Music Playing Software

[saketselot]

Hi All,

What are the forum members' views on the top softwares for playing music for the three main OSs - Windows, Linux and OSX ? From a perspective of ease of organizing media, quality of playback, compatibility with sound devices, etc? What other features are of importance?

Also, anybody here has experience with the remote control feature of VLC? How is VLC vs other softwares specifically for FLAC playback?

 

[baijuxavior]

I use mediamonkey for organizing my music collection and for playback on laptop. Can't comment on SQ as I use built-in laptop speaker.

 

[alpha1]

Quod libet.
quodlibet - audio library tagger, manager, and player for GTK+ - Google Project Hosting

I absolutely love the "Paned Browser" mode.
(Didn't find it in any other player)

 

[Vijay_s]

I have tried almost every Music playing software and finally settled with Media Centre 17 from JRiver. I found this software have more practical equalizer options as well as loads of features.

You can search for my old threads on this for more details.

 

[saurigr8]

I am using foobar to play my MP3 and other formats . .

 

[kaushik]

foobar2k + wasapi rocks!

 

[Hassan Khani]

I use Linux based mpd (music player daemon) controlled by mpd client running in ipad/ipod/web browser/ssh client etc.

You can configure mpd to directly send the data to sound card bypassing the mixer or to a usb dac. Sound quality is very good. It can play flac,mp3 etc.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Another Linux answer: Aqualung. It was the first one that I found that handles gapless playback perfectly: that is, it acts just like a CD player: if there is no gap in the sound from one track to the next, it doesn't insert one, if there is, then you get the gap.

It is music-only. On the rare occasions I need video, I use VLC. VLC is useless for music, because of the gapless playback thing. Stupid, but it is not the only one that suffers from this.

Hassan Khani: I'm just about always in front of the PC listening on the 'phones or the speakers, or if not I'm using squeezebox, so I don't need a remote option, but I'm interested to know if your mpd handles gapless?

 

[saketselot]

Hassan Khani: That is exactly the solution I am looking to implement on my Macbook right now - but struggling quite a bit (no coding/computer science background and the help on the internet is mostly for people who have previous unix/linux experience)

Wondering if I can bug your for some help on getting this up and running?

Thad: Any idea if there are Mac implementations of Aqualung possible?

 

[spirovious]

I use foobar 1.1.5, lilith 0.99 ,C play 0.37 & final media player.
One can easily make out the difference in sound quality.Cant say which is best still lilith sounds warm,analog way,some are detailed sounding.

 

[msagar]

After experimenting with several softwares finally settled with Amarra (MacBook Pro).

 

[Hassan Khani]

Another Linux answer: Aqualung. It was the first one that I found that handles gapless playback perfectly: that is, it acts just like a CD player: if there is no gap in the sound from one track to the next, it doesn't insert one, if there is, then you get the gap.

It is music-only. On the rare occasions I need video, I use VLC. VLC is useless for music, because of the gapless playback thing. Stupid, but it is not the only one that suffers from this.

Hassan Khani: I'm just about always in front of the PC listening on the 'phones or the speakers, or if not I'm using squeezebox, so I don't need a remote option, but I'm interested to know if your mpd handles gapless?

I haven't tried gapless playback as I am using flac files for playback. I could see an option in mpd config file for enabling mp3 gapless playback. So far I didn't find mpd introducing silence if it is not there between songs. It is better to try out as I could see mixed review for mpd with gapless playback.

I have tried many players as well as OS (win xp, vista, win 7, mac, Linux) and finally settled linux with mpd for simple config, ease of control especially running headless and most important the quality of music played.

 

[Hassan Khani]

Hassan Khani: That is exactly the solution I am looking to implement on my Macbook right now - but struggling quite a bit (no coding/computer science background and the help on the internet is mostly for people who have previous unix/linux experience)

Wondering if I can bug your for some help on getting this up and running?

Thad: Any idea if there are Mac implementations of Aqualung possible?

