Favorite Music Player?

[hanselthecaretaker]

As in, for your digital computing device.

After getting a new pair of actual quality headphones I’d like to be able to play with the mix if needed vs just listening through WMP.

I’ve been out of the loop for years so am curious to hear first hand accounts of what has good user-friendly features, and ideally is free to download. I like VLC for video stuff but have never even thought of trying it for music. Might just do that for starters.


Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

When iTunes kept making stupid decisions that ruined it for me, I stumbled across MusicBee and it has been a godsend. A little tricky to use due to its extensive list of options and customization choices, but once you get it figured out, it's wonderful. Helps that you can import and export settings and visual layout stuff in case you need to re-install it anywhere. Free as well, still being worked on by the dev, and has a bustling forum for help. Would absolutely recommend

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I've been using jetAudio ever since I got a Cowon A2 portable media player for riding the train to work like 15 years back; it was one of the only players that played divx/xvid AVI videos without needing to transcode them way back then (remember having to transcode videos for hours just to play on your phone or media player or PSP?). The audio enhancements on that thing were amazing and their jetAudio players (desktop and mobile) have continued the tradition; the BBE enhancements are really a night and day difference. I uploaded 2 versions of Snake Eater, because of course , to my Google Drive; I played the normal MP3 in jetAudio and recorded the Loopback of it as it played, the differences in sound should be very notable. jetAudio is a paid program as the BBE enhancements don't come with the free version but you can definitely find it for "free" to try it out if you know how to use the Interwebs. I'm guessing that the free version will let you try the effects for like 20 seconds or a minute so you can hear the difference. Also, Cowon still makes dedicated MP3/media players (even though phones pretty much do everything), they make a MP3 player that costs $1,899.99

Here's the settings I use for the jetAudio:

- EQ settings (which are editable in notepad, just save the default settings to the .jeq file and open & edit in notepad and save, then load the file)
[User1]
Value=2,-4,-2,-1,0,1,0,-1,-2,-1,0,1,0,-1,-2,-3,-4,-4,-3,-2

- Effects settings (Reverb set to the Stage option)

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Use VCL mainly, but lately it's been forgetting where it was in an album or podcast if I stop to watch or listen to anything on a different program, and the repeat track function doesn't work anymore for some reason. Oh and it refuses to play any playlists I attempt to make. Tiny specific quibbles, I know, but they never used to be issues and are still there nonetheless. May have to look for a substitute soon.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Use VCL mainly, but lately it's been forgetting where it was in an album or podcast if I stop to watch or listen to anything on a different program, and the repeat track function doesn't work anymore for some reason. Oh and it refuses to play any playlists I attempt to make. Tiny specific quibbles, I know, but they never used to be issues and are still there nonetheless. May have to look for a substitute soon.

I've been using the Zoom Player for probably at least 10 years now (not related at all to the Zoom meeting app). You just need to install the player and then install the LAV Filters (and DirectVobSub I believe for displaying subtitles), which you can do via the Zoom player's Install Center. The player just has so many options like you can change how many seconds the left/right arrows skip forward/backward if you want. You can set the player to open in say the video size of the file centered in the middle of the screen or have the player open with the window maximized or have the player open in fullscreen mode when you open a file. You can do some pretty neat things like if the audio is out of sync and too early, you can delay the audio by 10 milliseconds at a time to get it properly synced and to test it out you can go frame-by-frame WITH audio to confirm whether the audio is in sync (with a scene where a character puts down a coffee cup or closes a door or something).

 

[Worgen]

I tend to use VLC but at this point I mainly just listen to my youtube playlist so... I guess brave since its my preferred browser.