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What is the best alternative to DeaDBeeF?
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MPV
All
10
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
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Top
Con
Minimal theme support
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Top
Pro
Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
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Top
Con
Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.
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Top
Pro
Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files. Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window. This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
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Pro
Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
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Pro
Extremely responsive
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Pro
Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
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Top
Pro
Fast
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, Android
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Experiences
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1444
86
Quod Libet
All
16
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
7
Top
Pro
Great for organizing and editing large collections
Quod Libet gives the user the necessary tools to edit and organize their library from within the app. There is support for tags as well to help you quickly find the music to fit your mood. To help you sort through large libraries, you can use the filters which help filter by genera or other search perimeters.
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Con
(not) customizable
If you get a player, you want to make it yours. QL has a lot of stuff preconfigured, which you can't make as you want it. So base is great, but never makes it to be come yours.
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Top
Pro
Lots of plugins available
Quod Libet offers many plugins including Last FM sync, lyrics support, and iOS sync.
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Top
Con
Doesn't support playlist files
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Pro
Powerful search syntax
Quod Libet has powerful search syntax options, which are very useful for creating smartlists or querying a big music collection.
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Top
Con
The GUI could have more eye-candy
There aren't any icons within the GUI, just text. This makes it feel more like a library management tool than an audio player. A little polish would go a long way here.
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Pro
Easy to use
Despite very good library management capability, Quod Libet is easy to use. The base music player doesn't have too many features, making it a breeze to use. However, if you want to go deeper you can install plugins. These plugins can sometimes add complexity, but it's up to you what you do or don't want.
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Con
Rhythmbox clone
Can't find many differences with Rhythmbox.
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Pro
Integrates with IoT / home audio
Sonos, Squeezebox, ...
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Top
Con
GTK app
It will need a bit more of resources in a non qt environment.
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Top
Pro
Built-in Soundcloud support
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Con
Plugins could be better integrated
Lyrics are not downloaded automatically in Quod Libet, while simply viewing lyrics could be made a lot more accessible. There is also little information pulled from last.fm - scrubbing works, as well as there being no artist info or suggestions for similar artists.
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Pro
Folder view
Quod Libet has multiple viewing modes, including Folder (File System) hierarchy view. The only other program to have a good folder view would be Sayonara.
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Top
Con
Uses quite a bit of memory
Quod Libet can use up to 130 MB.
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Pro
Customizable looks
There are a few controls that allow the user to change how the player looks.
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Pro
Fast & Small
Fully functional and takes up little space on the hard drive.
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Experiences
Free
96
20
Audacious
All
12
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Streamlined player not weighed down by unnecessary options
Audacious is a classic music player at heart that has not felt the need to weigh itself down with an assortment of unnecessary options. Advanced functionality can be attained through plugins available from within the program.
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Top
Con
No manual sorting fields
There is no option to add one's own categories to the sorting fields.
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Pro
Tons of plugins
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Con
Updates are not very frequent
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Pro
Lightweight
My audacious uses only 18.5 MB of RAM. It has a Winamp visualization style that's very minimized and convenient.
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Top
Con
No bit perfect output past 24bit
Audiophiles require this, and while most users might not notice a difference, audiophiles will appreciate the improved audio quality.
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Top
Pro
Support for Winamp themes
Audacious can switch from its GTK interface to one that matches the looks of the famous Winamp player. What's even better is that this interface supports any Winamp themes, which allows for more options.
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Top
Con
Buggy
For example when using Visual Studio Code and Audacious you get flicked out to the gnome login screen.
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Pro
Folder oriented player, but able to play any music container and highly configurable
Lets you play, delete and even change metadata of your music files.
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Top
Pro
The easiest player for multiple types of files
It plays dts, aac multichannel, etc.
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Top
Pro
Compatibility with most media formats
It's able to reproduce most of media formats without external plugins.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, BSD
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Experiences
Free
227
40
foobar2000
All
32
Experiences
Pros
21
Cons
10
Specs
Top
Pro
Lightweight
Foobar2000 has a clean, minimalistic UI, small filesize, and is light on resource usage.
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Top
Con
Not easy to skin
Out of the box it looks like something out of win2000. It is also very difficult to skin for the normal user.
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Top
Pro
Functionality can be extended with components
Foobar200 has over a hundred components to choose from that add UI functionality, decoding support for various formats, etc.
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Top
Con
Provides little in terms of hand-holding
Advanced tasks such as skinning and installing components may be a bit intimidating for beginners because they require knowing your way around the computer, not just the player.
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Top
Pro
Supports a wide variety of audio formats
Foobar2000 natively supports MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, ALAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CD, Speex, Opus, and support for additional formats can be added with plugins.
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Top
Con
Outdated Plugins
Many, many plugins are outdated and not maintained for years, leading to stability issues with a lof of them. A rather complex SDK and missing sufficient documentation makes maintaining or creating new plugins unnecessarily hard. Getting to that neat GUI setup you've seen somewhere is probably impossible because of that.