MPD is a client / server program, where the MPD server is typically run on a linux server which has either a good sound card or connected to a usb dac. The sound card or dac analog output is connected to preamp/poweramp or integrated amp.

The client can be run in pc,mac,linux,android,ipod,iphone etc. The client is used to control the server, you should be able to change songs, create playlist etc.

If you only have a mac you can either use itunes (itunes also has a remote control app which can be ran from ipad/ipod) or you can try other audiophile mac applications.

I will be glad to help if you choose to take the path of using mpd on linux.

 

[krishpiscean]

After experimenting with several softwares finally settled with Amarra (MacBook Pro).

Last time i checked it there was only a paid version. Are u using that or is it a freeware.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Thad: Any idea if there are Mac implementations of Aqualung possible?

Click the Aqualung link in my post: available for Linux, Mac and Windows

I haven't tried gapless playback as I am using flac files for playback. I could see an option in mpd config file for enabling mp3 gapless playback. So far I didn't find mpd introducing silence if it is not there between songs. It is better to try out as I could see mixed review for mpd with gapless playback.

If you can listen to a live concert recording with no silences created by the player, then it's a winner. Where every track is discrete anyway, we just don't notice it. I gave up on VLC the day I put a Western classical CD in my machine: each movement might be split into a dozen "tracks" to match references in the printed booklet. Imagine listening to that with gaps, even if only a fraction of a second! Quite impossible. I'd left Foobar behind with Windows, so had to find something else in a hurry.

Here's what the Aqualung people say:

Pick a song that you know really well, something that's in your bones like Siberian Khatru. Grab it from CD using cdparanoia to have it as a WAV file. Now open your favourite wave editor and slice the file up into multiple consecutive sections. Be careful not to insert silence, delete samples or alter any sample data. Save the slices to separate files. Now convert the sample rate of some pieces to random values (the example program shipped with the libsamplerate library will let you do this in very good quality). Pick some pieces and convert them to Ogg Vorbis format. Pick some others and encode them to FLAC. Pick a few and convert them to MONO. Now open up the Playlist editor of the music player in question and add the files in order. Push play, and listen.

Aqualung is a music player designed from the ground up to provide continuous, absolutely transparent, gap-free playback across a variety of input formats and a wide range of sample rates thereby allowing for enjoying quality music: concert recordings and "non-best-of" albums containing gapless transitions between some tracks. (Multiple movements long compositions are often broken into separate but gaplessly flowing tracks when mastered to CD.) Obvious examples are The Song Remains The Same (Led Zeppelin), The Dark Side Of The Moon (Pink Floyd), and Yessongs (Yes). Besides the ability to play the music from these records without a defect, Aqualung provides high quality sample rate conversion, a feature that is essential when building large digital music archives containing input sources conforming to various standards. Aqualung passed our test and it will pass yours, too.

 

[saketselot]

Thanks Hassan

My first desire to figure out if I can run MPD on the mac itself. I have been able to download and install the package on my machine - currently struggling with creating the directories for playlists, etc. Next would be a client. I have a windows phone which has an MPD client app. Hopefully, I should be able to use the above mentioned app with the above mentioned instance of MPD on the Mac. If thise does not work out and if I do not find any satisfactoy solution for the mac, then I would consider a linux install either on another dedicated machine or on a partition on my mac.

sure does seem like I have my work cut out!!!

 

[msagar]

krishpiscean:

Last time i checked it there was only a paid version. Are u using that or is it a freeware.

I am using paid version

 

[sam9s]

++1 for Foobar with wasapi ...... foodbar is just exceptional, the level of customization and filters available is just unbelievable ....

 

[shrjun]

After experimenting with several softwares finally settled with Amarra (MacBook Pro).

I too picked up amarra but have been unable to create playlists for some reason !

 

[hydra]

Sonora for Mac. It's time to love your music again.

Sonora is a new software media player for Macs. It supports FLAC, among other non-apple formats. $9.99 in the Mac App Store.