Which Media Player

[Dynobot]

Obviously many if not all here prefer XMPlay's sound over other media players....which other media players have you tried and which comes closest 2nd best to XMPlay?

[raina]

Cubic Player did it for me for a long time but then I installed Windows 98 and started using XMPlay. At the time its approach to playing stream files was buffering it all to RAM so I had to keep WinAmp around for playing bigger MP3 files like live sets and such. WinAmp also came to rescue in the early XMPlay 2.x days. While XMPlay was gaining more features, for me it was a very fragile little thing. While I absolutely insisted on playing my modules on it, I couldn't make an MP3 playlist for a night and trust XMPlay to get through the party without crashing. I never came to know what the cause was but what's important is it all got better eventually.

[Sam_Zen]

A bit of a rough poll. I consider XMPlay as an audio player, not a media player capable of playing audio.

As raina states, playing modules was the core function of XMPlay.
Before, I used Cubic Player as well, and also the Inertia Player.
From Windoze on I used the ModPlug Player as the main one, until XMPlay came along.
And I still use it sometimes to get a quick listen to a module file.

[raina]

Have to add that CP was my all-rounder back then, I used it to play MP3s, SIDs and MIDI files as well. The latter was especially interesting: Cubic Player could play MIDI using GUS patches without the need for wavetable hardware, not entirely unlike what XMPlay does with E-MU SoundFonts today. Now, I DID have a GUS but that was still pretty cool..

[saga]

none.

well, back when i used win98, xmplay always crashed and i used the player mentioned by Sam, ModPlug Player. The first year or so when i switched to win xp, i used winamp, but with the BASS plugin installed. so winamp had basically the same replay engine as xmplay has, but it was missing looping stuff, per-file interpolation settings, etc. So i eventuelly came back to xmplay which was not crashing on win xp.

[amit]

Foobar has many benefits , mainly tag management , but it lack some elementary abilities.

Quintessential player has a similar efficiency approach as xmplay but with a more flashy skin engine. With bass input plugin it has the same decoding quality as xmplay. The newer QMP on the other hand is bloated and very buggy.

I am only referring  to lossy/lossless/streams playback; No mods and such.

[Dante]

to my opinion, the 2nd awesome-st media player after xmplay is aimp...this little app totally blew me away. Very light on resources, very nice skins, with many unique functions..a real winamp killer!I can't comment on module playback since i'm using xmplay mainly for mp3 files, but from whatever i've tried, these two apps are the ones that stoud out...

[shamka]

yeah... aimp is a very good one ... especially since it's built on bass engine.

[Dynobot]

yeah... aimp is a very good one ... especially since it's built on bass engine.

I tried Aimp but it didnt have a way to use ASIO...

[r]

i love testing out mp3 players... i guess that makes me weird! 

XMPlay is #1! i use it on a daily basis, and am using it a lot more nowadays for AAC-enabled web radio stations.

i still use Winamp 2.91 for a couple of things... tagging, conversion, and sometimes video.
i also like AIMP mainly for the way it partitions dragged directories in the playlist and for crossfade.
i like 1by1 for its directory player.
i like Evil Player because it's the lightest audio player resource-wise.
i like Xion for its innovative skinning engine.

these are my main players.

[Sam_Zen]

There's a difference between being able to play tracker formats, and the playback of regular, compressed or not, soundfiles.
XMPlay is my main associated audio player, but sometimes, if I want a quick listen of an MP3, I just hit F3 of TCommander.
No need for skins, tags, equalizers, whatever. Just a time-slider, and play back the file.

2 saga
A vast jump from W98 to XP. I can assure that ModPlug Player functioned as well in NT4 and W2K.
I only discovered XMPlay while running W2K.

Of course everybody has his choice of second player, due to preference of properties, navigation or skin.
Quite some players are mentioned. Only MP3 is mentioned. How about including formats like OGG, FLAC, or APE ?

[shamka]

XMPlay is my main associated audio player, but sometimes, if I want a quick listen of an MP3, I just hit F3 of TCommander.
No need for skins, tags, equalizers, whatever. Just a time-slider, and play back the file.

with F3 in total commander i use mplayer cause i have in one package a very fast player for video and audio. as you say no need for skins and other things

[saga]

A vast jump from W98 to XP. I can assure that ModPlug Player functioned as well in NT4 and W2K.

i know it works, but at some point i wanted to listen to other scenemusic than just mods...

[Dynobot]

Well, even though I didn't list it as a choice....[because for one its not free].

The best media player I have used is jRiver Media Center.  It does everything you could possibly want in a media player with excellent sound for audio.  But its really not far to compare that to a free media player like XM or some others....esp in terms of features.

Another nice free media player though is JetAudio, though it seems not to support ASIO out....the free version is still nice.

[Sam_Zen]

Yep. JetAudio is worth mentioning too.

[saga]

I honestly don't get why you need ASIO in an audio player. Your sound device and your media player should resample the sound the same way, no matter which driver you're using. ASIO only puts more load on the cpu or the device because it has a lower latency. But why the hell do you need low latency in a media player? ASIO was made for musicians and audio engineers!

[Dynobot]

Why do I need ASIO

Because my set up is THAT of a recording studio.  I ONLY use an external DAC....[no sound card], and at the present moment my hardware only accepts ASIO out, which it converts to toslink for my DAC.

Vista PC--->jRiver--->Transit USB--->Lavry DA10--->Acoustic Zen Silver RefII--->Dynaudio BM 6AMkII


The link in the chain where jRiver [is] must have ASIO out.  I don't play MP3 files, only lossless music.


Apparently you must think XMPlay should not have ASIO capabilities seeing that it is meant to play MP3 files and modules...I would guess this is also true of upsampling.

[Zarggg]

You both have valid points. saga is correct in stating that in the most common setup for the end user -- outputting audio data directly to a sound card -- the low latency of ASIO is not necessary. Standard WaveOut or DirectSound is sufficient for this purpose.

However you do have a valid reason to use ASIO in your specific setup, Dynobot. For this reason, it is justified for XMPlay to have the option of outputting audio data via ASIO.

[Dynobot]

You both have valid points. saga is correct in stating that in the most common setup for the end user -- outputting audio data directly to a sound card -- the low latency of ASIO is not necessary. Standard WaveOut or DirectSound is sufficient for this purpose.

However you do have a valid reason to use ASIO in your specific setup, Dynobot. For this reason, it is justified for XMPlay to have the option of outputting audio data via ASIO.

This is why I don't understand how players like JetAudio etc. can call themselves serious players and even offer 32-bit play back and NOT have ASIO out.  I mean who would want to play an MP3 file at 32 bits?  Talk about over kill....thats like having a Ferrari in NYC.

[saga]

and at the present moment my hardware only accepts ASIO out

that's a good point of course. as a musician i'd never use ASIO for my media player anyway since there can be only one asio stream - having both my tracker and xmplay open at the same time would lead to conflicts then.