What are the best audio players for Windows?

Question

41

Options
Considered

1.4K

User
Recs.

May 9, 2022

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 2 of 37 OptionsWhy?

Best audio players for Windows	Price	Platforms	Release Date
93 AIMP	FREE	Windows, Android	January 13, 2020
91 MusicBee	Free	Windows	January 9, 2020
88 foobar2000	Free	Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS	December 31, 2019
85 MediaMonkey	Free / paid	Windows/Android	January 10, 2020
82 Winamp	Free	-	-

See Full List

MusicBee

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

The UPnP plugin is still buggy

InventiveChacUayabXoc's Experience

Does EVERYTHING better than all the other apps - UNLESS you (believe yourself) to be a "power user" then use Foobar especially if you like ugly, I mean utilitarian apps, personally I'd rather use Musicbee alongside Tagscanner and my codec tools of choice than suffer foobars limited customisation and obfuscated ui (yes you can skin foobar, so it goes from ugly to merely plain) I prefer an audio player whose UI i can tweak a 1000 different ways until it's EXACTLY how I like/need it. In fact I have 4 instances of it all set up not just for completely different looks matching the genres but set up for a streamlined user experience, a complicated 9so to speak) full on set up and some in betweeners. (eg 1 with my entire collection laid out differently with a different colour scheme that EASILY handles nearly 500,000 audio fles (60% FLAC), another set up for basic previewing of newly acquired music, a second that only has 1 specific genre and a fourth that I use for storing the files that i discovered lacked tags (that's 1 instal version & 3 portable versions) all with purposefully selected button sets to suite their intended "jobs" - you can literally add a button with your choice of icon (+colour) for every single action! no other player offers this. I could go on. Just use Musicbee and forget the others that crash, hang, break your library, over write id tags & covers without you knowing why etc etc. Musicbee is SO flexible, I've tried 30 or 40 other players yet MB is still my main and has been for years, all the other apps have bits I like and many I don't, Musicbee... nope cant think of something I dislike.... it does it all, literally. Visualisers, various layouts (mini, mid, full, album art & playing track, size & timed pop up - it has it all believe. It has no restrictions and therefore can be set up as complicated or as simple as you want it to be unlike eg Dopamine which is rigorously limiting or foobar which to me appears to be complicated for the sake of it - it has that fake intellectual vibe people have who own apple products. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Release Date:January 9, 2020

Portable:Yes

See All Specs

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). See More

Top Con

Doesn't integrate with system media playback interface

HonestFebris's Experience

Brilliant software, which includes the ability to playback songs to a UPnP device See More

Top Pro

Lots of ways to organize media

Top Con

Extremely buggy.

Crashes and freezes a lot. See More

HonestMeili's Experience

Tried loads of music players. Many were good; most were bad. Music Bee is the best of the best. It is not without its faults but it is hugely customisable and so you end up with a music player which suits you. I've never found a better player. 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. See More

Top Con

Installs pictures that are irrelevant to the artist being played

CleverApkallu's Experience

It has alot of options and control over how it looks like, arranging panels, mixing, compact and theater mode, auto sync matching your own preferences, tagging, volume gain and much more. You can use it as normal music listener or use simple and/or complex settings to make it just as you like. See More

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 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. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

Having collected MP3s since the mid-90s, my collection of 18,900+ songs is no easy thing to wrangle. I'm diligent at attempting to tag them all, but before I found MusicBee it was a laborious task that never seemed to near completion. Now all my songs have the correct info, artwork, and a great many of them even have synchronized lyrics that play right in MusicBee like I was a bona fide karaoke DJ! Few pieces of software have ever brought me this much joy, and to think that it's still free and receiving monthly updates with new features boggles my mind. If you love music you should love this program, full stop. See More

Top Pro

Synchronized lyrics

In addition to automatically pulling lyrics for songs, MusicBee can synchronise music playback with lyrics. See More

Top 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. See More

RespectableNuha's Experience

Lots of customization, no issues syncing so far seems better than windows media player See More

Top Pro

Simple interface

MusicBee offers a very straight-forward and easy-to-use interface. See More

Top Con

Plays same tracks repetitively , even when marked for skipping

Jakob Stever's Experience

Extremely buggy. For a whole month every piece of music I added to my library had the same album artwork. There were frequent crashes and "Memory errors", sometimes many times per day. See More

Top Pro

Auto-playlist creation with powerful rules

ImmaculateTlalocayotl's Experience

Equalizer See More

Top Pro

Integrates with Last.fm

MusicBee allows scrobbling with Last.fm. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Good podcast support

MusicBee allows the user to subscribe to and auto-download podcasts. See More

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

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Waveform seekbar

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

Does it all better than any other app .... still.

Top Pro

Supports Winamp visualizers

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Supports seeing time on seek

MusicBee tells you the time you are seeking to on mouseover on the seek bar. See More

Top 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. See More

See All

35 Other Options Considered

foobar2000

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

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

ConscientiousAhBolomTzacab's Experience

Just the best. Almost unlimited customization possibilities and many available user interface and audio diagnostic tool add-ons for power users. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows/MacOS/Android/iOS

Release Date:December 31, 2019

License:BSD-2-Clause

Portable:No

See All Specs

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 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

ConsiderateOrcus's Experience

Great headphone support, much better than winamp (back in 2009ish when I switched) LOVED HRTFifying my songs (making them 5.1 rather than stereo xD can winamp do that?) still use winamp for day-to-day though, foobar just isn't as compact and easy to mess with. For a while (probably 2015-2018) I just went with what was easy so... I'm just getting back into it so glad I found this site! I always used GOM media player for my video needs... not sure how foobar addresses that (Xvid/ mp4) today. Maybe we'll see. 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