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Top
Pro
Plugins can be used to bypass Windows mixer to output a bit-exact signal
Through the use of a plugin (of which there are three popular ones), users can get bit-exact sound output straight to their DAC or soundcard. While not something every user will use, for audiophiles this is a pretty important feature.
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Top
Con
Locks files and folders, making it hard to manage them
Several parts of Foobar lock files and folders in a way that they cannot be file-managed (move/copy/rename/delete) easily in the program (and externally). With the waveform plugin it's even worse. Cannot delete a file until the waveform is fully scanned.
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Pro
Highly customisable
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Top
Con
Cumbersome start-up
Foobar2000 requires a bit of work to get it up and running.
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Top
Pro
ReplayGain support
ReplayGain can be applied on a per album or track basis, allowing the user to set up an even volumed listening experience.
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Top
Con
The previous button doesn't work in random playback
You are unable to go back to a song when using random playback.
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Pro
Advanced layout
The player has a layout-editing mode that allows for a wide variety of UI setups.
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Con
Breaks existing components every few updates
Makes it very hard to keep a customized version of Foobar running smoothly without worrying about non-working components.
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Pro
Internal search is a beast
Foobar2000 provides an extensive search to look through your library. It supports special queries to only look for certain tags and other conditions and is incredibly fast in doing so even with over 20k of songs in your library.
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Con
Periodical unexpected shutdown
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Pro
Good quality
It was made in order to be as respectful to music as it can be.
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Top
Con
Not 'easy' as in plays stream services/ podcasts etc.
May be asking too much, this app is PERFECT for the 'hardcore'.
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Pro
Good compatibility with Windows Media Center IR remote controls and wireless mini-keyboards
Foobar works well with Windows Media Center IR remote controls with virtual mouse functions; also with wireless mini-keyboards.
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Top
Con
Can crash right after install
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Top
Pro
Compatible with Microsoft Media Center (MMC) remote controls
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Top
Pro
Fast monitoring of the folders
It has one of the fastest monitoring abilities. Only couple of seconds passes between adding a file into monitored folder on external NAS and it appearing in the library.
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Top
Pro
Grouping by folder structure
Grouping files by folder structure is an important feature especially when files don't have proper tags.
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Pro
Easily handles large music libraries
It has by far the best scanning of large music libraries containing couple of thousands of files.
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Pro
Variety of skins available
Foobar 2000 has powerful theming support. Browsing a site like DeviantArt will give you hundreds of skins (that have been made by other users) to choose from.
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Pro
Built-in support for Windows Media streaming
Foobar2000 can natively play ASX/MMS/RTSP streams.
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Pro
Transcodes all supported audio formats
The converter component allows foobar2000 to convert from and to any file formats that the player is capable of playing back.
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Pro
The many add-ons (components) available
Includes dynamic range analysis, integrity checkers, equalizers, and visualizers, such as waveform, oscilloscope, spectrum, spectrogram (waterfall), peak and smoothed VU meters, and X-Y (Shpect Lissajous) displays.
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Top
Pro
Random/Shuffle on an album basis.
I'm old enough to have a lot of music where whole albums are worth listening to. This is also essential when the composers created music where the flow from one song to the next is part of the art of the album. E.g. on Queen's ANight_at_the_Opera_, the first song -- Death_On_Two_Legs -- is a very hard rock song with very pissed off lyrics. The next is _Lazing_On_a_Sunday_Afternoon, which is a very lighthearted amusing song. The contrast is wonderful. Also many artists have one song flow into another and breaking them up by using random on a song basis really breaks the music. Plus shuffle prevents repeats until the entire playlist is done. If you want, you can select individual songs and the are shuffled as if they are the entire album. It's harder to describe than to do: configure play mode to shuffle albums If you're like me -- and I know I am: add library to list play But you can be more selective: select albums (or songs if you only like a few) do { play_the_shuffled_list(list); if (mood("not in for the current")) skip(); if (mood("change_the_list)) change_the_list(&list); } while !shuffled_off("mortal_coil"); die("happy");
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Top
Pro
Lots of themes made by foobar users.
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Top
Pro
MP3 player management
Users can easily send their music files to their MP3 device through the use of the right click menu when browsing their library.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS
License:
BSD-2-Clause
Release Date:
December 31, 2019
Portable:
No
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Experiences
Free
503
90
MediaMonkey
All
15
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Exceptional cataloging options
You can organize music by over 40 different criteria, including common criteria such as title, artist, and album, as well as items like track volume, lyricist, and parental rating. You can even use custom labels by which to organize and you can set how you want to prioritize the criteria. Media Monkey can also rename large batches of files based on set rules.
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Top
Con
Not really "multi-user" friendly
Example: If you have a family, not everyone has same tastes or star ratings. You CAN achieve a somewhat multi-user experience, but it's overly complex and clunky.
