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General discussion

9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?

Sep 15, 2004 11:24AM PDT

Which music-player software do you use?

iTunes
Windows Media Player
Musicmatch
RealPlayer
Winamp
QuickTime
Other

Place your votes and discuss this topic.

Some questions to get the conversation rolling are:

Why do you use the music-player you voted on? What makes it so special?

Do you use more than one of these players, if so why, shouldn't one player cover all the different formats?

If you had to convince another person to go with the player you use, how would sell them on it?

If you didn't vote for any of the above player, what music-player do you use?

I'm hoping that these poll discussion will be fun for all of to participate in and hopefully we'd also gain more knowledge out of it.

Enjoy!
-Lee Koo
CNET Community

Discussion is locked

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 17, 2004 10:59PM PDT

I have used all but ITunes. I have found that lately I have liked the way the latest Windows Media Player functions.

They have added alot of nice features to make the experience enjoyable.

All of the players have their pluses and minuses. Windows media seems to be my favorite (For the moment).

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 18, 2004 7:37AM PDT

Hola,

Winamp (latest version)5.03a

I like the interoperability of the program with all formats of media and the addition that its not bundled to a bunch of other programs.

I do unfortunatly have to use quicktime for those formats and I must agree that there should be one open source format that covers all file types.

If you have never used it just try it.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 18, 2004 2:00PM PDT

Winamp
WMP
Real Player 8

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 18, 2004 7:42PM PDT

Okay, my kind of question! First, just to let you know, I spent 20 years in the music business. I was a radio dj, record producer, recording engineer, concert promoter, band manager, club booking agent, and I started my own record label. Not bragging and not that it means a whole lot...but it explains my passion for music. I am a pc guy all the way. I have used, in this order, Windows Media, Musicmatch, Realplayer, and Winamp. Once I found Winamp, with its skinning capability, small size, and terrific EQ, I was hooked. It was my default player on 2 pc's. Then iTunes for Windows came out. Well, I am not a Mac person, but...iTunes rocks! With 3000 mp3s, it was nice to be able to see a list of all my songs clearly, rate them on a 1-5 star basis, EQ each one individually if I like and save the settings for each. I love the Party Shuffle (plays tracks at random) and the ability to make Smart Playlists that can play any combination of artists, decades, song lengths, my ratings, most played, etc. etc. You can literally program it to only play songs under 3 minutes long by artists that start with G that are 120 beats per minute (not that you would). And then I bought a 15g iPod, and I just plugged in my iPod and it synced up with iTunes. It is effortless. I am hooked on iTunes.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 2:22AM PDT

Sonique by Lycos is the only player I've found that I can set to append a file to its playlist when I open it from Windows Explorer or My Computer. It also has plug-ins to support almost any (audio) file format and a few video formats.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 7:55AM PDT

I use Musicmatch because it came with my computer, but I would like to know wich is the best so I could change if I'm not currently using the best.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 11:29AM PDT

I have iTunes, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch,RealPlayer, & QuickTime.
WMPlayer & Real are used on many websites-so I keep these. MusicMatch came with my computer and I find the sound too tinny...I don't like it at all. QT I keep for those formats, but the one I use all the time is iTunes. I really like it. The sound is good (and the equalizer is adjustable for each song!), it's easy to use, it links to the download site and it has, hands down, the BEST visualization of ANY of them (and I have downloaded different ones for Real and WMPlayer). And best, it's part of the program...nothing to download. I use WinXPPro, so it's not that I'm an Apple 'nut'. LOL.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 1:02PM PDT

Sonique 1.9. Been using sonique since 2000. I use the player because it's compact, it doesnt have that many windows like winamp.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 3:36PM PDT

Winamp!
The latest incarnation of Winamp (5.x) not only allows skinning, but its also interoperable with Sysmetrix, supports scaling to use up less desktop, uses little resources, and does not have any spyware/adware/DRM/privacy issues. Using a sys tray only icon then minimized unclutters the taskbar and the desktop. (In other words it plays the tunes invisibly)
Faithful decoding of the music, regardless of the source is its greatest selling point. I use WMP and QT only when forced too. I wont use RealPlayer, way too many privacy issues.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 19, 2004 10:37PM PDT

iTunes, almost exclusively. Why? Because it just works.

However, I do occasionally use RealOne or Windows Media Player when I come across content on the web requiring those formats. But for music, it's iTunes baby.

I have a mixed PC/Mac environment and iTunes makes it easy for me to maintain a single music library on a network disk and import/export playlists to every computer (PCs and Macs alike) and every user account. I also use Airport Express/Airtunes to pipe music through my home audio system, and this works from any type of PC as well. Sitting on the sofa with a wireless laptop controlling my audio system is just too cool.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 20, 2004 9:23PM PDT

Because I have so many digital audio files on my hard drive, I use Monkey Media from www.mediamonkey.com. It allows categorising by genre, artist, etc. It supports MP3 and WMA formats.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 21, 2004 11:50AM PDT

The last several months I have been using iTunes. I like the radio station listings and the direct link to their store. Yes, I have actually been buying the music I listen to. In fact, since iTunes came out I haven't bought an actual CD at the store. At $9.99 on iTunes I save 5 - 7 bucks over what the typical music shop charges and then just rip my own CDs. Their model works.

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Re: 9/17/04 Which music-player software do you use?
Sep 21, 2004 1:03PM PDT

I have used Musicmatch and Real Player in the past, and was dissatisfied with both. I now have installed, WMP 10, Quicktime, Winamp 5, and CMI Audio Rack.
For music, the CMI Audio Rack, with it's surround sound feature, is far superior to any that I have experienced.

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foobar2000
Oct 7, 2004 8:31PM PDT

I use foobar2000. It is small and fast and has some very advanced features. Also the decoding engine is one of the best if not the best. It supports most of the new advanced and high quality formats like Ogg Vorbis, AAC and FLAC out of the box.

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I tried Foobar and Like it!
Mar 7, 2005 12:00PM PST

I have a fast computer with a top of the line sound card and an excellent sound system attached to it.

I use WinAmp. Jet Audio, and Real 10 regularly, with DFX for Real, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player. (I try to avoid Windows Media Player 10 because of the previous bad experiances with it.)

A few years back I tried Foobar when I discovered Lossless Compression formats [Shorten, APE, FLAC]. At the time, I was using a lesser computer with an adequate set of speakers. The soundcard was better than average, but nothing spectacular. I could NOT distinguish between Foobar and WinAmp, so I used WinAmp.

The difference between latest iteration of Foobar and WinAmp 5.0, when used with Creative's Wonder Card and Cambridge Soundworks' top of the line computer speaker system is quite noticeable and definitely favors Foobar 2000.

I recommend Foobar without reservation. Of course for visualizations, nothing beats Real's "Annabelle The Sheep." Foobar is sadly deficient in the visualization department, but for pure sound quality, it will blow you away!