[mswlogo]

I am a long time Winamp user and I loved it for several reasons.
 
1) It could play ANYTHING. MP3, FLAC, DTS/AC3 Embedded in FLAC - Mixed Down, DSD Decoder or Pass Through
2) User interface was exactly how I like to listen/browse. I would often put it on Random Play until I hit an album I was in the mood for and I could right click play artist or album.
3) I also liked it's ability Marking tunes with Stars, and History of number of times played etc.
4) Winamp also did this without mucking up your source library (which I occasionally will clone from home to work).
 
My Flac Library is setup for Logitech Media Server and Home Theater that can decode DTS, AC3 etc. It's all "Pass Through".
 
Winamp is smart enough to "sniff" the FLAC and do DTS, AC3 decoding etc.
 
Now Foobar2000 is also top dog doing all the technical stuff "right". It will sniff the Flac's too and do the right thing.
 
Problem is FooBar2000 user interface is fairly dumb/flat.
 
I know there are skins for FooBar2000 that can make it look Winamp-ish but I'm not sure it will have the smarts for items 2-4 above.
 
I know I could run Winamp and I just stupidly uninstalled it and having trouble finding a safe mirror to down load from and a "Patch Kit".
 
The reason I did uninstall it is I now run a 4K monitor and it is not 4K aware and a bunch of icons are disproportionally small.
 
I've tried JRiver, MusicBee and Media Monkey. They are all pretty darn good. But none achieve 1-4 as well as WinAmp did or FooBar2000 did.
 
The problem with the others that do support Winamp plugins is they don't "sniff" the FLAC's. You have to unpack the FLAC and rename the file to DTS, AC3 etc.
That's a lot of work, lot of wasted space and makes replenishing my library tedious.
 
Any suggestions.
 
It's a damn shame Winamp has allowed to wither away.
 
So my requirements are:
 
1) Winamp like "Browsing" and Tracking of tunes.
2) Pass through on DSD files (to Mojo)
3) Sniff FLACs for DTS/AC3 and decode and mix down to 2 channel.
4) Support ASIO/WASAPI (they all do this pretty good).
 
I can get 80% of the way with JRiver, MusicBee, or MediaMonkey.
 
Which is the best route to take?
 
Plugins for things like Pandora, Internet radio is a plus too.
 
I have no issue if the player cost $$$

 

[mswlogo]

Ok I gave up on jRiver, MusicBee, MediaMonkey and went back to Foobar2000
 
Finally after years of using Foobar2000 (as just a debug tool rather than a main player) I finally dug in more of how it works.
 
In my opinion it's the only player that does everything technically correct (formally I say Winamp too).
 
If when I tried to get some others to play AC3 they would crash when changing tracks and other glitches.
 
Foobar2000 was rock solid.
 
If all you want is DSD Pass through and PCM 2 Channel FLACs, JRiver would be my choice.
I could not get others to do DSD Pass through and I could not get JRiver to work properly with DTS/AC3 Embedded in FLACs (or not embedded).
When not embedded in FLAC you lose Tagging, which is why I have them Embedded.
 
I wrote a README on how to set it up to play "Everything".
 
DTS, Dolby Digital (Multichannel) Decode, and DSD Pass through to DSD DAC.
 
Install foobar2000
              Choose Album List + Properties
              Choose Grey Orange
              Choose Default Playlist
 
Install foo_ac3 (works for AC3 embedded in FLAC or AC3 files I think)
Install foo_input_dts (works for DTS embedded in FLAC or DTS files I think)
Install foo_input_sacd (Only installed to get file mappings, not used if DAC supports SACD)
Install foo_out_asio
 
Start Foobar2000
 
Setup DSD external DAC
              Under File -> Preferences -> Components -> Playback -> Output
              Expand Output and set Device to DSD : ASIO : ASIO Chord
              Under File -> Preferences -> Tools -> SACD -> Output Mode -> DSD (Non DSD DAC Set PCM, Sample Rate to 96Khz)
 
Setup Mix Down (only needed for AC3 Multichannel)
              File -> Preferences -> Playback -> DSP Manager
              Add "Downmix channels to Stereo"
 
Add Library Folders.
              Library -> Configure -> Add Folder
              If Folder is already there try removing and adding again.
 
In Playback Menu
              Select Cursor Follows Playback
 
To Play, drag whatever you want from the Main Left Panel to the Play List (including the root node [everything])
Optionally In Playback Menu choose Random
 
Click start of Album in Playlist to Play that Album and Disable Random.
Or Search for Artist or Album with Filter on Main Window and then Drag that Filtered View Over to the Play List.
 
To Wipe Playlist
              Click in Playlist and hit CTRL-A then CTRL-X.
 
Fancy Skins didn't work well on 4K Monitor.
 
My mistake with Foobar was I was dragging folders direct to the Playlist Window.
 

 

[mswlogo]

Oops. Noticed today my DSD light was not on and I was Decoding DSD on the PC.
The above Configuration is fixed. You don't need the ProxyASIO any more.

 

[Joraa]

I am a long time Winamp user and I loved it for several reasons.

1) It could play ANYTHING. MP3, FLAC, DTS/AC3 Embedded in FLAC - Mixed Down, DSD Decoder or Pass Through
2) User interface was exactly how I like to listen/browse. I would often put it on Random Play until I hit an album I was in the mood for and I could right click play artist or album.
3) I also liked it's ability Marking tunes with Stars, and History of number of times played etc.
4) Winamp also did this without mucking up your source library (which I occasionally will clone from home to work).

