing complicated about using foobar2000, it just has a legacy look, akin to Media Player Classic. It enables you to configure it any way you see fit, while also being very lightweight and stable. It has several ways of doing bitperfect sound, you can choose different DSPs from a preset list, and add many components to do a lot of things, including syncing iPods/iPhones.

Foobar has too many good features and customizations for me to use anything else. Configuring it can be a pain but once it's set up, It's beautiful.

J River Media Center: http://www.jriver.com/

I remember we had a poll of popular player here, foobar came out on top and itunes 2nd with half the votes. Myself I voted for foobar, used it for nearly ten years now, winamp before that.

foobar2k with the wasapi digital out.  for whatever reason the wasapi thing clearly results in clearer sound.  foobar has so many useful features too :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by CardasHD650 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mad Max 

uLilith or WMP11/WMPC with Reclock.

After that, Foobar2000.

 

Many many thanks for the recommendations, reading all about uLilith it seems really OTT with it being in Japanese to get my head round. When the English version's out I'll definitely give it a go. Foobar2000 maybe the one.

 

Cheers!  

 

The English version is what I use.  It is called uLilith, the japanese version is Lilith.

You can grab the latest build here: http://www.project9k.jp/download/uLilith/
 

Still, compared to a regular transport, any of these media players color the sound mildly and screw up the soundstage.  Foobar is rather muddy compared to uLilith to my ears, but both can't get the soundstage right compared to my DVD player feeding my DAC directly.  uLilith already has WASAPI built in if you want to use that or google and download ASIO4ALL if you use a USB DAC.  Foobar's WASAPI plugin fails with USB output, but uLilith's doesn't.  ASIO4ALL sounds better than WASAPI with either to me.  It is slightly more "alive" and richer.  Reclock seems to be the most neutral and transparent to me.

Honestly, I'm tired of using a PC as transport.  (It is best reserved for anime.)  I use my DVD player more since it does everything better through jitter-laden optical, LOL.  I can just imagine how much better it would be with a better transport using coax digital.  No rush to upgrade, my music sounds damn good right now.  =]

oops double post

i like foobar because it is highly customizable. i never tried lilith,but ulilith reminds me of a winamp classic....i might try it out

on my pc, i use media monkey though because it also helps me organize my music on my computer and my ipod.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

I've always like Winamp, but I'm not currently using it because there is no exclusive mode support for the WASAPI plugin yet.  I may try J. River Media Center.  I'm using foobar to play files, but I won't give it any time because IMO it sucks for having a library.  It's a playlist-based player.  How does a player color the sound?  Makes no sense to me for lossless stuff.  For lossy stuff, a decoder itself can vary, but lossless will be the same from player to player.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mad Max 

Quote:

Originally Posted by CardasHD650 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mad Max 

uLilith or WMP11/WMPC with Reclock.

After that, Foobar2000.

 

Many many thanks for the recommendations, reading all about uLilith it seems really OTT with it being in Japanese to get my head round. When the English version's out I'll definitely give it a go. Foobar2000 maybe the one.

 

Cheers!  

 

 

The English version is what I use.  It is called uLilith, the japanese version is Lilith.

 

You can grab the latest build here: http://www.project9k.jp/download/uLilith/
 

Still, compared to a regular transport, any of these media players color the sound mildly and screw up the soundstage.  Foobar is rather muddy compared to uLilith to my ears, but both can't get the soundstage right compared to my DVD player feeding my DAC directly.  uLilith already has WASAPI built in if you want to use that or google and download ASIO4ALL if you use a USB DAC.  Foobar's WASAPI plugin fails with USB output, but uLilith's doesn't.  ASIO4ALL sounds better than WASAPI with either to me.  It is slightly more "alive" and richer.  Reclock seems to be the most neutral and transparent to me.

 

Honestly, I'm tired of using a PC as transport.  (It is best reserved for anime.)  I use my DVD player more since it does everything better through jitter-laden optical, LOL.  I can just imagine how much better it would be with a better transport using coax digital.  No rush to upgrade, my music sounds damn good right now.  =]

I would like to know what are you basing yourself on to make that claim. I've been using WASAPI through USB for years, no issues whatsoever.

@CardasHD650: foobar2000 has quite a clear and high quality output with WASAPI. If for some reason WASAPI doesn't suit your taste, both ASIO and Kernel Streaming can be used, though WASAPI is really the way to go.

At the moment it does have a plugin that syncs uPod/iPhone/iPad, and Zune syncing is in the works. I made a thread about a few things that can optimize foobar2000, with components not found on foobar2000's homepage. Take a look:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/536003/ditch-itunes-get-foobar2000-and-tweak-it-to-your-liking

Foobar with WASAPI output via USB to my USB DAC/AMP works great and is outstanding!!!

Poster above who claimed otherwise must have been doing something wrong or using malfunctioning or improperly configured equipment.

It's either his machine has some misconfiguration or the guy set it up wrong with higher than the DAC allowed bit depth in foobar output options. I can't make other player looks like this, beside I won't give up a player that I have spent over 2000 lines of code tweaking it (well I know there's ppl who do more :D).