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Top
Pro
Helps remove duplicates from the library
MediaMonkey can find duplicate files and songs, helping the user to remove any unnecessary items from the library.
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Con
Really buggy at times
Biggest annoyance: Often get database errors (data corruption?). Usually, you'll end up clicking "cancel" in some dumb cryptic error prompt and/or restart app. Android sync isn't a breeze. Multiple instances sometimes open up (due to unknown cause) can cause the corruption / database issues. You should backup often just in case.
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Top
Pro
Can pull metadata from the web
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Con
Accuracy of automatically pulled meta data can be spotty
In cases where a song is a part of multiple albums, or there's a re-release with slight changes (such as track numbers, bonus songs, etc.), MediaMonkey can get confused and apply wrong titles to songs based on their track numbers. It then ends up mislabeling content that has already been labeled correctly. There's also no way to manually set what album to base the auto-tagging on in order to work around this.
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Pro
Works with almost any UPnP or DLNA enabled media player
MediaMonkey can stream the library to most UPnP or DLNA enabled devices. This allows you to, for example, stream to your Blu-Ray player.
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Pro
Powerful file renaming system
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Pro
Advanced automatic auto-dj
MediaMonkey has a built-in auto-dj feature, appropriately called Party Mode, that can automatically play tracks based on set criteria.
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Pro
Can convert audio and video files
MediaMonkey can convert all common audio formats and some video formats. Supported files include .mp3, .ogg, .aac, and .flac.
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Pro
Supports most tagging formats
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Pro
Format agnostic
MediaMonkey supports everything from lossy MP3 files to lossless FLAC files.
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Pro
Has a decent companion Android app which can sync with / connect to PC server
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Pro
Can build smart playlists with automatic filters
For example: 4+ stars jazz songs Top played recent songs Best rated classic rock Unplayed recently added songs Build your own "smart" radio station, etc.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows/Android
License:
Proprietary
Release Date:
January 10, 2020
Portable:
Yes
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Experiences
Free / paid
82
15
AIMP
All
27
Experiences
Pros
20
Cons
6
Specs
Top
Pro
Multiple audio codec compatible
AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.
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Con
Not open source
AIMP is not libre / open source software, so development is closed and lead by the AIMP staff only.
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Top
Pro
Useful audio library
AIMP can play, manage, and filter music stored in the whole computer or specified folders. It is able to read metadata from music files' tags and perform real-time searching out of it.
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Top
Con
Buggy, bloated and obfuscated options
Seems to hang when adding a large number of files.
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Pro
Internal updater
AIMP updates using its built-in updater, so you don't have to visit AIMP's website and download the whole installer every time a new version is available.
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Top
Con
Cluttered and confusing interface
The interface is very busy and not intuitive so it can take awhile to become familiar with it. The skins don't conform to specific design standards so they often have different behaviors. You can read more about it here.
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Pro
Lightweight skinning
Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer.
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Con
AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English
AIMP's "Help" included in the software itself is only available in Russian and English.
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Pro
18 band equalizer + 22 presets + preamp
AIMP has an 18 band equalizer (which is manually customizable), plus 22 presets by default [user can add his/her custom presets]. It also includes a +15/-15 dB preamplification.
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Con
Russian content
Supporting this is also supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Pro
Multiple other features
AIMP has many more features including: dither, anticlipping, customizable hotkeys/shortcuts, customizable player's user agent string, access to Favorites audio files and playlists, rating for tracks, tracklist export, optional temporary information bar with track info every time a track begins, volume normalization, ReplayGain support, volume fading between tracks, and more.
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Con
BEWARE FRAUD, MALWARE, TROJAN, BACKDOOR
Download only from the actual aimp site
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Pro
Mini Player support
AIMP can be maximized, restored, sent to the tray, or switched to Mini Player for your convenience.
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Pro
Among the best audio quality for Windows audio players
AIMP uses the BASS library, which provides one of the best audio quality of all currently available music players for Windows.
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Pro
Multiple playlist management
AIMP can manage multiple playlists by a tab system, similar to web browsers.
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Pro
Tag Editor + Audio Converter can carry out a multitude of tasks
AIMP has two tools for further music management. Tag Editor lets you add album art to audio files, fix metadata to individual files or to all files included in a folder, rename filenames, complete tags from filenames and viceversa, and more. Audio Converter lets you convert an audio file into another format (for instance, from FLAC to M4A). You can choose quality parameters, renaming of files, and output paths for converted files. Audio conversion supports multiple core encoding, so if your CPU has four cores, you can convert audio using 1, 2, 3, or 4 cores.
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Pro
Supports audiophile-level playback quality
Other music players usually require separate plugins for this, but AIMP comes by default with the modern WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) audio output support thus providing purest sound output unadultered by the Windows mixer (in WASAPI Exclusive mode) out of the box.
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Pro
Delete files from player
Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player.
