fOObar2000

 

Winamp forever!

 

XMplay has been my go-to player for years. It's like the old Winamp but better.
It plays a variety of formats by default, supports winamp dsp and input plugins + its own proprietary plugin format and it's skinnable (with a handy big mode for 4k)
I like it especially cause I can play obscure video game music formats like .psf, .nsf, .vgm and such.

 

You're right and it's not VLC's developers fault. Being a closs-platform application they have to fight with usual video obstacles on Linux, and on Mac they pretty much have to fight with everything. Apple keeps deleting it from the store to avoid any competence to the official quicktime codecs and players and many other nasty things. That of course leaves out very important containers/formats like the best container, MKV.

Oh! Isn't this the one that plays old good modules like .xm themselves? Nice...

Anyways, I wouldn't discard real differences despite they shouldn't exist. Weird things happen with computers, especially if the WMP bastard is involved.

 

is this really true? i dont believe it. did you record proof in any way?

i have always just used the built in windows media player and never really seen any reason to upgrade from it. it plays audio and it has a volume control and allows playlists. im happy with that.
i dont even need the volume control, but its a nice feature

 

The latest versions of:
AIMP 4
Foobar2000
Resonic (free)
Winamp
JRiver26
Jetaudio (almost never)
+ few others + DAW(s) /editor(s)

 

Winamp: Playin' MP3s before it was cool.

 

All things being equal /1-5/, a different player renders different sound (differences being most obvious in sound definition - like a less sharp and a sharper photograph. As everybody can see that difference in photographs, everybody should be able to hear it in reproduced music.)
P.S. Unlike you, I have never met two players that sound exactly the same on the same system, with the same music material.

 

Possibly you should have read the Manual first. HQPlayer is also a high-quality audio file converter, with dithering, resampling, noise shaping and PCM to DSD converting options, and some convolution options too. If you use only the playback options it does nothing to your files.

 

The sound is 'ehnhanced' at its most by pros in final mastering. If you need an enhancer chained to your audio player, you might possibly need a better audio player.

 

Well, it's true, for some people curiosity killed the cat.

 

Yeah maybe, but converting shouldn't corrupt the original files? I did read the somewhat confusing manual, but I just want to listen to music as simply as possible, so foobar2000 it is! The Meier Crossfeed plugin is also cool when you listen on headphones

I should also add that my headphones and DAC/amplifier are pretty decent, so foobar2000 is already good enough for me

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2020

I too would like to hear some proof of different players having a different sound - how about doing a blind test and recording some samples and getting people to pick which one they like the "sound" of best? That would be the most scientific way to go about it, would it not?

Otherwise it's just down to personal preference, which for me is generally VLC, although I have used Foo in the past and may revisit it after reading this thread.

For Android I really like Pulsar - or are we only talking PC players (yes, I'm including Macs in that)?

 

In general, DAWs use ASIO drivers, and normal media players, apart from sometimes having gimmicky internal processing built in, will use the "ordinary" audio drivers such as MME or DirectX. These drivers do sometimes sound different to ASIO.

 

If you converted PCM to DSD, yes, it would.
Good enough is good to a degree, but the main question was "the best'.

 

It seems like most of the people here didn't take much effort to compare players' sound quality, partly because of the prejudice that 'If the format is lossless the software doesn't matter', But it is not true, it is just as MORTIX said.

 

The best audio player?
Ask Ibeny... He's "THE" specialist.

 

Yes i could be because of the WASAPI and Direct Sound drivers that this players use, and how they have been coded to read and play the files.. and this is really annoying because the last thing i want is to export a mix and have it slightly change when i play it outside the daw. If i use Cubase or Ableton browser to preview the files they sound the same as the DAW. But 90‰ of the people will listen music in this players. So we have to adress it. I know that we are splitting hairs here but when you are working on a song for days you can clearly listen when something doesn`t sound the same. I think WMP/Foobar/Itunes/Quicktime are probably the mostly used so that`s what i use. But i thank you all for the other suggestions.. I will try some of them and see how they compare..

 

Converting FLAC to MP3 doesn't mess with the source files, nor does camera RAW to JPG. Destroying the original source files must be a new software development, created by somebody with a unique sense of humor

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2020