What is the best music player (software)?

[Dobrescu George]

  IMO a player should be picked for its features(some of which could be related to sound options), not for how it "sounds" when nothing is set correctly.
if I start using some with windows mixer including some weird THX DSP I have on my laptop by default, and then get another player that goes with kernel streaming, boom they sound different. if one forces the max resolution of the DAC like asio, and another makes some weird resampling because I didn't care to check my windows settings, they might just sound different from bad resampling or the DAC's low pass at low resolution, or whatever else.
blaming the player for those stuff is going a little far IMO. now going for the all " a 1 is a 1" thing, is ideally true, but in practice, as soon as something as simple as volume control is used, we're passed the bit perfect concept. so it's not all black and white.  but it should be easy enough to get stuff that are audibly identical. http://archimago.blogspot.fr/2013/06/measurements-part-i-bit-perfect.html
 
now when everything else is equal and 2 players still sound different, personally I would try to RMAA them or something like that to find out which is doing it wrong, try to solve the issue, or simply unistall the sucker.

 
so far I've been happy with foobar for what I do, but plenty of others are just as fine.

 
Congrats on becoming sound science moderator!

 
I totally forgotten that for volume control to be lossless, a software must do high resolution resampling, because with redbook there is no chance of lossless volume, unless you use only half of the volume (bit shifting). 
 
 

  I AM a software developer, and i have used all of those programs many times. My point stands.
 
Bias, mood, what you ate, smells currently in the room all have effects on your hearing, and i would put money on bias being a big part of your listening experience.
 
Bits are bits is a fact, 1 is 1. 0 is 0. If you disagree then you are missing a fundamental understanding of how computers work. They CAN HOWEVER send different bits if they have done processing to the signal to "make it sound better" which is why i suggested checking for equalisation.

 
I develop music software specifically. It does sound different. It is not about bits themselves, FLAC is compressed to begin with, so it needs decompression, then there is how noisy the current on motherboard is at that moment, or on the external DAC, then there is volume, then there are other things. Of course most of differences will come from a DSP.  (these differences will be much greater than between players)
 
For fun, you can try a LAV filter based software, against foobar, against jriver, against winamp, against windows media player. If they all really sound the same to you, then it is okay. But without bias, ask someone to blindfold you and change them for you, to not know beforehand. 
 
 
 
 
 
But, yeah, choosing the best music player should be done based on features, ease of use and other factors. For example, mediamonkey has a ton of features, and so does foobar, while using VLC for music will not let you convert tags, or convert between filetypes. There are a ton of choices for all features you might need, but up to date, I never could satisfy all my needs with one software, so I am having 2-3-4 software only for music enjoyment and management. 

 

[yay101]

 
For fun, you can try a LAV filter based software, against foobar, against jriver, against winamp, against windows media player. If they all really sound the same to you, then it is okay. But without bias, ask someone to blindfold you and change them for you, to not know beforehand. 

http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/overall.html
 
Even way back then we knew not all decoders are created equal. However all 100% accurate decoders sound exactly the same and will provide the same 1's and 0's every time regardless of which accurate decoder is used (assuming bit perfect playback and no dsp).
 
And out of all decoders i am far more likely to trust ffmpeg which lav and foobar 2000 use over any non open source decoder from a sheer developer talent perspective, a lot of very smart people have made ffmpeg what it is today.
 
There are hundreds of ways people can screw with audio behind the scenes to make it sound "better" which im sure you would know as a developer yourself. There are tricks and filters and compressors that can do all sorts of things to make music sound "better", but no where will there be a promise of accuracy.

 

[Dobrescu George]

  http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/overall.html
 
Even way back then we knew not all decoders are created equal. However all 100% accurate decoders sound exactly the same and will provide the same 1's and 0's every time regardless of which accurate decoder is used (assuming bit perfect playback and no dsp).
 