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Pro
Multiple languages available
AIMP is available in 36 languages, including: Russian, English, Arabic, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), French, German, Italian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), and more.
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Pro
Built-in scheduler
AIMP has a scheduler which lets you stop playback, close the program, or turn off your computer at a specified time/period.
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Pro
Waveform seekbar
AIMP's seekbar features a waveform display of the entire audio file for easier navigation within the sound file. For example you can easily see where are the silences which is especially useful for podcasts and talked content.
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Pro
Icon sets available for download
The user can download icon sets for different audio formats.
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Pro
Allows for radio capture
AIMP can grab internet radios' audios and save them to drive, in real-time. You can save the streaming in its original format, or choose the codec manually [AAC, OGG Vorbis, OPUS, etc] and its bit rate. You can even save its CUE log and split files, if desired.
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Pro
DSP manager allows for sound effects
AIMP has a digital sound processor manager which lets you apply sound effects to the output audio in real-time. These effects include: echo, reverberation, Flanger, Chorus, bass, enhancer, speed, tempo, and pitch. It also has a voice remover feature for stereo audio files.
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Pro
Support for several WinAmp's plugins
AIMP supports several plugins originally designed for WinAmp. However, it also supports new plugins designed for AIMP itself. From visual plugins to extra codec support, YouTube playlists playback, Soundcloud playback, or spectrum analysing, these are a selection of supported plugins.
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Pro
Easy to use
Handsome design
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Android
Release Date:
January 13, 2020
Windows Versions Supported:
Vista/7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)
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Experiences
FREE
362
59
MusicBee
All
32
Experiences
Pros
23
Cons
8
Specs
Top
Pro
Customizable look and feel
MusicBee can be skinned which can significantly change the appearance of a player. To apply a skin, it must first be downloaded, moved to the appropriate folder, and after restarting MusicBee, it can be applied. A collection of skins can be found here. It's also possible to customize the layout by choosing which panels to display.
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Con
Extremely buggy
Crashes and freezes a lot.
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Pro
Can autofill information on songs
MusicBee can automatically identify songs based on their sound signature and use that information to pull metadata about the song (such as tags, artwork, and lyrics).
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Con
The UPnP plugin is still buggy
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Pro
Simple interface
MusicBee offers a very straight-forward and easy-to-use interface. 
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Con
No shuffle play
Does have an option for shuffle play but this randomizes the songs, which means repeats.
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Pro
Remarkably responsive interface with small to medium numbers of files
Your media library is stored in a flat file rather than a traditional database, limiting its ability to manage truly massive collections of audio files, but offering far reduced processing overhead for small to medium-large collections.
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Con
Does not handle large numbers of files very well
When opening a large number of files, the interface slows down, album view blocks, process blocks disk every now and then on updates.
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Pro
Portable version is available
A version of MusicBee can be used without having to be installed. It can be kept on an external device and run from that.
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Con
Doesn't integrate with system media playback interface
Yes it does - Read the manual, check or ask for help at the forum to find out how to use Musicbee.
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Pro
Functionality can be extended via plugins
A collection of plugins can be found here. These plugins extend the uses of the app from iOS support, last.fm support, to streaming services support.
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Con
Installs pictures that are irrelevant to the artist being played
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Pro
Auto-playlist creation with powerful rules
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Con
MP3 and AAC transcoding requires installing separate encoders
Due to licensing reasons, MP3 and AAC encoders don't come bundled with the software and have to be installed separately.
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Pro
Lots of ways to organize media
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Con
Plays same tracks repetitively , even when marked for skipping
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Pro
Synchronized lyrics
In addition to automatically pulling lyrics for songs, MusicBee can synchronise music playback with lyrics.
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Pro
WASAPI/ASIO support
High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI and ASIO support.
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Pro
Can convert media
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Pro
Good podcast support
MusicBee allows the user to subscribe to and auto-download podcasts.
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Pro
Waveform seekbar
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Pro
Integrates with Last.fm
MusicBee allows scrobbling with Last.fm.
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Pro
Supports Winamp visualizers
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Pro
MiniLyrics integration
Not only does it allow MiniLyrics to search for and add synchronized lyrics to your music files, but the MiniLyrics window can be docked in MusicBee over its own lyrics panel so you can edit them and see them displayed along with whatever you're playing.
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Pro
Vast library capabilities - handles a massive collection of music with ease
Current file count exceeds 500,000+. Updates the library faster than other similar feature rich players whilst being fully capable of playback, id tag editing, even visualiser generation simultaneously, limited only by the power of your PC. If your experience is different you likely don't have a capable machine.
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Pro
Runs well under WINE in Linux environments
There are detailed instructions in the community forum describing how to create a suitable WINE prefix in which to install MusicBee with nearly all the features operating as they do in Windows. There is also support for Linux using CrossOver by CodeWeavers, who offer an automated installer to accomplish the same result on nearly all major Linux distributions as well as Google's ChromeOS.
