Finally found a PC player I can live with, but...

[Mallette]

...I still can't understand why all these players are so counter intuitive to my needs. I've installed VLAN. It's simple, has few bells and whistles, but it plays all resolutions nicely and doesn't constantly nag me to upgrade to "pro," or "gold," or whatever that still wouldn't fit my needs.

All I want is a player that will show only playlists and do so by reading my directory structure of choral, pop, jazz, etc and presenting it under that structure. All of these players seem to just make a mishmash of playlists, files and whatever so I wind up using a file browser to find what I want to hear.

I've tried J River Media Center, Media Monkey, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and a host of others over the years and none of them really work for me.

Dave

[Groomlakearea51]

The massive music server is almost finished.... As soon as I review the components with my daughter's college roomates (aka: the computer engineering lab rats...), I'll certainly look at that one. I like simple. Or at least simple to the user. What do I have? Is it in WAV format? does it play on the high end, RCA jacked, stereo PC soundboard nicely, and does it rip easily and without heartache to a CD for the CD player?.... As long as that's how things work, I'm happy! [Y]

[H]

[LarryC]

I've tried J River Media Center, Media Monkey, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and a host of others over the years and none of them really work for me.

Does iTunes fit this category? I don't really use it much, but my computer-savvy (Mac) music teacher seems to use it exclusively.

[Rich_Guy]

I have tried all on your list including VLAN and a few others, I still prefer to use Windows Media Player on my Windows 7 based music server. Simple and clean it I like it's look and it has everything I need with no advertising. It also has the best sound where others I've used lacked.

I use WhiteCap visualizations from www.soundspectrum.com which gives my media player beautiful visuals on my plasma display while my music is playing.

[Mallette]

...but my computer-savvy (Mac) music teacher seems to use it exclusively.

Mac heads would use a carving knife to do brain surgery if it had the Apple logo on it.[]

Dave

[Mallette]

Media player doesn't play anything but low res files. All my serious stuff is 88.2 or higher. Even though wav is a Microsoft "standard," "Media player encounter a problem..." etc on anything above 44.1.

Dave

[tromprof]

I have been very happy with Media Monkey. Plays about every kind of audio file, and easy to manage and set up play lists. It is also easy to get it to bypass Windows and send an unprocessed digital stream to my USB DAC. I couldn't find a media player called VLAN, are you talking about the VLC media player? I have used VLC to play video files that Real Player stalls on but never tried it on audio files.

[Mallette]

I couldn't find a media player called VLAN, are you talking about the VLC media player?

Sorry, yes. The site is VideoLAN. The player is VLC. Media Monkey is OK, but doesn't organize things well...meaning the way I want them. I must want the media player to look at my directory structure and show the directory names, then the playlists under them when I click on one. I'd like to be able see the individual files if I request to do so, but mostly just playlists. This doesn't seem to be such a big deal, but all the players seem to have their own weird ways that just don't work for me.

However, at least VLC plays everything at any res I throw at it. That's a GOOD thing!

Dave

[MechMan]

I use PS3 media server right now...It might just be beause I'm too lazy to experiment with others. I hate WMS.

[fini]

...but my computer-savvy (Mac) music teacher seems to use it exclusively.

Mac heads would use a carving knife to do brain surgery if it had the Apple logo on it.

Dave

Oh, good Lord Dave, it's so gauche to be anti-mac... [{][}]

And Larry, a music teacher? Are you learning to play an instrument?? Do tell...!

[Rivernuggets]

I've been using Foobar for a couple months and enjoy it so far. Free and easy to use, audio player only.

[Mallette]

Oh, good Lord Dave, it's so gauche to be anti-mac...

If you've paid attention, you know I find the two OS's we are now stuck with as about as useful for computing as the two political parties we are stuck with are useful for governing.

This monopoly and the shadow that is allowed to survive so the monopoly can claim "competition" have held back computing to levels almost nobody realizes.

"virtual memory," fer cryin out loud. What an incredibly archaic POS (Pitifiul Operating System) they both are.

Dave

[fini]

If you've paid attention

You've stumbled upon my secret...

[muel]

I've been using Foobar for a couple months and enjoy it so far. Free and easy to use, audio player only.

I've been using Foobar more lately and it has been working well for me. I like that it will automatically find any new FLAC files I create and I don't wind up with double entries as I was finding sometimes with Media Monkey (don't know what was up with that). Foobar has a portable installation (no information written to the registry... just the application folder) that could be very useful to me! I could put it on a USB drive and assuming the same drive letter is assigned I could move it from one machine to another with all my settings and play lists. I haven't put this to the test yet as I have a networked storage drive. That would be a slick way to transport 1 or 2 TB of music to a friends house for an extended listening session! Also, Foobar has been working well with the asio4all driver (to bypass the Windows driver).

[Rich_Guy]

Media player doesn't play anything but low res files. All my serious stuff is 88.2 or higher. Even though wav is a Microsoft "standard," "Media player encounter a problem..." etc on anything above 44.1.

Dave

I haven't had any problems, almost all my music files are lossless wav files and I believe it's normally at 44.1 and 48.

My home built music server sounds amazing much better than any CD player I've had or anything else I've ever had in my system and I couldn't be happier with it. I just finished completely redoing my music server it's now based on an Intel H55TC motherboard & Intel Core i3 530 processor, I replaced everything but the OrigenAE H7 case and my Auzentech sound card both of which I have always loved. It's also now a Blu-ray player as well, my only complaint with WMP is it's not Blu-ray capable, I use Power DVD software to play Blu-ray discs.

I hope to take some pics of the new music server and do a post on it's build soon.

[Mallette]

I haven't had any problems, almost all my music files are lossless wav files and I believe it's normally at 44.1 and 48.

Media player works at 48 or below. Not good enough for high res. Media player isn't too bad other than that and I'd use it if it would play high res and had better ways of organizing music easily the way I want to, which is to simply display the directories I create and the playlists within.

Dave

[Rich_Guy]

I haven't had any problems, almost all my music files are lossless wav files and I believe it's normally at 44.1 and 48.

Media player works at 48 or below. Not good enough for high res. Media player isn't too bad other than that and I'd use it if it would play high res and had better ways of organizing music easily the way I want to, which is to simply display the directories I create and the playlists within.

Dave

I guess you would need sacd to hear any difference, WMP plays what I have as best as any player I've used and much better than many. I want a nice clean full screen look (looks do matter a lot to me) and nice visualizations while the music is playing. WMP has greatly improved in the last couple of versions and has more customization than I need.

For organizing I only use "Artist" with album covers and my own created "Playlists".

I have tried a lot of different players a few that people bragged about being "the best", some I hated the looks, many with too many silly options or advertising, some that were buggy and a few that did not have good sound quality. I always keep coming back to WMP since it has always sounded the best and has a nice clean look.

[Mallette]

guess you would need sacd to hear any difference,...

Which is precisely how I record vinyl or location work. Of course, there are no software 1 bit, 2.8mhz players available due to the Sony stupidity I mentioned previously, but they transcode nicely to any PCM format using Korg's Audiogate software.

There is a noticeable difference between 44.1 and 88.2 on these recordings. I have had some good ears A/B against the vinyl, and at 88.2 it was indistinguishable. At lower res, it was distinguishable by most which was which.

Since storage space has long since ceased to be an issue, I maintain my vinyl and location recordings at least at 24/88.2 or higher. Call me an audiophool...

Dave