What program do you use to play your music? (itt: we debate itunes jk)

[179831]

delete

 

[proton007]

Hmmm... looks like an idea for a new music software...patent it before someones else does!

 
Me, I just use Foobar, on linux i use mpd + ncmpcpp.

 

[Chawanwit]

My headphone dealer suggest the J River. Not sure if it is free or not. But I do feel iTunes is very convenient, but can be annoying in ways like one iPod can sync with only with pc or Mac.

 

[One and a half]

I've tried a few over the last 18 months.
 
Quod Libet
Amarok
Foobar 2000
Jriver Media Centre
Audirvana +
Pure Music
Fidelia
Amarra Symphony
 
Linux didn't play DSD (at the time), so that was out, Foobar I use today for convenience on my work Windows machine, J River wasn't stable, kept crashing at odd times. Audirvana+ is a solid perfomer, plays DSD native and .iso but needs a bit of time to settle down. Fidelia has the worst gui, can't live with super zoom, Pure Music is a standby, excellent quality of the players that work with iTunes.
 
Go to player of all of the players is Amarra Symphony, clarity, definition together with the robust database in iTunes works. Amarra can get upset at times, but for reasons that are understandable, and it comes good with a bit of hammering and sawing.
 
Of others not mentioned, Clementine, XBMC didn't output bitperfect to the sample rate of the track, Winamp and WMP were rock bottom for SQ. iTunes on Windows is not an angel, far as sound quality goes, just is lacking. On OSX, different animal. If it changed the sample rate by itself, it is a great standby, especially on Mountain Lion.
 
For the platforms I found that OSX and Linux have the better SQ compared to Windows, so the choice of player is limited to the OS and your preference for file storage, some are cross platform, JRiver announced a version for OSX in development, but not released as yet. I suppose you could cripple Windows enough so it wouldn't use so many resources it doesn't need to play audio, but it's a lot of work, and there's no gurantees of it working, and it didn't (for me).  Jplay I tried, but it crapped out on my notebook a Sony F127.
 
These statements are all subjective, I'm the only one that listens to them, so I'm happy

 

[DGriff0400]

umm i use mediamonkey with izotope advanced 5 dsp+eq and studiosound output.the ui is pretty cool and changeable and you can pretty much tell it what to do and it plays everthing...i think.

 

[179831]

delete

 

[dolor]

In  windows, foobar. In mac songbird.

 

[chewy4]

Well, bitperfect is bitperfect. Doesn't really matter what OS. I can't even notice the difference between bitperfect and non-bitperfect anyways. Media player is the least of your worries when it comes to sound quality in most cases.
 
I just switched from Winamp to Songbird myself. 
 
I wish they made Rhythmbox for Windows though. I liked that media player. 

 

[cel4145]

Quote:

umm i use mediamonkey with izotope advanced 5 dsp+eq and studiosound output.the ui is pretty cool and changeable and you can pretty much tell it what to do and it plays everthing...i think.

 
+1 for MediaMonkey
 
Been using it for years. I find it makes managing uber large libraries (20,000+ songs) fairly easy. 

 

[One and a half]

Quote:

Well, bitperfect is bitperfect. Doesn't really matter what OS. I can't even notice the difference between bitperfect and non-bitperfect anyways.
 

Just to expand a little about bitperfect and the examples I gave about Clementine and XBMC. If a 96/24 FLAC runs in either player, the player would not switch a DAC to the same sample rate as the song, the player therefore either leaves bits out or interpolates them, thus mangling the sound.(coarse and undynamic). Adding to complications, the OS Audio "core" receives the same command, and if you are lucky, doesn't add to the complications by interpolating data on top of the player's mangled performance with its own sample rate converter.
 
Foobar rarely gets this wrong, Clementine is always wrong (so far).
 
Examples for iTunes on OSX with incorrect sample rate set
 
DCS Paper on OS and sampling rates (still valid)

 

[One and a half]

Quote:

I have never even heard of most of these programs!  That's quite a list, one and a half.  So many to look into.  Tentatively, however... it looks like there are still none that do much in the way of auto playlists.  I am disappoint... 

ITunes has a comment section where you can add data like Top 40 September 2012, and then activate the column in the view. Problem is to remember what comments there are, but I think iTunes indexing should be good enough for that.
 
ITunes is not smart enough to : Show A - B, it can only A, or B, but can't  :NOT A, or NOT B.

 

[Happy Camper]

I am currently using Musicbee with 159,379 items.

Have used:
Itunes
foobar
lillith
jriver
winamp

 

[DJHeadshot]

I use EAC to rip my cd's to flac and MP3 tag to add album art to songs.  I use foobar2000 as my music player simple and light weight program but very customizable and does exactly what I want to do.  I like the fact that I can quickly browse and select which music I play by the folder structure which I my preferred method of organizing and viewing music to play, I don't like using id3 tags although all my music has proper tags.  Also I don't use playlist I pick an album and and listen to it in the default order usually from start to finish if I can and then picking another one or just keep on listening to whatever is next in the list.

 

[AlphaRedFox]

Honestly, I just use iTunes because it's always open. It uses so much computer resources though to the point to where I don't understand why it's not secretly running Crysis in the background. Damned devious Apple. 

 

[CantScareMe]

Someone once said foobar is great for two types of people; those wanting a ultra basic, fast, clutter free platform just to play music and those that want something more advanced and are able to put in the time and effort customise their foobar setup. I'm actually the former type.
My albums, hundreds of albums, are arranged in basic folder's on hard drives and that's how I play them. I don't need a massive playlist manager (I just listen to one album at a time), I don't bother with album art, lyrics, internet connections, streaming, fancy features. Actually, apart from using the asio4all and advanced control foobar plugins, I'm all done.