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Pro
Does it all better than any other app .... still
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Pro
Media library
Has media library support that can displays all available tags plus custom tags.
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Pro
iOS sync support
There is a plugin available that allows users to sync their iOS devices (including music ad podcasts).
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Pro
Ability to lock down access to settings
It's possible to lock down access to settings while still having access to the player. This is great for parties, allowing guests to browse and play music without worrying if they will mess something up.
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Pro
Supports seeing time on seek
MusicBee tells you the time you are seeking to on mouseover on the seek bar.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
All rights reserved
Release Date:
February 19, 2023
Portable:
Yes
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Experiences
Free
396
83
Clementine
All
32
Experiences
Pros
12
Cons
19
Specs
Top
Con
Slow development
Very little development work has been going on for a while as of mid-2017. Nobody is responding to bug reports.
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Pro
Tag editing
Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries.
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Con
Resource exhaustive
Clementine uses up to two orders of magnitude more CPU than VLC and takes up about 180 MB of memory, plus additional memory for spawned processes (tag-readers), while VLC uses 80 MB with no other processes.
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Pro
Intuitive and fast to set up
Clementine is easy to get up and running with lyrics, equalizer, online info, etc., within minutes after installation.
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Con
Doesn't allow gapless playback
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Pro
Sensible UI
A fork of the 1.X line of Amarok, Clementine favours usability over design trends.
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Con
Bit perfect output no longer configurable
Audiophiles want to play their expensive HD albums.
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Pro
Very good folder organization
Organizes your music folder based on the tags of your library.
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Con
Too bloated by default with things like LastFM that can't be removed
When you install it, you get ton of internet radios and services plugins, that you can't remove, only turn off. There is also useless stuff like artist info that doesn't work and stuff.
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Pro
Remote app for Android
There is a very good remote app for Android. The app lets you do a lot: from the usual volume controls to checking the lyrics on your phone. You can even download the songs from Clementine onto your phone.
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Con
Not customizable
It doesn't allow you to modify its interface by dragging toolbars around etc.
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Pro
Supports a lot of online services
Clementine includes support for services such as Ampache, Google Play Music, Spotify, and many internet radio stations such as Jamendo and Icecast. It's also possible to search all available sources (local and online) at once, as well as mixed content playlists.
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Con
Horrible user interface and confusing layout
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Pro
Built-in equalizer for custom sound
There is a built-in equalizer with many presets from genre-specific rock, pop, and party, to experiences such as large hall and live. You can also tweak it yourself and name your own preset.
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Con
Ugly
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Pro
Creates playlists based on past music you listened to
Clementine gathers the user's listening data to use for smart playlists. Clementine uses your listening history to play music similar to the music you play most - which typically is music you will like but maybe haven't discovered yet.
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Top
Con
Goes crazy with CPU and RAM
Takes its toll on your system's CPU and RAM.
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Top
Pro
Built-in format conversion
Users can format any of their music files to a different format with Clementine's built-in format conversion tool.
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Top
Con
Default settings aren't great
Although this is subjective, you might have to do some tweaking before you like it.
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Top
Pro
Can display song lyrics
Fetches lyrics from several lyric providers.
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Top
Con
Ugly ressource hog with no features and buggy without hotfix
And yet Nr. 1 recommended because of nerds being accustomed.
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Top
Pro
Looks good and is really responsive
Unlike some other players in this list, Clementine doesn't seem to go unresponsive in the Ubuntu 16.04 system and looks really good with options for Visualization too.
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Top
Con
Slow to start in Gnome/Cinnamon
It takes about the same time to start as an IDE or Photoshop.
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Top
Pro
Decent library management
Clementine allows the user to move and organize audio files easily. Some examples include the following: It's easy to find a specific album song (find artist, select album, select song). It's easy to add songs to a playlist and queue the songs. It's easy to rename files from their metadata (artist, album, song number, etc). It's easy to add cover images. There are options to find duplicates, untagged songs, etc.
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Top
Con
Not a lot of documentation
Clementine does not offer a lot of documentation, which can make discovering its features a bit difficult.
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Top
Con
Buggy
Clementine is probably the most fully featured music player for Linux, however it has its own issues. It crashes and experiences occasional memory leaks that can slow down your system.
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Top
Con
Database regularly messes up
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Top
Con
Sometimes messes up taskbar
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Top
Con
Last.fm support is broken
See More
Top
Con
Cannot choose which tag profile to use
I use Tag2 (ID3:2.4) which doesn't seem to be the default tag used and I can't see a way to choose this.
See More
Top
Con
No way to search on filename
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Specs
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Release Date:
2016-19-04
Development:
Open Source
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Experiences
Free
697
192
VLC
All
18
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Free, open source, and cross-platform
VLC is licensed under the CC-SA v3.0+ and available on Windows, OSX, and Linux with source code available here.
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Top
Con
Not really meant to be a music player
VLC is made to be a video player. Therefore, it won't carry out actions such as managing your music library.