And out of all decoders i am far more likely to trust ffmpeg which lav and foobar 2000 use over any non open source decoder from a sheer developer talent perspective, a lot of very smart people have made ffmpeg what it is today.
 
There are hundreds of ways people can screw with audio behind the scenes to make it sound "better" which im sure you would know as a developer yourself. There are tricks and filters and compressors that can do all sorts of things to make music sound "better", but no where will there be a promise of accuracy.

 
Of course, I know too well how you can screw up behind the scenes. 
 
I like to advertise DSP as such, and bit perfect as such. Given the quality a DSP can carry, I am much more interested in developing a DSP, and a full fledged full feature software than a magic solution. Bit perfect can only go so far, there is so much more to be achieved through a well developed DSP. 
 
Given this, there are very few situations in which bit perfect exists in this world. Simply because we still get better SQ if we have high priority for music process, and volume is not bit perfect for most software yet.
 
I would not be so sure that ffmpeg is best, nor that it is not. But I don't think I would develop a decoder, because there are lots of open decoders to chose from. Best is what works best for you, that bit is clear. I am still testing which decoder can do what I need, but for the moment, ffmpeg and LAV are enough mature, and complete. There are many other areas where sound can be tweaked, instead of decoding. 

 

[yay101]

 
I like to advertise DSP as such, and bit perfect as such. Given the quality a DSP can carry, I am much more interested in developing a DSP, and a full fledged full feature software than a magic solution. Bit perfect can only go so far, there is so much more to be achieved through a well developed DSP. 

Then I certainly applaud you on this, transparency in software is something I can always appreciate even in competitive fields like processing I only ask the what is being done, I understand the veil behind the how.

 

[goodsguys]

I am glad you are happy with the media player of your choice.
 
The arguement was that powerdvd sounds better than kodi, i cannot speak on behalf of every media player in the world,
 
simply because i have not tried every media player in the world I do not wish to mislead anyone.
 
But i have tried kodi and powerdvd, powerdvd sounds a lot fuller, more detailed.
 
I did google this and spent a few days going through a lot of forum posts to find the most popular media players that forum members are using
 
because i am in the process of setting up a htpc.
 
Since then i have tried powerdvd against windvd, vlc, jriver, winamp, nero, aurora blu ray player, kodi and media player classic, and also tiny core which is a linux based system.
 
I need video as well as audio for htpc so some players were ruled out.
 
I'm using the asus stx2 7.1 with daughter board as the soundcard, which is running into 3 quad 405-3 power amps. (£2.5k / power amp)
 
The soundcard is packaged with a driver disc which has asio as part of the installation
 
Nero sounds the best, most natural, true to life, least coloured, with powerdvd a close second.
 
People prefer using kodi, vlc and media player classic, these are the most popular media players simply because they are free.
 
Having to pay $60 for powerdvd, or any of the other media players means these media players get less attention simply because less people are using them.
 
That's why some people are so dismissive of them, because their friends or net acquaintances do not mention them.
 
What i look for is as true to life and realsitic sound as possible, that is my interpretation of the best media player.
 
The media players i mentioned are available as free trial downloads so you can try them out at no risk, then perhaps post back from an informed point of view.
 
Personally i would not pay $60 for a media player, i got powerdvd bundled in software free when i purchased my pc

 

[DDF]

Ffmpeg performance is quite poor unfortunately

See
http://src.infinitewave.ca. and compare to dbpoweramp

 

[yay101]

1. We are talking about decoding, not converting anything, and certainly not re-sampling with UNKNOWN SETTINGS (what's being done there).
 
2. They are quite vague about methodology, and have no checking of results just email us and we will publish.
 
3. Different programs that employ ffmpeg get different results, accuracy again seems very dubious.
 
If you really want some meaningful graphs and i can grab the output of various codecs this weekend and compare their bits to their source.

