I love Windows Media Player and AudFree Spotify to MP3 Converter. The converter helps to download Spotify music as local MP3 files. So that I can listen to the local Spotify tracks offline via WMP. BTW the downloaded quality sounds the same as the original online streams.

 

I use VLC and TKPlayer. VLC is more popular and multi-functional, while TKPlayer is less famous but more easy-to-use. Both are free and good.

 

Maybe someone can help me since its kinda on the topic but im coming from Mac and I could easily hit the space tab when I wanted a sample to play or check what samples are in a folder.. how can I set it up so ot does this on windows 10 or atleast easier then right clicking and going to media player?

 

The latest VLC does the job nicely.

 

HQ Player hands on!

 

Download Links Included

All in one Players:

Pot Player (My Fav)
Media Player Classic Black Edition
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
VLC

Audio Players:

MusicBee (My Fav)
AIMP
FooBar3000
Resonic

 

I downloaded Bughead but haven't tried it yet. Is this a standalone software? Does this write into registry? I try to avoid programs that use registry.

What are MinorityClean, Nontallion and the other directories? Does the package include several programs?

 

@FrankWhite23 I know how you feel. No Avenger's right and I usually like to keep my system free of uneccessary third party add-ons and such but check out QuickLook. It's in the Windows store too.

 

I'm a foobar man. I love all the options I have with different plugins.

 

It is standalone program, but works only with processors with AVX2 support. It does not write anything into registry.
Minority Clean is a separate resident program that keeps CPU cores' ballance, supposedly helping to get a clearer reproduction.
Rewrite data reorganizes audio files on HD (by special filtered rewriting of data - once rewritten file you should not copy or do any saves on it in order not to lose the benefit) so they better match SSE, AVXx or MMX media instruction sets, so you get some sort of "sound purification" (a metaphor).
The rest (Nontallion, Qctahedron, PINK HQ) are alternative versions of BugHead player if you find they better suit you.

 

I think that very few people here realized what was his question and his quest. There is a slight but significant difference in sound quality between audio players.
If someone who is on OSX wants to try: play your wav file in Preview (only press spacebar), and let it play in VLC after that. That is the difference he is talking about.

BTW, that Preview player on OSX is the best sound quality I ever heard. I didn't find any that could match its resolution.

 

Last edited: Sep 9, 2020

Versatile and good sounding. But has a feature that is quite ridiculous - "Total Time Played". It counts the time player was/is active. Nobody knows its purpose, and it is deeply hidden, hard to see under Preferences/Playback tab. It can't be turned off.
Since it uses CPU/mem resources for non-audio purposes it can only impair the sound. So some people asked the developer to introduce a tick-box to turn it off, but he refused because 'it takes much time to test a new tick box, and the feature is invisible, anyway...' (!?)

 

Last edited: Sep 8, 2020

I prefer VLC Music Player and AudKit Spotify Song Downloader. The converter let me download music from Spotify to MP3. In this way I don't need to open the Spotify music app to listen to songs in my Spotify library. Quite convenient.

 

My first audio player was K-Jofol... Yep, long time ago, and I LOVED that thing.
Then it was Apollo. Just great sounding stuff, but only MP3 or WAV, as far as I can remember.

Then, Foobar, and never looked back.
(For a while, I confess, I used MediaMonkey to transfer audio files to my iPod. Since I stopped using my iPod, I uninstalled MM, but for doing that it was flawless)

 

everytime i play a movie in VLC, it always say error in audio (i am using Apollo btw) so i have to reassign the audio device every time, anyone experiencing this too?

 

I love Wynil and MusicBee.
Both let you choose between ASIO, WDM and WASAPI. Plus some other nice features.
VLC is my to-go for videos.

 

Portable version? Writing permissions are ok?

 

Should be easy to verify teh claim that players change the sound.

Play song in player A and software loopback record output
Play song in player B and software loopback record output

and then do the cancelation test by flipping the phase of one or compare them in another way