[Honkytime]

A couple years ago now i started this exact quest to find the best media players and found that no one program does everything well. I have, tried, tinkered, modified,put add-on's, skinned, listened to, watched so many media players threw the years now, to me each one has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of my findings for some of the different media players i have tried.
 
Windows Media Player - Great if you want to watch movies and play music but that's about it.
 
VLC - Greatest video player ever there really is no video format that this this will not play. Prefer to listen to music on other players thou.
 
Winamp - Even in retirement Winamp is still "whipping the lamas ass!" used Winamp for years and still do on my smart phone. The best part of Winamp has to be milkdrop visualizations and with a add-on milkdrop can be used in Foobar.
 
J River - Loved the way it organized and played your music and videos, didn't like the auto check and some of the functions.mostly the 60$ price tag.
 
Foobar 2k - I like foobar, thou it takes some learning curve to use foobar properly, there is really no end to how far you can modify this program to tailor it to your music needs (other than death), but foobar does not play video and i find that it does not do good with lower quality recordings (had the same issue with J River)
 
Lilith Audio Player - I found this media player on the head fi Forums and red the thread and found that there was great controversy about people saying that it sounded better than other media players, so i gave it a shot to see if i could hear a difference. For my test i took the music files that i have that i found (sounded funny, bad recording file) in foobar and j river and played them in Lilith. I don't know why but the imperfections in the music that i hear in Foobar/J River are not there. I find that Lilith did sound better than the rest of the media players that i tried but
its pretty plain. if you just like to cue up music and keep it simple this is the media player for you.

 

[jiiteepee]

I'm still using the NI Traktor Beatport SYNC from '07.
 

(minimized)

 

[Yodeb]

Can you recommend me an audio-player FREE (GPL) as good as foobar? Thank you very much.

 

[Terja]

Try AIMP3. It's a good stand alone player that does not really require as much of a learning curve as Foobar to get the best out of it.

 

[MikoLayer]

I am not sure what special learning curve is there to be overcome with foobar. At the very least, all you need is to download the wasapi plugin and change the output, no?
You can do all those cool things with different plugins, but none of them are really 'must' items. I think it is as easy/intuitive as any other player unless you demand the level of customization that don't exist in the competitors.

 

[elmoe]

Problem is, foobar is quite ugly by default and skinning it can be a pain in the butt. That said, it is literally the ONLY player I've found that will show me my media library in a "tree style" menu, by FOLDERS only. For my extensive library, this is really the only way to go, as I hate searching and much prefer browsing:
 
Thus, through the "music" tab, I select an album from a list ordered by FOLDERS:
 

 
That selected album automatically create a playlist in the playlist tab:
 

 
And that gets the job done. However, it is annoying having to switch tabs. I would love to find a good looking player which integrates playlist view + albumlist by folders, but I haven't found a skin for foobar I liked more than this one, and no other player I've tried can do this.

 

[Schonen]

  Can you recommend me an audio-player FREE (GPL) as good as foobar? Thank you very much.

MusicBee.
 
http://getmusicbee.com/

 

[dirtythekid]

+1 for MusicBee. It has everything I want. WASAPI and ASIO support, nice skin out of the box, plugin support (via Winamp Plugins, but you can use the Winamp VST plugin to expand on this), and it's a reliable performer. I'm among the people that DON'T believe all 'bit-perfect' players sound the same. Having that said, MusicBee sounds great to my ears.
 
YMMV, but I think you'll always do best to play music through WASAPI or ASIO, so your (free) options are:
-MusicBee (my personal pick)
-MPC-HC or PotPlayer with ReClock
-uLilith (or Lilith, but meh)
-foobar2000 (duh)
-StealthAudioPlayer (strong contender for best sound, but zero interface and unreliable playlist management)
-Winamp with Maiko WASAPI output plugin (best interface of the bunch IMO, but Maiko is somewhat unstable and the sound is just a little off to my ears)
 
If you're going against the WASAPI route and just want a simple DirectSound player with great sound, I strongly recommend MesonPlayer. It has the same minimalist approach as StealthAudioPlayer, but without the playlist hiccups.

 

[dirtythekid]

I'd like to add there are options for system-wide parametric equalization with Equalizer APO if you go the DirectSound route:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/?source=recommended
 
and you can adjust it via GUI addons:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/peace-equalizer-apo-extension/?source=navbar 
or 
http://jiiteepee.tripod.com/eq31gui-2.html

 

[nerady]

+2 for MusicBee. I used the clean interface skin for foobar2000 for years, so I was right at home with the default musicbee skin.
 
Quote:

  +1 for MusicBee. It has everything I want. WASAPI and ASIO support, nice skin out of the box, plugin support (via Winamp Plugins, but you can use the Winamp VST plugin to expand on this), and it's a reliable performer. I'm among the people that DON'T believe all 'bit-perfect' players sound the same. Having that said, MusicBee sounds great to my ears.
 
YMMV, but I think you'll always do best to play music through WASAPI or ASIO, so your (free) options are:
-MusicBee (my personal pick)
-MPC-HC or PotPlayer with ReClock
-uLilith (or Lilith, but meh)
-foobar2000 (duh)
-StealthAudioPlayer (strong contender for best sound, but zero interface and unreliable playlist management)
-Winamp with Maiko WASAPI output plugin (best interface of the bunch IMO, but Maiko is somewhat unstable and the sound is just a little off to my ears)
 
If you're going against the WASAPI route and just want a simple DirectSound player with great sound, I strongly recommend MesonPlayer. It has the same minimalist approach as StealthAudioPlayer, but without the playlist hiccups.

 

[jfaaz]

I use strictly Mac OS.  I used to use iTunes, but my library is too large and iTunes would crash or be too slow.  Furthermore, the audio quality is poor with iTunes. 
 
I used Decible for a while and was impressed with the sound quality and fact that it switches the sample rate.  However, it takes too long to import playlists with Decible.
 
Then I tried Swinsian.  Swinsian will completely replace iTunes as an audio library and also adjusts the sample rate.  I can even take songs from my iPods and import them into Swinsian.
 
Therefore, I am staying with Swinsian.

 

[elmoe]

Just gave MusicBee a try, it's actually pretty good. Now that my foobar is all configured I'll stick with it, but if it wasn't MusicBee would be a good alternative.

 

[adisib]

I tried out AIMP3 and am enjoying it.

 

[fiascogarcia]

I now have MediaMonkey, iTunes, JRiver, and Foobar loaded on my computer, and I still can't really decide which one I like the most.  Does anyone know how to copy cover artwork from iTunes to FooBar, BTW?  iTunes is great for capturing artwork (even WAV), but I don't know how the heck it stores it.  Unfortunately, iTunes is the only source of some of my cover art.

 

[Terja]

Foobar, JRiver should be able to read iTunes embedded artwork by default. I use all three and artwork displays properly for all three. I actually use iTunes for all tagging and for running my library and JRiver mostly for playback (and Foobar sometimes). Does your artwork display properly in iTunes?