 

[Hitesh]

I personally use Windows Media player 12 with these 3 plugins (Minilyrics Plugin, WMP Tag Plus and WMP Plus!)
This setup suits my needs perfectly

 

[Marmite]

MusicBee in WASAPI mode fed via HDMI to my Pioneer AV amp and then out to my speakers (audio) and telly (video).

To my tired old ears HDMI sounds better than SPDIF from the PC and has the benefit of simplicity in connecting. FLACs from my PC also sound better than my standalone cheapie Samsung CD/DVD player.

For video, I use Kodi, again in WASAPI mode. I run a couple of Pioneer FS 52 speakers and they sound good for music and movies. Kodi also seems to output better picture quality than VLC, my other main video player, which can also be a bit glitchy at times (especially after the latest update to v3.0.3).

 

[Alotofsilence]

I use AIMP player. Total free of charge, regulary updating, skinnable interface. It has a lot of features, audio converter (with options) to flac, m4a, and many other formats. Advanced tag editor with DISCOGS and Brainz.

 

[manueljenkin]

Try Playpcmwin. The sound quality is very good for a windows based player.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/playpcmwin/

Hysolid is also great but it is very buggy.

The best sound I've heard is from a custom audio optimized linux distro - wtfplay. It is completely command line so may not be for everyone. An alternative that has an easier user interface for general audience is daphile.

 

[manueljenkin]

I AM a software developer, and i have used all of those programs many times. My point stands.

Bias, mood, what you ate, smells currently in the room all have effects on your hearing, and i would put money on bias being a big part of your listening experience.

Bits are bits is a fact, 1 is 1. 0 is 0. If you disagree then you are missing a fundamental understanding of how computers work. They CAN HOWEVER send different bits if they have done processing to the signal to "make it sound better" which is why i suggested checking for equalisation.

If you're a software engineer it means you know how certain codes work. Doesn't necessarily mean you understand everything about analog design/mixed signal design, phy layers, etc. All of which can contribute to noise polluting dac/amp analog section.

Bit perfect players can still sound different is my experience (including dacs like rme adi2 which measured to show no difference with the limited tests we do). It quite has to do with ground plane noises, stress on phy layer and more afaik.

 

[manueljenkin]

I use a lightweight player , called Spider Player . I don't use playlists , never really have . I just pull up my music folder . I tried Foobar , didn't like it much . Jet Audio was ok , had the nicest gui , but their sound engine stinks . At present , I have my headphones (HD598 SE) , plugged in to the headphone jack on my speaker's (Boston Acoustics BA 7900) control pod .

I see that spider player is not being developed anymore. Have you tried Playpcmwin? Please take a look at post number 62 and post number 102 here. You might find interesting choices. I'll try spiderplayer soon. https://www.head-fi.org/threads/my-experience-with-different-music-players.923248/page-5

 

[Sterling2]

iTunes only lacks one important capability for me, it does not do multi-channel, so I run Foobar 2000 to enjoy my multi-channel FLAC downloads.

 

[Bernard23]

Used J River in the early days of PC audio, started in MC16 and got to MC21 before the $30 upgrades for no improvement in SQ, all the feature upgrades at the time were in video, final straw when Matt tersely admitted that MC21 -> MC22 had no audio improvement, but that i should still get it. I didn't. I got ride of my separates about 5 years ago and migrated to Sonos, so rarely used my PC / J River until quite recently. Lockdowns and working from home has meant having a good dac amp and phones setup in my office is attractive. Since I can't install MC21 on my office PC, I've installed MusicBee which is great. Simple UI, the album art is a bit hit and miss; J River is better in that respect. Most importantly i can stream WASAPI sing my dac drivers, so that's all good. I couldn't comment on SQ differences between players, even if both were on the same PC, in the time it takes to switch them over I've lost the nuance already; I've long since moved on from trying to recognise minute tonal or detail changes as that's not enjoying listening to music, it's a totally separate exercise that rarely leads to musical enjoyment in my own experience.