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Top
Pro
Simple to setup and use
VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player.
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Top
Con
Lacks libraries and advanced music player features
VLC is a media player first and foremost. There is no library management (aside from playlists), limited usage of tags, and no rating system. VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder, but falls behind when it comes to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library.
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Top
Pro
Very versatile and easy to use
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Top
Con
Absence of personalization
VLC Player has only one basic interface in white or black, and overall personalization opportunities are quite narrow. Unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck to the default look.
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Top
Pro
Doesn't require additional codecs
Everything VLC needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed. This makes it one of the most hassle-free music players as it can play virtually anything as soon as it's installed.
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Top
Con
Contains some insignificant but irritating flaws
Despite all keyboard shortcuts, the width of the picture can't be controlled by trackpad. Besides that, the VLC start-up window doesn’t open at the same place or the same width at which it was previously closed.
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Top
Pro
Tons of advanced settings
Besides basic configurations, video player has an extensive amount of adjustable settings.
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Top
Pro
Doesn't manage your music library for you
You organize your music into folders any way you want. Want to play an album? Drag and drop. No tags, no confusion, no fluff. Easy.
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Top
Pro
Can be almost completely keyboard-driven
VLC includes keyboard shortcuts for most actions. The video player can be controlled with simple and customizable keyboard commands.
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Top
Pro
Surprisingly Lightest on Resources
Yes. Lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer .
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Top
Pro
Can play every format video available (as of 2017)
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Top
Pro
Includes Blu-Ray playback support
Blu-Ray playback support was added on July 13th, 2014. It allows playing back DRM-free Blu-Rays with the help of libbluray, libaacs and libbdplus.
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Top
Pro
Supports a GUI interface and an ncurses terminal interface
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Top
Pro
Can easily stream music across your home network from any device on the network
Using sftp/ssh music (and videos) can be streamed from any server on the network to any device running VLC. VLC can also be used as a webcam for streaming and snapshots. Amazing all in one package
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Top
Pro
Large amount of extensions
VLC has a large amount of extensions.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, ChromeOS, AppleTV
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Experiences
Free
634
188
Lollypop
All
16
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Super intuitive way of organizing and browsing albums and artists
You can view all the albums you have in one long list. Clicking on one of them will bring a popup at the bottom of the screen where you will see a list of all the songs on that album.
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Top
Con
GTK App
Its a GTK app so integration in other desktops is terrible it also uses GNOMEs ClientSideDecorations so it will break many window managers.
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Top
Pro
Works fast and reliably
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Top
Con
No equalizer
Lollypop still does not have an equalizer.
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Top
Pro
Super flexible layout
The latest version has a good full-screen layout and is very responsive. Goes very smoothly from full screen to minimal player (also being a GTK+ app).
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Top
Con
Good party mode
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Top
Pro
Integrates with the MPRIS sound menu
This applies for most players in the "Linux world", but not for all. Therefore I consider it worth mentioning.
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Top
Con
No In-App Volume Control (0.9.242)
It has no in-app volume control, it has to be managed through system 'Sound control/Applications'
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Top
Pro
Huge development
There is constant improvements, librem and gnome3 is possibly the future.
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Top
Con
Requires a well organized music collection
Lollypop will be a pain to use if music is badly tagged. The setup is a one time thing, but it can be a pain to organize a large library.
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Top
Pro
Cloud music
Lollypop allow you to play music from the web (iTunes charts and search from Spotify).
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Top
Pro
Integrates well with many desktop environments
One example being the conditional use of client side decorations (a.k.a. header bars) depending on the currently active desktop environment.
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Top
Pro
Good party mode
See More
Top
Pro
Clean, light and works very well.
The only one that can play a lot of files without to stop.
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Top
Pro
Queue option lets you change what's playing on the fly
You can add songs to a queue, and then re-order or remove songs as you please. It works similarly to a temporary playlist.
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Top
Pro
Online radio integration
The newest version features a nice interface for adding, browsing, and playing online radio stations. This gives you access to more music than you would normally have, which can help expand your music library for free.
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Experiences
Free
86
35
Mellow Player
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
2
Top
Con
QML
It written in Qt-QML which ignores all Human Interface Guidelines and make the app look like a web page.
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Top
Pro
Native
It is written in Qt so it requires less resources than a web browser or an electron application.
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Top
Con
Not native
It's using qt5-webengine which is not much different from electron / a webbrowser.
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Top
Pro
AppImage
It is available as AppImage so you can easily try it.
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Hide
free
12
1
Winyl
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
The library is well organized
Winyl organizes your library by folder and not by ID3 tags. As such, your library stays organized (as long as your music folders are organized) even if you have incorrect or missing ID3 tags.
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Top
Con
It only shows the file name when playing tracks
Winyl cannot display the format or bitrate of the track as it plays. The user must therefore find the file in their library, select it, and go to properties.
