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[daniel40392]

This Thread is now about what music player you use and why you use it! Enjoy.

[Kai]

I loathe windows media player.


I used to use iTunes, but recently I got fed up with it being a laggy piece of shit and the lack of support for flac (not to mention apple in general is sort of iffy to me) so I switched to winamp.

it's pretty nifty. although every skin that isn't the default one looks awful.

[daniel40392]

But why do you loathe it?

[öde]

Winamp has a much nicer and easier to use design with the seperate control, playlist and media library windows. It also has a wide range of plugins for various things, especially for media formats. I used Amarok now, which is probably the best media player I've used.

[daniel40392]

Hmm after installing it and currently using it im starting to like it already.
The simplicity is quite nice and it doesnt take up my entire screen to change the track.
Not bad at all.

[Dimmukane]

I use foobar2000.  It supports any audio file I come into contact with, is low-memory, and still has plug-ins to work with last.fm, and foosic, whereas  most of the more obscure media players do not.  I don't care much for how nice things look, I'm supposed to be listening to music, not watching it.

[Will]

I use iTunes, even though I know it's basically bloatware, because I like shiny toys, and the visual interface makes me happy (being able to download all the album artwork, and then flip through it almost like a jukebox for whatever reason is exciting to me - shut up!) plus I like the easy method of shuffling my playlist by album.  If I'm just listening to a single track, or something that I don't have in my iTunes playlist, I use Winamp.

[TheFuriousWombat]

i use itunes also. it's easy to organize things exactly to my liking, i too like the artwork flipbook thingie they've got going on, and setting custom equailizers and such is very simple to do. i've tried some of the other players but i keep coming back to itunes for ease of use and the nice interface.

[Misereatur]

Winamp.

[ThePQ4]

I like using WMP (9, more then 10, but alas...I am stuck with it now), because I like how when I minimize, I make it go down onto my toolbar, and then I don't have to open it again to skip songs. However, I like it for movies. When I watch movies and stuff I've DL'd, I prefer Realplayer --although Realplayer always -wants- to play my music...wtf? I've used Winamp, and it's OK, but it never wanted to cooperate with me... maybe I'm just Winamp-stupid.

[Thrillho]

I use winamp. Global hotkeys, playlists, separate windows, option to leave it in your tray, plugins...everything about it smells of awesome.

[BillAdama]

I use an actual stereo.

I used to use my computer, but my computer is so old it often resulted in freezing and stuttering.  Plus my stereo holds 60 CDs, so I can just put a bunch of stuff in and switch to whatever I feel like.

I haven't really switched over to mp3s because I still prefer listening to whole albums rather than just tracks. 

[TheFuriousWombat]

um...i have hundreds of full albums in mp3 format. the two aren't mutually exclussive, and the option to download whole cds at once exists everywhere you look.

[SensoryOssuary]

I use Foobar, just because it has a very clean interface, can handle massive amounts of music without any slow-down, and it very customizable with a modicum of technical skill.

[Will]

I tend to use my cd player more than I do my computer, don't get me wrong.  But yeah, almost every P2P client imaginable gives you the option to download whole albums.  Hell, I don't even think you can find individual tracks on torrents...

[thelightguy]

Foobar is great (it's what I use for music) but it honestly takes a lot of work to get anything that resembles a proper media player.  Out of the box, it's just a playlist, a half-assed media library through the album list plugin, and the basic controls. 

However, I still use WMP for video playback, because it's the only player that doesn't skip on my computer.

Winamp, I use for shoutcast only... it lacks unicode support and has some problems with buggy plugins.

And iTunes, I use for my iPod because all the other options suck more.

[Rubby]

I like using WMP (9, more then 10, but alas...I am stuck with it now), because I like how when I minimize, I make it go down onto my toolbar, and then I don't have to open it again to skip songs. However, I like it for movies. When I watch movies and stuff I've DL'd, I prefer Realplayer --although Realplayer always -wants- to play my music...wtf? I've used Winamp, and it's OK, but it never wanted to cooperate with me... maybe I'm just Winamp-stupid.

You're doing computers wrong.
wmp is a mass of unorganized bloat and realplayer feels more like a virus then a viable program. The way you say realplayer keeps wanting to play your music - well no confident piece of software does that. I have it on my computer for those rare times when I need it and although I've stopped it from hijacking my program defaults, my firewall says it's calling home or being contacted every hour or so. That's fucked! Why would it need to do that?
Anyways, enough ranting.
I use winamp. It's got nice support of most file types and I just love the library. I've been thinking of switching to foobar though, it seems like the customization process would be a blast.

[thelightguy]

Google for "Realplayer alternative"... it's a package that wraps realplayer codecs in a directshow codec so you don't even need to install realplayer.

[Der Turm, der Leute frass]

I used iTunes, but since a while my audio driver doesn't work anymore  (probably I'm just to stupid to install it correctly) 

[Hat]

I've never had a problem with Itunes being laggy. I switched from winamp because of the inability to organize files effectively. Not sure if this has been fixed since I last used winamp, but seeing as I use Itunes for ripping all my CDs and it does a pretty good job, I can't be bothered changing back.

[Johnny C]

iTunes doesn't have any lag for me. I like to use it.

[SpacemanSpiff]

I had to use iTunes because my parents have iPods and I found the software to be pretty bloated and generally infuriating to use. I suppose I just don't understand its UI.

In Windows, I use WinAmp 2.91 because it does everything I want it to do perfectly (plays FLAC, OGG and MP3) and nothing more, really. Foobar would be a nice alternative if I wasn't too lazy to switch, though.
In Linux, I use Audacious, which is basically the equivalent to a 2.x series WinAmp.

