[chrislangley4253]

I still main foobar2k,

But, I'll be trying out album player and aimp caught my eye too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither

Dithering is definitely not something you want to enable when you are ripping CD's to FLAC. I highly recommend against it.. It might sound better, but you are no longer getting an accurate rip.. You are getting a dithered rip, ya know?

 

[gopanthersgo1]

I'm using mpd on my windows box.

 

[JbstormburstADV]

I've got MusicBee running on my Windows 8.1 for playing/management while I use foobar to add Replaygain, and I love it, especially since I can do some toying around and end up with a UI similar to that of ITunes.  As for Linux, I've got Banshee running, but I'll take any better suggestions if you have them.

 

[eljr]

   
there is no such thing as a best player.. foobar, Winamp, JRiver are equally good. if you want improved sound quality, just upgrade your headphone, amp, dac without worrying about these pointless discussions.  

wow
 
you are a treat
 
i guess this is your way of saying all features and comparability is irrelevant to you and anyone more considered deserves your ridicule  

 

[eljr]

  Foorbar I think it is the best since it has so many features and it is free!

here is where i am at
 
i have a dedicated lap top for music
 
i use j river
 
i have a second lap top that i stream music from the dedicated laptop to  
 
in order to play my flac files i need a player on the second laptop 
 
should i put j rivers on that as wel or just use the foorbar you recommend?
 
what's your thought?

 

[maro73]

Hello
I have been using Jriver for almost 2 years
Big advantage is the Jremote app , and the fact that it serves music on the home network
Cheers

 

[DSlayerZX]

JRiver, once you bought it's license, it's good for the entire household.
 
So why not just install JRiver on your laptop since you are already familiar with it instead of foorbar?
 
Quote:

  here is where i am at
 
i have a dedicated lap top for music
 
i use j river
 
i have a second lap top that i stream music from the dedicated laptop to  
 
in order to play my flac files i need a player on the second laptop 
 
should i put j rivers on that as wel or just use the foorbar you recommend?
 
what's your thought?

 

[squidman]

Well didn't bother reading through all the 15 pages of the thread, but will give foobar a shot (was using vlc til now!).  Just picked up the asus phoebus for gaming, to get away from the onboard realteck alc 898 or whatever it is on my z9pe-d8 ws, but stuck with an apparently obsolete v-can mk 1 for my akg k612's.  Still looking for a decent streaming service, the french one requires me to use my vpn, the ors (spotify etc) are at a lower bitrate (320? and expensive too!). I don't really want to pay 20 quid a month or 50 bucks for lossless streaming...(the norwegian alternative)...will let you know how I get on....looks like its' back to the old days of torrenting flacs and playing locally untill it gets a bit cheaper (wow like back in the day with limewire!!)...
 
edit: limewire was THE BOMB back in the day! before streaming! Have of course moved on many years ago to spotify, but with better cans...blechhh!!! youtube and spotify aren't quite the same...need better source!

 

[vogelscheuche]

Definitly incredible sounding Player for flac is the DJ Software Traktor pro 2 from Native Instruments. With an Xonar Essence and WASAPI is there nothing better I know.

 

[pauliunas]

I personally use foobar2000. It "free" so you can try it and see how you like it. It also allows a lot of customizations if you like to tweak.


 


http://www.foobar2000.org/

 


No it's not ""free"", it's FREE.

 

[crashnburn]

  I've got MusicBee running on my Windows 8.1 for playing/management while I use foobar to add Replaygain, and I love it, especially since I can do some toying around and end up with a UI similar to that of ITunes.  As for Linux, I've got Banshee running, but I'll take any better suggestions if you have them.

Hmm.. Interesting THanks. 

 

[voon]

I love the MusicBee player. Tons of features and plays just about anything, with lots of useful features built in and relatively hassle free. So +1 to that.
 
http://getmusicbee.com/

 

[Headphile32]

Using Pono Music World player and find it to be better than Foobar and it also rips CD's into Flacs perfectly. It is a JRiver software with Pono. I am greatly impressed with JRiver now. The playback is quite impressive.

 

[pauliunas]

I honestly don't think it's important. They all use the same FLAC codec in the end... What they do is "ask" the codec to decompress a file and then send the result to your sound card's driver. Some of them have equalizers and other "effects", but in my opinion they all just spoil the recordings. I mean they can be fine-tuned to a specific track or even album to make it sound better, but when playing something else, they might be irrelevant. It's much simpler to just get a better recording - if the original doesn't satisfy you, you can't squeeze out much of it with software. The only thing to consider when choosing a music player I see is the design, and sometimes the way it organizes your music. But usually it's all the same.. You can sort it by artist, album, title, genre, folder structure and make playlists. Nothing special... I use foobar because it's very light, doesn't eat my resources for unnecessary stuff like visualisation andisn't bloated with other things I don't need. In fact, I would like a better design (not this Windows 95 thing), but I don't care about it enough to start looking for a new player.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I usually use foobar2000, because it's easy for me to drag-'n'-drop on-the-fly playlists from my manually-organized folders that I browse instead of using a graphical user interface. (It's ironically easier for me to browse manually my own way rather than being forced to play by the rules of a program.) Plus it's bit-perfect and has tons of plugins to enhance the experience any way you want. There are various players that claim to offer better sound quality even though the free ones are already bit-perfect, and some users indeed perceive an improvement. One example is JPLAY. I sometimes use the free trial of JPLAYmini, which is a minimalist player that looks like a text file and writes the entire track or playlist to memory before playback. To my ears, though, there is little or no difference. Whenever I perceive a difference, it's not significant enough to be sure it's genuine, and the measurements substantiate the notion that it doesn't sound any different. One player that definitely does sound different is HQPlayer. It applies DSP (read the PDF that comes with the free trial to learn about it and why the designer feels it's better, and click here to see the settings I used) that somehow makes music sound more realistic to me, with an "urgent" sense of dynamics. However, it's expensive and the interface is atrocious.