J River Juke box
http://www.mediajukebox.com/

Media Center costs $$ and is truely king

AIMP2 music audio player/converter. All formats+many plugins+skins+freeware+open source. Best music player imho. For Video - KMPlayer, or Windows Media Player Classic.

Sony Vaio > Foobar2000 > ASIO4all > HRT Music Streamer 11+

PC Desktop: Amarok and SqueezeCenter.
Server: MOC - music on console.
Portable: Internet Radio Player I @ PSP 2000, Samsung Yepp U5 for RP ripped streams (20+ Gbytes)

I'm a Winamp man, through and through. Being able to sort, randomize and "touch" the mp3 files directly on my hard drive through the media player playlist is what is most important to me and as far as I know Winamp is the only media player that has full ties to the files through the player. You can even delete the file from your hard drive in the playlist. Foobar is the closest, but I don't even think that player can do that.

Have moved to J.River Media Jukebox w/ ASIO4ALL bypassing all of Windows audio mess to external USB DAC, in my case a Keces DA-151 to the AudioEngine A5's RP turned me on to.

The desk has never sounded so good !

Cheers 

 Zep wrote: 
No, it notices every change in the library automatically.

Try http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/media/foobar2000/#order=5 for skins.

Does foobar scan your music collection every time you start it up?

I hate it when that happens...

Foobar is cool, added many components just can find a skin i like, do you have link to any? 

Linux:

MPD works best for me at the moment. I use QMPDClient on my KDE4 desktop and windows box, Sonata on my GNOME laptop, and ncmpc from the console.  The quality of the clients is fine, but nothing matches-

Windows:

foobar2000.  Add a few choice plugins and nothing else comes close.  No other media player is more useful or just plain cool.

 TernaryBit wrote: 
 

I still like Mplayer for playing audio files.  IMHO it sounds better, especially when playing 44.1/16 audio files over professional 96/24 sound systems.  Mplayer's polyphasic filtering algorithms go where VLC can't (yet ).  But GUI support for Mplayer is still lacking, and VLC will satisfy all but the most golden-eared audiophiles.  Don't leave home without it!

 Servo wrote: 


 

 bokey wrote: 
No, I'm talking about the KDE Mplayer front end, called "KMPlayer" (it also works with Xine).  It's the first and only "KMPlayer" that I know.  I don't care for the Konqueror integration feature myself, and never use it.


And I don't really care about yet another Windows® product that doesn't work very well.  The least that you could have done would have been to be specific about which product you were referring to.  Your post, your responsibility.

Your dubious claims of primacy are not acceptable, and frankly quite boorish.

To quote BillG:

• Play nice. While hearty debates are big fun, bashing people with differing views is not.

Try JR River Media Center, best I have found so far

New here... Hi all...

With out any reservations FooBar 2000 is THE player for playing music on a PC.

TernaryBit wrote:

Thanks TB I will check out VLC.

Like your handle by the way!

 Zep wrote: 
I hear you on the bloatware issue. I hate what Winamp has become over the years, especially once AOL got ahold of it. Winamp lite cuts out the visualizations, so that sucks...

But once again, FOSS comes to the rescue with VLC! It's the most minimalistic yet powerful player I've tried. Plays every format natively, including DVDs, with almost no memory footprint.

For Windows, Winamp, because it just does what it does.  In playback of multiple tracks, the playback is seamless.  I just wish they'd leave the damn thing alone, because it is turning into bloatware.  Anything that insists on rescanning my media files every time it starts up is painful.

For Linux, XMMS works but it's too small to see the tiny fonts.  I also like Amarok, but it too is turning into bloatware.

 Servo wrote: 
You're talking about the Konqueror Media Player    ( and since 99. 99 % of RP users use Linux, why not make that assumption ) 

  I'm talking about TheKMPlayer    that is for windows and which started development in 2001. Since the changelog I found for the Linux player doesn't have dates on it and the one you posted only  goes back to 2006 I don't know when  the KDE KMPlayer was developed and I don't really care.

 If you want to run down the specifics as to which one came first , feel free to do so and post them, by all means. I   shudder to think that I might have led the masses of RP Linux users astray.

I have tried most players on my iMacs and I am totally agreeing with Bill,FStream via Octoshape rules.I also have a sound program that I am running in trial mode for free,called Hear.It has a sound enhancing that I like, the rest  that it can do I don't really care for.No EQ on FStream is used.It is possible to make a setup so you only have ONE click to get RP going,that I like.FStream also starts recording what you are listening to with just one click and is saved where ever you like.