[rmt5]

I'm sorry in advance for this unbelievably noobie question.

I'm looking to move away from itunes, mostly because it's really heavy on my system resources and I would like to avoid supporting Apple.

Having searched the forum, I know there's a lot of support for foobar. I tried it, and frankly, don't have the patience or technical know-how to navigate it properly.

I'm looking for a player that has these features in this priority:

1. Easy, glossy, non-cluttered interface like itunes (I don't like winamp because it seems very cluttered and busy)
2. Light on system resources
3. Capable of decent sound quality
4. Free/Open Source

Thanks so much in advance for your advice.

 

[rmt5]

Oh, Ps. I use Windows (Vista, 32 bit)

 

[azncookiecutter]

Winamp or MediaMonkey.

EDIT: Ah, just saw your Winamp complaint. Mediamonkey is a good one then. And no need to be frustrated about foobar, there's tons of user configs that are available for download, and are usually easy to use out of the box.

 

[krmathis]

How about Songbird.
Not quite sure about "light on system resources", but it should qualify for the rest.

 

[macrog]

Foobar is worth the effort. It sounds better than any alternatives I have tried. At the end of the day if it sounds better than the rest is there really the option to use anything else ?

 

[noisiaNL]

foobar

 

[Bones13]

Foobar can meet your requirements out of the box. Just choose an uncomplicated interface when you do the the initialization part.

When you are ready, if you are using an external dac, you might play with using ASIO or Kernal Streaming, but that would be optional.

Very light on resource use. Small code. Most of the bells and whistles you actually have to add on.

When I use Foobar now, I download the Apple Lossless Codec, and the Kernal Streaming Addon. I initialize Foobar with album view, art, and visualization (always a waste there imo). Then shut down Foobar, copy the codec and addon to the components directory. Reopen Foobar, enable the codec, and Kernal Streaming (in the playback) section. Choose my music folder. Then shut down Foobar, reopen it to have your choices working, then "add" my music directory, after it sorts them out, it plays right off. Longer to go through my big music directory than to download and set up the software.

Oh, I do choose the "blue" theme. I don't go for a busy view, as usually my player is going behind whatever game I am playing.

 

[rmt5]

Thanks, all, for your feedback. I actually went with Mediamonkey, which seems worlds better than itunes to me already. I appreciate the community's devotion to foobar - I really do. And maybe some day I'll get there, myself. But with my cheap computer's crappy sound card, there's no real use in obsessing about audio quality for me at this point (when it comes to my computer setup, anyway).

Thank you again!

 

[jjinh]

nice choice. i use to use itune - it sucks. been using mediamonkey and imo its heaps better

 

[leveller1642]

DoubleTwist: iTunes Songs On Any MP3 Player

Hands-on: doubleTwist's iTunes alternative leaves us wanting - Ars Technica