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Top
Pro
Looks great
Winyl has a beautiful interface with thumbnails for each album (if the art is in the ID tag). If not, you can easily add cover art. It also has a great mini player and that too has cover art.
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Top
Pro
You can quickly and easily add music
Winyl is designed to be a fast media player with low resource usage, meaning that it takes about 20 minutes to load 67 000 files. This is a pretty good time frame in comparison to some other media players' import times. So for those with a large library, this may be a good choice.
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Top
Pro
Album view
Shows albums, covers and tracks next to it, like Google Music.
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Top
Pro
This program uses .cue files to split albums that are in one file
This is a convenient tool for those who may have many albums that are not yet split into separate files for each song.
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here
61
6
Windows Media Player
All
6
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
4
Top
Pro
Saves information on files while ripping CD
While ripping a CD onto the computer, it easily saves the information for the songs, while storing on the media player.
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Top
Con
No longer able to play DVDs
The older versions can play DVDs, while the latest version can't play, but only able to play VCDs.
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Top
Pro
Beautiful music visualization
Windows Media Player comes with their own built-in music visualization. In addition to this, users can install their own visualizations which are downloaded from the internet.
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Top
Con
Sluggish
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Top
Con
Large cluttered interface
It's hard to find needed options.
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Top
Con
No longer being updated
Windows Media Player is no longer updated to new versions since the release of Windows 7. The latest version of Windows Media Player is Windows Media Player 12 (released in July 2009); it is still bundled in Windows 8 and above.
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28
28
Nuclear Music Player
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Streaming and playing local files within a single client
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Top
Con
Resource intensive
Just like any other web app.
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Top
Pro
Cross-platform
As an Electron app NMP runs on GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows.
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Top
Pro
Free and open source
Licensed under AGPL-3.0. Everybody can inspect the code, use it and improve it.
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Top
Pro
Looks beautiful and modern
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Top
Pro
Plugin system allowing for easy addition of more streaming sources
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Hide
free
34
5
Music Player Daemon
All
7
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
4
Top
Pro
Multiple frontends available
MPD is a music player server that requires a separate client for user interaction. There are many frontends available, with the most popular being ncmpcpp.
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Top
Con
Not a music player, only a music server
You know how you need your browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) to access web pages? The browser is what YOU touch, see, and interface with, but in order for it to give you anything it must connect to a server that "serves" appropriate content. mpd is the server in this analogy, NOT the thing you actually use. The front-ends that are available for mpd, now those are music players.
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Top
Pro
Features provide a good music experience
While mostly bare-bones, Music Player Daemon does include a few features which help make it perform well. Buffer support ensures that your music continues to play without interruption even when your system is under an extremely heavy (but temporary) load, gapless playback starts loading a song just before it's needed so that it's ready to play the instant the last song ends. Meanwhile, crossfading allows your songs to blend into one another for continuous playback.
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Top
Con
May not conform to how you organise your library
MPD expects you to have all your music in a single folder (music_directory) and use symbolic links to retrieve other resources.
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Top
Pro
Easy to use with various outputs
See More
Top
Con
Poor tagging support
Does not support enough tag types.
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Top
Con
Requires a refresh every time you add music
MPD won't automatically refresh it's library - if you add music to your music folder, you will have to manually tell MPD to refresh or else it won't add the new music.
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Experiences
Free
59
12
MPlayer
All
11
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPlayer needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
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Top
Con
Not much documentation on the use and configuration
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Top
Pro
Easy shortcut keys
Quick skip ahead buttons and other shortcut keys.
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Top
Con
Contrary to review, some media that play well in vlc does not play in mplayer
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Top
Pro
No bugs , no lag in the video display
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Top
Con
Doesn't support directory playback
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Top
Pro
Works via CLI and has multiple frontends to choose from
Some of the more popular frontends include Deepin Media Player, GNOME MPlayer, KPlayer, KMPlayer, Rosa Media Player, SMPlayer and Xt7-Player.
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Top
Con
Lacks a built-in visualizer
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple forks
Some of the more popular forks include MPlayer2 and mpv.
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Top
Pro
Nice theme available to choose from
Also, the video window is separate from the main window making it less cluttered while playing audio
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux
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Experiences
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53
11
Resonic
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Portable version available
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Top
Con
No playlists
Or not yet, at least in the forums they say they're working on it
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Top
Pro
Clean interface
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Top
Pro
Fast
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Top
Pro
Lightweight
About 8 MB, and about 11 MB with the integrated Soundfont for its MIDI playback synthesizer. Native application, no dependencies (no .NET runtime).
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Top
Pro
Has a waveform seekbar and analyzers
Has a big single-click waveform seekbar and three real-time analyzer visualizations by default.