My Flac Library is setup for Logitech Media Server and Home Theater that can decode DTS, AC3 etc. It's all "Pass Through".

Winamp is smart enough to "sniff" the FLAC and do DTS, AC3 decoding etc.

Now Foobar2000 is also top dog doing all the technical stuff "right". It will sniff the Flac's too and do the right thing.

Problem is FooBar2000 user interface is fairly dumb/flat.

I know there are skins for FooBar2000 that can make it look Winamp-ish but I'm not sure it will have the smarts for items 2-4 above.

I know I could run Winamp and I just stupidly uninstalled it and having trouble finding a safe mirror to down load from and a "Patch Kit".

The reason I did uninstall it is I now run a 4K monitor and it is not 4K aware and a bunch of icons are disproportionally small.

I've tried JRiver, MusicBee and Media Monkey. They are all pretty darn good. But none achieve 1-4 as well as WinAmp did or FooBar2000 did.

The problem with the others that do support Winamp plugins is they don't "sniff" the FLAC's. You have to unpack the FLAC and rename the file to DTS, AC3 etc.
That's a lot of work, lot of wasted space and makes replenishing my library tedious.

Any suggestions.

It's a damn shame Winamp has allowed to wither away.

So my requirements are:

1) Winamp like "Browsing" and Tracking of tunes.
2) Pass through on DSD files (to Mojo)
3) Sniff FLACs for DTS/AC3 and decode and mix down to 2 channel.
4) Support ASIO/WASAPI (they all do this pretty good).

I can get 80% of the way with JRiver, MusicBee, or MediaMonkey.

Which is the best route to take?

Plugins for things like Pandora, Internet radio is a plus too.

I have no issue if the player cost $$$

you still can use winamp, you don't need to pay for it.
http://www.mywinamp.com/winamp-for-windows-10-download/

 

[domsch1988]

I too did avoid foobar for a long time. It's just so clumsy after installation. Ideally i'd like the foobar power with the ITunes look. Say about apple what you want, but itunes does look nice.
Eventually the speed with which foobar handles a big library and the now bs approach let me dig in.
I spend 3 days now setting my interface up (insane, but what you gonna do). I now have two layouts set up (one fullscreen, one half screen) and it's workable. No beauty, but everything works.

If anyone knows of a player that's a bit more modern (better intagrated tagging would be great too), but doesn't skip on speed or ease of use, i'd highly appreciate it. And no, winamp was never for me. Tried it again and again over several years. It was alsways slow and uggly as well as unstable for me. This might have changed, but i'm not going back to it really...

 

[PJABBER]

AIMP v4.13 with their Advanced Tag Editor and Audio Converter will likely be your best free choice - www.aimp.ru/

But also check out Daum's PotPlayer v1.7.2710 if you often play video files - https://potplayer.daum.net

These are both audiophile level media players with deep feature sets.

 

[domsch1988]

AIMP v4.13 with their Advanced Tag Editor and Audio Converter will likely be your best free choice - www.aimp.ru/

But also check out Daum's PotPlayer v1.7.2710 if you often play video files - https://potplayer.daum.net

These are both audiophile level media players with deep feature sets.

Thanks, Aimp looks nice, i'll have a look at it later, when i'm at home. If the online tagging is good and it supports batch file moving based on taggs, it could replace mediamonkey and foobar at once. This would be great.

 

[Twenty-One Twelve]

Here's mine, Jukebox 2112, which is suitable for playing most things.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/jukebox-2112/9mwlm64kmd3n

One thing, it does not use a database. If you want to load your entire music library, you can (64-bit Windows 10 desktop program), but anything over, say, 10,000 tracks, you probably would want the music on an SSD (1000s of fully-parsed tracks per second then). It uses a custom file picker so you can easily add folder(s) at a time. I know, sounds like a minor thing but it is simple to use, and no database. I've done several players in the past, and except for my first - iPlay (et al.), a Windows CE/PocketPC/PDA thing - they've all had a (very fast) database. Today, I don't need one.

For headphones, it has a nice crossfeed DSP, which can be configured for effect. Too much to put here, other than great reverb to go with the xfeed. The link has the beans, and pics, and a trial.

The newest feature is on-the-fly ReplayGain. The latency is hidden by the pre-loading/decoding/RGcalc done during the last 10 seconds of the current play, so the RG value for the upcoming track is calculated well before that track plays. Typical RGCalc time (i6700) is about 0.1s for a 5-min. MP3. I added RGCalc because I didn't want to process 1000s of tracks that have no RG value when I know I couldn't verify nothing went wrong during the update (re-writing metadata can be considered harmful, especially 20-year-old tracks -- maybe not, but still, I like RGCalc).

Second-to-last thing, it properly handles FLAC CDs, where you archive the entire CD (say, from EAC) into a FLAC. I even merge multiple CDs (from .wav) into a single FLAC. Here's an example shot (a tool I use to do this)

https://40th.com/jb/w2f/

Like the good old days, where you played CDs and not 45s.

Last thing. It uses current Windows features so, for example, the graphics scale perfectly, from FHD to QHD to UHD and beyond. The images at the MS store don't do it justice since they are scaled for some reason. WASAPI for shared and exclusive, multi-channel, sub-woofer creation, and on and on. My cue to stop.