The best desktop music player?

This is probably a topic that’s quite contentious, but I’ll ask it anyway.

I’m looking for a really good desktop music player. I’ve got a few hings that it needs to do, too.

  • Ability to play anything, either natively or with plugins.
  • Have an EQ and DSP options.
  • Should be able to handle cuesheets as separate album tracks.
  • Be a windows program.
  • Not be foobar 2000.

I’m not opposed to paying, either.

So far, I’ve tried foobar and don’t care for it. MusicBoxAlpha is promising but way too early.

If anyone’s got some suggestions, that’d be great!

Thanks!

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I think VLC can do what you’re asking, but I’m not sure how great of a music program it is. I mostly use it for video.
Edited to add link: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

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VLC is pretty great. It’ll play any file type and I’m almost positive it has an EQ either built in or plugin. Also supports Chromecast as well.

You can also install it on your phone and use it to access your media drives and stream it to your speakers or headphones or whatever.

Organization is sort of left up to you though. Not the best for organization.

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This is what I was most concerned about UI/UX might be debatable. I’m 99% sure it’s capable of doing everything else in the world, though.

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Did you check out ?

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Easy to miss, it’s in bullet points.

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Oh boy, and I thought a scanned the entire thing twice… LOL… must have been distracted by trying to remember the one my friend on Linux always recommends… which I think might be Clementine. (Listed in the alternative.to list above.)

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Clementine is pretty good I would recommend trying it at least.

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I have VLC and though it does do a good job of playback, UX is not so great.

I’m really trying to find something with the UX of iTunes but without the Apple proprietary stuff.

So far, I think MusicBee is coming really, really close.

I’m still evaluating, but this is getting really close.

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Let us know what you end up with!
I might check it out too. Since WinAmp and Groove died, I’ve had a hard time finding something I like.

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I’ve used AIMP for a while, since it plays all sorts of formats, does conversion, EQ, is Windows-based, and isn’t foobar2000. It should handle cuesheets, but I am unsure of the DSP options.

The UI is closer to a more modern version of WinAmp (hence the name).

It’s not perfect, but it’s feature rich and fairly light. Just throwing it out there for possible consideration.

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I’ve always used Media Monkey

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I’ve just been using MusicBee for the past few days and I think that’s what I’m settling on. It does everything I want, plus podcasts and audiobooks as well. So I think this is what I’m settling on.

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I use VLC media player…

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I guess I am a dinosaur, still using Winamp for music :slight_smile:

(in Windows)

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I’ve been using Musicbee as a “winamp” replacement. But Plex as a music server. Plex has some annoying issues, but it’s the best I have found since slimserver. I wish Plex would do a better job with it’s Android app. For iOS users, is it more stable? AnDroid app seems to lose connections and get a bit confused at times. Web browser is always perfect.

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"THE" Winamp replacement

Radionomy released v5.8 of winamp with a few fixes and new features (and new bugs).
It won’t get any more updates so is a dead-end.

One of the ex-winamp devs decided to make his own replacement after leaving due to the direction of the current owners.
WACUP” the WinAmp Community Update Project is far beyond old Winamp now.
With WACUP you get trusty old Winamp but with modern features like support for Youtube, Vimeo, soundcloud and more.
It has integrated twitter, discord and rich-presence support so you can easily share what you are playing.
Much improved podcast support, now includes atom feeds.

It will play and save almost any format you need out of the box or you can use another winamp plugin you like.
It comes with support for all the main lossless formats, and all codecs are built from the most current versions.
Wacup also comes with WASPI and ASIO output.

The WACUP community is far more active than the Winamp community so each update has continued to include more yummy presets for the Milkdrop visualiser.

Most importantly WACUP now has more :llama: :llama: in it (that is a fact I can confirm, because I added them).

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This sounds really awesome. I’d read Winamp was working on another new player after that 5.8 release, but hadn’t seen anything since.

I’m going to check WACUP out. Anything with 200% Llama has got to be good!

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Enable the random display of the VJ text in Milkdrop to see extra :llama:
As long as you have Segoe emoji font you will summon many llamas.
(call them specifically by pressing 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 while milkdrop is running).

Radionomy say they are going to release a new Winamp, but not in the form we know.
The feeling is that they are focusing on the mobile market.

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