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Top
Pro
Pure sound
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Top
Pro
Supports all formats
WAV, BWF, RF64, AIFF, AIFC, FLAC, APE, ALAC, WV, TTA, DSF, DFF, MP3, MP2, MP1, M4A, MP4, AAC, MPC, MP+, OGG, OPUS, SPX, WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, MP4, WMV, AVI (certain codecs), MID, RMI, KAR, IT, XM, S3M, MTM, MOD
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Top
Pro
WASAPI/ASIO support
High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI (Player and Pro) and ASIO (Pro) support.
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Top
Pro
Most actions can be done with a single click
Most actions can be done without having to double-click. Things like navigating folders, playing files, seeking audio, changing volume are all done with a single-click.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32 and 64-bit)
License:
Proprietary
Release Date:
March 21, 2019
Portable:
No
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Experiences
$0 - $80
36
8
cmus
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Top
Pro
CLI only
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
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Top
Con
No album art
cmus does not display album art
See More
Top
Pro
Does not use a lot of memory
Cmus only uses about 15 MB. This is a very small and light media player, which is ideal for people with low end hardware.
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Top
Con
CLI only
No graphical interface is available for cmus. Everything is done through CLI (command line interface).
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Top
Pro
Good library structure
A lot of music players may act more like playlist viewers rather than a music library. cmus sorts by Artist > Year > Album.
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Top
Con
Difficult to use
Cmus uses odd keyboard shortcuts such as "C" to pause, "E" to add songs to queue, and "4" to edit the queue.
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Top
Pro
Works very well with tags from MusicBrainz database
cmus will factor in additional data from the MusicBrainz database while sorting. For example sort orders for arist or album, and the original release date for an album (in the case of a re-release).
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Top
Con
Can't play wavepack files
See More
Top
Pro
Fast
A lot of music players will be slow when starting if they have huge libraries, but CMus starts fast no matter the library size.
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Top
Pro
Customizable keybindings for a personal experience
You can add keybindings for just about anything - including seeking (forward/backwards 1 minute, for example) which isn't supported by all music players.
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Top
Pro
No mouse required
cmus does not require a mouse as it runs in the terminal
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Top
Pro
Open source extensions and scripts
On GitHub you can find the official WIKI where there are a dozen extensions and scripts from color themes to a lyrics viewer and the ability to play YouTube songs.
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Experiences
Free
122
25
Winamp
All
10
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
4
Top
Pro
RSS, Atom Podcasts, and Internet Radio streams (among other modern features) are available
Modern features are essential for power listeners nowadays, proving that Winamp (while an old app) still offers features users look for in a modern player.
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Top
Con
Relatively poor quality audio
Compared to other players, Winamp doesn't offer high quality audio. Reason for Winamp's lesser audio quality compared to other modern audio players is that it uses deprecated audio output interfaces (APIs). In fact since Windows Vista onward, those APIs Winamp is using (such as DirectSound, WaveOut) are emulated in software mixer for compatibility purposes further distancing the audio path from the hardware. Modern audio players support modern WASAPI audio output for direct access to the audio hardware (especially in WASAPI exclusive mode). For more info see Wikipedia's entry on DirectSound.
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Top
Pro
A huge selection of skins are available
Winamp allows skinning the interface and there are thousands of community created skins available.
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Top
Con
No Major updates
There are no major updates since version 5.
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Top
Pro
Functionality can be extended via plugins
A wide variety of DSP, input, and visualization plugins have been created by the community.
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Top
Con
Heavy
At the beginning it was simple to download and install, now it has so many things it became very heavy to download.
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Top
Pro
Great search and Playlist functionality
Considerable functions to search and develop playlists.
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Top
Con
Cluttered interface
With all controls, skins, and options it's hard to find the basic commands.
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Top
Pro
Good sound quality
The sound quality of Winamp is good, especially with DSP plugins like enhancer.
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Top
Pro
HTTP streaming support
HTTP streaming is necessary for both live and on-demand content, which it can deliver without lengthy buffering or waiting periods. It is also less susceptible to network hiccups than other forms of streaming.
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Experiences
Free
127
26
qmmp
All
10
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Offers some skinning options
Qmmp allows the user to drastically change its look via skins. It can use Winamp and Xmms skins, as well as a list of 12 skins made specifically for qmmp that can be found here.
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Top
Con
Interface is not particularly intuitive
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Top
Pro
Small single-window interface
Unlike more popular players that draw a huge window taking up the entire screen, with tons of knobs and menus popping out in new windows, qmmp gives you a single tiny window (that looks pretty much the same as Winamp used to look) with the basic controls and the playlist. The rest is available through a menu.
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Top
Pro
Lightweight and supports almost all formats
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Top
Pro
Plugin based
You can extend it with plugins.
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Top
Pro
Qt-App
No matter what OS or desktop you use Qmmp will integrate well
See More
Top
Pro
Clean and simple interface
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Top
Pro
Depends on libaries
It depends on libaries instead of big fat toolkits like gstreamer.
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Pro
integrated file browser
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Top
Pro
Supports cue sheets
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