SurfingMusicMan
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Alternative to Windows Media Player
Is there a free altnerative to Windows Media Player that does not add effects to your music and lets you easily build playlists?
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Ognis
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/16 12:01:23
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Just for listening to music, you can try winamp. For listening to 24 bit files, try VLC player.
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droddey
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/16 14:35:03
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Is there a free altnerative to Windows Media Player that does not add effects to your music and lets you easily build playlists? Not to dissuade you from your search, but WMP doesn't add effects to your music and you can easily build playlists. What it does, AFAIK, is go through the Windows mixer (at least under XP) and so probably converts 44K CD to 48K. That's sub-optimal, but most folks probably wouldn't notice much difference in casual listening (which I assume that playlists would imply.) It will also play 24/96 files if the correct codecs are installed, but I'm not sure if it converts them or not. OTOH, WinAmp is also highly recommended by a lot of folks and does have options to bypass the sample rate conversion and play it unmolested. J.River Media Center is another option, but it's more than a player, it's a music manager and player together, with metadada retrieval.
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SurfingMusicMan
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/16 14:50:06
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I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that WMP adds some sort of compression or something. Wave files sound different to me when played in WMP as opposed to other apps.
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Phrauge
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/16 15:03:36
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ORIGINAL: barthowk
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that WMP adds some sort of compression or something. Wave files sound different to me when played in WMP as opposed to other apps.
Yes, WMP does have EQ and compression but you can turn them off.
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droddey
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/16 15:36:57
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AFAIK, they are all off by default, so unless you've turned them on, they shouldn't be affecting anything. Right click in the title bar, then View and then Enhancements and you can show them, and turn them off if they've gotten turned on.
post edited by droddey - 2007/03/16 15:37:16
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DaveClark
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/03/20 12:39:00
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Thanks to Ognis for mentioning VLC.
I needed something unobtrusive to run under both WinXP and Linux, and this does the job better than any others I've used. Playlists look like they may be difficult to manage, but I don't use them anyway --- seems like they're always a pain to do. If you're looking for something small and straightforward to simply play a single file after exporting, or something like that, you may want to check VLC out. It also does videos of all types in addition to audio of all sorts, including ogg/vorbis files. I verified that it runs under SuSE Linux 10.1 (with all those updates --- as bad as Windows!) as well as WinXP. I've used XMMS, WinAmp, Samsung and Magix's bundleware, and many, many more. IMO this is the best one so far for simply playing stuff, apparently transparently not errantly.... Source code is available, also.
Regards,
Dave Clark
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DaveClark
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/05/26 16:51:48
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Greetings all,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to take back what I said about VLC after now using it for a couple of months. Although it seems ~OK for checking out something to see what it is, I've noticed that there are some oddities, especially when sample rate conversions are involved --- at least this is my impression. I especially take back what I said about "transparently not errantly." Although without sample rate conversions this may be true, with sample rate conversions, it is not true.
Has anyone else heard problems with this player?
Regards,
Dave Clark
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rumleymusic
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RE: Alternative to Windows Media Player
2007/05/27 00:29:53
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The newest version seems to have corrected the sound distortion issues of 9 and 10. It also has 24/96 compatability if your hardware supports it. But the stupid thing still can't read CD text. Quicktime always worked well for me as an alternative. 
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