[TheFuriousWombat]

i think itunes' ui is one of the most streamlined and accesible around. maybe you're used to less accesible programms so simplistic ones are harder to navigate? for the most part organizing music on itunes is absurdly simple i find and really involves little more than dragging and dropping specific tracks into easily made files/playlists. that's the main reason i like it so much. it just doesn't requier any thought and i can organize my relatively sizeable library with ease.

[IronOxide]

I use iTunes and I really enjoy the amount of organization that it provides me with. As far as it being laggy, I run it while playing WoW*, so it can't be too bad, can it.

*Don't have Burning Crusade yet, kind of curious to see how that pans out.

[Johnny C]

The unfotunate problem - and only one I have - with iTunes is that people using OiNK seem to be tagging for some other player and that means that a bunch of the tags that I get are absolute shit.

"Smashing Pumpkins, The"? "Hawley, Richard"? "explosions in the sky"? Albums that are deliberately unlabeled? Come on, people.

[TheFuriousWombat]

argh, that does bother me! i'm mildly ocd so all my music has to be tagged the same way. no "last name, first name" bullshit. no lower case band names/song names/album titles. certain words (a, the, an, and, if ect) are lowercase but all others are not. i also like itunes "track number/out of" thing. all my songs have to have that filled in, but not the cd number or the album artist listing. i'm very particular and will go way out of my way to ensure all my songs are tagged like this so alternatly tagged tracks (as in, almost all the tracks i download) annoy me.

[Hat]

The unfotunate problem - and only one I have - with iTunes is that people using OiNK seem to be tagging for some other player and that means that a bunch of the tags that I get are absolute shit.

"Smashing Pumpkins, The"? "Hawley, Richard"? "explosions in the sky"? Albums that are deliberately unlabeled? Come on, people.

I never had this problem with Oink. Maybe you are downloaded albums uploaded by jerks?

[Rubby]

"Smashing Pumpkins, The"?

I do this. Winamp (which I use) is fine organizing files with a leading The in the band name but my mp3 player (Creative Zen) organizes everything exactly, so if I don't use the "Band Name, The" format it becomes really hard to find anything.

[Johnny C]

"Hawley, Richard," though?

[Hat]

See, I don't mind looking for "The" bands under T on my zen, because of the way the interface allows you to jump to the T section fairly easily, and its still easier than poring over files in Itunes renaming them.

[Rubby]

Well I have this wonderful little program called Tag & Rename which renames files, folders and tags with about 4 mouse clicks.

[Johnny C]

I have this wonderful little thing called torrent software which won't let me reseed files after I've messed with the tags.

[Rubby]

It's true you have to wait until the tracker has killed the torrent, so I have this massive folder called "Music Temp", but whatever.

[Inlander]

I use a C.D. player . . .

[Johnny C]

It's true you have to wait until the tracker has killed the torrent, so I have this massive folder called "Music Temp", but whatever.

I just remove it and edit the tags myself. This afternoon I downloaded an awfully-tagged comp of thematic music from film and television, which I intend to use on mix CDs as transitional tracks, removed it from Azureus when I found out that the tags were bollocks and spent an hour researching and editing the tags.

[fish across face]

I use foobar2000.  It supports any audio file I come into contact with, is low-memory, and still has plug-ins to work with last.fm, and foosic, whereas  most of the more obscure media players do not.  I don't care much for how nice things look, I'm supposed to be listening to music, not watching it.

Yep, I use foobar2000 and for all of those reasons (except whatever foosic is??). 

The only thing I'd add about why I like it is that the tag editing and scripting is really easy to follow (OK, maybe working with SQL queries and stuff for years makes it easier for me) and pretty powerful.

[David_Dovey]

I use iTunes because I have an iPod and I love being able to sync playlists and play counts between the two, plus I find the interface very easy to use and generally pretty. I was tempted to change a while ago but iTunes 7 basically took away all of the qualms I had wit iTunes.

[lb969]

You're going to laugh.

For ripping, I use MusicMatch Jukebox.

Then I can use my Vision:M's manager to upload it to my MP3 player. (I prefer it over the Sync function in WMP).  Something like 98% of the files are fine. Sometimes you do get bad tags. Last time was KT Tunstalls "Eye to the Telescope". Half the tracks were messed up.

For playback, I use WinAmp.

[Valrus]

I use iTunes. On a Mac, I think it's still the only real option; perhaps at some point the field will open up a bit like it has with web browsers, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Fortunately, with some extra Applescripts installed, and the iTunes plugin in Quicksilver, it does absolutely everything I need it to and considerably more.

[Scytale]

I use Rythmbox which is basically a clone of the Itunes interface for Linux, works pretty well. I'd use Banshee, which is another sweet I-Tunes clone but it uses C# and I'm remiss to install mono on my PC.

[mqarcus]

Winamp and the weird combination of W's and V's for Linux.

[The Hammered]

I almost always use CD players, but for the computer I use foobar2000.

[godinpants]

Mostly my cd player, but if im going to listen to stuff on my computer, its itunes, because im on a mac, and its there.

[Evil_Lathander]

I use foobar2000.  It supports any audio file I come into contact with, is low-memory, and still has plug-ins to work with last.fm, and foosic, whereas  most of the more obscure media players do not.  I don't care much for how nice things look, I'm supposed to be listening to music, not watching it.

Same here,0.9.4.2 at the moment.

this player has very good options... even an audio scrobler