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4.7 star rating
0
PC
Audio
Windows
What are the best desktop audio players?
12
Options
Considered
118
User
Recs.
Feb 7, 2024
Last
Updated
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11
Options
Considered
Best desktop audio players
Price
Platforms
Release Date
68
MusicBee
FREE
Windows
February 19, 2023
--
AIMP
-
Windows, Android
January 13, 2020
--
Audacious
Free
Windows, Linux, BSD
-
--
Winamp
Free
-
-
--
foobar2000
FREE
Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS
December 31, 2019
See Full List
68
MusicBee
My Rec
ommendation
for
MusicBee
My Recommendation for
MusicBee
All
19
Pros
17
Cons
1
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.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Installs pictures that are irrelevant to the artist being played
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows
Release Date:
February 19, 2023
Windows Versions Supported:
7/8/10/11 (64-bit)
License:
All rights reserved
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Lots of ways to organize media
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Top
Pro
•••
Integrates with Last.fm
MusicBee allows scrobbling with Last.fm.
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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 and ASIO support.
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Top
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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Top
Pro
•••
Supports Winamp visualizers
See More
Top
Pro
•••
iOS sync support
There is a plugin available that allows users to sync their iOS devices (including music ad podcasts).
See More
Top
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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Top
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.
See More
Top
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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Top
Pro
•••
Waveform seekbar
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Top
Pro
•••
Synchronized lyrics
In addition to automatically pulling lyrics for songs, MusicBee can synchronise music playback with lyrics.
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Top
Pro
•••
Auto-playlist creation with powerful rules
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Top
Pro
•••
Simple interface
MusicBee offers a very straight-forward and easy-to-use interface. 
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Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can convert media
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Top
Pro
•••
Does it all better than any other app .... still.
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FREE
Recommend
33
3
--
AIMP
My Rec
ommendation
for
AIMP
My Recommendation for
AIMP
All
21
Experiences
1
Pros
14
Cons
5
Specs
Top
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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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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PĂ©ter MĂ¡tĂ©'s Experience
Ever since I found it, I couldn't change to another player. Big negative that I have to use something else on Linux.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Android
Release Date:
January 13, 2020
Windows Versions Supported:
Vista/7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)
Top
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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Top
Con
•••
Not open source
AIMP is not libre / open source software, so development is closed and lead by the AIMP staff only.
See More
Top
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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Top
Con
•••
Buggy, Bloated and obfuscated options
Seems to hang when adding a large number of files.
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Top
Pro
•••
Multiple audio codec compatible
AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types.
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Top
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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Top
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
•••
Lack of Linux support
Unless using Wine, the player in not cross platform.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Delete files from player
Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player.
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Top
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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Top
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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Top
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.
See More
Top
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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Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight skinning
Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer.
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Top
Pro
•••
Icon sets available for download
The user can download icon sets for different audio formats.
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Top
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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Top
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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Get it
here
Recommend
12
1
--
Audacious
My Rec
ommendation
for
Audacious
My Recommendation for
Audacious
All
4
Pros
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Tons of plugins
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, BSD
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.
See More
Top
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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Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
10
1
--
Winamp
My Rec
ommendation
for
Winamp
My Recommendation for
Winamp
Hide
Free
Recommend
9
--
foobar2000
My Rec
ommendation
for
foobar2000
My Recommendation for
foobar2000
All
29
Pros
18
Cons
10
Specs
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.
See More
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.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS
Release Date:
December 31, 2019
Windows Versions Supported:
XP SP2/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/Server 2003/Server 2008/Server 2012
License:
BSD-2-Clause
See All 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.
See More
Top
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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Top
Con
•••
Cumbersome start-up
Foobar2000 requires a bit of work to get it up and running.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
•••
The previous button doesn't work in random playback
You are unable to go back to a song when using random playback.
See More
Top
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
Con
•••
Not 'easy' as in plays stream services/ podcasts etc.
May be asking too much, this app is PERFECT for the 'hardcore'.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good quality
It was made in order to be as respectful to music as it can be.
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Top
Con
•••
Can crash right after install
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Top
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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Top
Con
•••
Periodical unexpected shutdown
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Top
Pro
•••
Advanced layout
The player has a layout-editing mode that allows for a wide variety of UI setups.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Highly customisable
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Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
UPNP / DLNA support
See More
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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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
•••
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.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Compatible with Microsoft Media Center (MMC) remote controls
See More
Top
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in support for Windows Media streaming
Foobar2000 can natively play ASX/MMS/RTSP streams.
See More
Top
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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Hide
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FREE
Recommend
11
3
--
Winyl
My Rec
ommendation
for
Winyl
My Recommendation for
Winyl
All
1
Experiences
1
EmbiggenedLukos's Experience
Simple design but many features.
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Hide
Free
Recommend
8
--
Strawberry Music Player
My Rec
ommendation
for
Strawberry Music Player
My Recommendation for
Strawberry Music Player
All
8
Pros
6
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Library monitoring seems faster/more accurate than some other players
See More
Top
Con
•••
Missing a "Genres" tab
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Top
Pro
•••
Cover manager feature
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free
See More
Top
Pro
•••
In-program tag editing
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Scrobbler with support for Last.fm, Libre.fm and ListenBrainz
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Free
Recommend
4
--
Mellow Player
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mellow Player
My Recommendation for
Mellow Player
Hide
free
Recommend
8
--
JRiver Media center
My Rec
ommendation
for
JRiver Media center
My Recommendation for
JRiver Media center
Hide
$49.94
Recommend
2
1
--
Groove Music
My Rec
ommendation
for
Groove Music
My Recommendation for
Groove Music
All
2
Pros
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Integration with OneDrive
Groove Music integrates the music streaming service with OneDrive so that users can stream their own music files hosted in their OneDrive.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows/Android/iOS/Xbox/Web Player
Algorithmic Radio:
Yes
Playlist sharing:
No
Free tier:
Personal files only
See All Specs
Hide
$9.99/MO
Recommend
1
4
--
Windows Media Player
My Rec
ommendation
for
Windows Media Player
My Recommendation for
Windows Media Player
All
1
Pros
1
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.
See More
Hide
Free
Recommend
4
2
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ommendation
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