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

CoherentChiyou's Experience

Does it all for me / headphone amp plus foobar2000 with plugins and FX Sound Enhancer - sounds like back in the 70's between my ears. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Foobar2000 has a clean, minimalistic UI, small filesize, and is light on resource usage. 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. See More

VigilantEnki's Experience

I use it everyday. it's perfect. See More

Top Pro

Highly customisable

Top Con

Cumbersome start-up

Foobar2000 requires a bit of work to get it up and running. See More

GregariousCronus's Experience

Very stable, superb conversions between wav, flac and LAME MP3s for various portable devices and I've used this with Audacity for recording, editing and distributing our band music since 2006 - brilliant. 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 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

wolfenlord's Experience

This is what I use. It is ugly, true, but its beauty comes from its minimalism. It is one of the very few audio players that lets you choose your soundcard output, which is bliss if you have multiple soundcards like me. 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. See More

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

EagerSurma's Experience

Has UPNP server component that works flawlessly with DLNA wireless media streaming devices See More

Top Pro

Advanced layout

The player has a layout-editing mode that allows for a wide variety of UI setups. See More

Top Con

Periodical unexpected shutdown

InventiveChacUayabXoc's Experience

Ugly, annoying to use, there's far better alternatives - eg Musicbee See More

Top Pro

Built-in support for Windows Media streaming

Foobar2000 can natively play ASX/MMS/RTSP streams. See More

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

Peter J. Mello's Experience

With development at such a crawl, this is relegated to de facto "nostalgia-ware" status. See More

Top Pro

Good quality

It was made in order to be as respectful to music as it can be. See More

Top Con

Can crash right after install

HilariousMnevis's Experience

Terrific player 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. See More

DevotedJacawitz's Experience

Clean, light yet very customized music player exist in the web. 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. See More

Eric Waters's Experience

Has been on every computer that I've run Windows on for the last 10 years or so. See More

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"); See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Lots of themes made by foobar users.

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

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

Compatible with Microsoft Media Center (MMC) remote controls

See All

MediaMonkey

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. See More

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. See More

GenerousUlgen's Experience

geen problemen met meer dan 150.000 songs, goede vertalingen. snel heel veel mogelijkheden om in te stellen, dus het duurt wat langer om het onder de knie te krijgen See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows/Android

Release Date:January 10, 2020

License:Proprietary

Portable:No

See All Specs

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Bruno Déry's Experience

Solid music player overall. Versatile (formats, types, many features) and good for managing big libraries: tagging, semi-automatic sorting, duplicates, smart playlists. Also has an Android player, which can sync with / connect to the PC server. Not perfect, but didn't find better yet after many years of use. See More

Top Pro

Powerful file renaming system

Top 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. See More

HarmoniousAmunet's Experience

Awful for a paid APP Cumbersome uses to many resorses learing curve required AHWWWWWWW! See More

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. See More

ImaginativeMastoratia's Experience

Using this over 10 years. Despite what someone suggested, it's not buggy. See More

Top Pro

Can pull metadata from the web

HarmoniousPollux's Experience

I love MediaMonkey. I've been using it for over 10 years and never had any real trouble with it once I understood exactly how to use it's functions. My music collection is somewhere around 200k worth of songs and this is the only media manager that I have used that can handle a collection that large. Some functions take a bit of understanding to use them right but once you get it down you'll never have a problem. See More

Top Pro

Supports most tagging formats

TallAhuraMazda's Experience

The best folder music player plus music converter. See More

Top Pro

Has a decent companion Android app which can sync with / connect to PC server

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Format agnostic

MediaMonkey supports everything from lossy MP3 files to lossless FLAC files. See More

Top 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. See More

See All

Winamp

Top Pro

A huge selection of skins are available

Winamp allows skinning the interface and there are thousands of community created skins available. See More

Top Con

No Major updates

There are no major updates since version 5. See More

Fun Guy's Experience

It's classic! See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be extended via plugins

A wide variety of DSP, input, and visualization plugins have been created by the community. See More

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. See More

Amy L.'s Experience

I'm still using Winamp and loving it :) See More

Top Pro

Great search and Playlist functionality

Considerable functions to search and develop playlists. See More

Top Con

Cluttered interface

With all controls, skins, and options it's hard to find the basic commands. See More

IntelligentXolotl's Experience

use it for years and wont miss it See More

Top Pro

Good sound quality

The sound quality of Winamp is good, especially with DSP plugins like enhancer. See More

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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

See All

VLC

Top Pro

Out of the box support for almost any audio or video file format

VLC reads almost all music and video without codec installation. It has a wide range of supported encodings. See More

Top Con

Doesn't prefer embedded covers

VLC does load covers directly from audio files but saves them in artist/album combinations at "C:\Users{Username}\AppData\Roaming\vlc\art\artistalbum{Artist}{Album}" in 500x500 maximum image size. The cover images will be loaded from their respective paths onwards. This can lead to some inconveniences: It will require extra disc space (although negligible if you only have a couple different albums), these cover files won't be deleted unless you do it manually, so if you chose to edit the artist or albums names previous entries will remain unused. Covers for individual tracks for already existing album/artist combinations will not be displayed, the first defined one will be used instead, this can also prove problematical if you just want to replace the cover as you have to delete the old one in the files first. While using Windows, the creation of the required files may conflict with the maximum path length limit of 260 characters if particularly long artist (while including every single performer for example) or album names combined with the already rather long path are used, which can lead to VLC not displaying any cover at all. At least as of Version 3.0.12, a random unrelated cover will be displayed for every audio file with a missing cover. See More

Bulk Marijuana Seeds's Experience

This one is popular for windows See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS/ChromeOS/AppleTV

Release Date:August 19, 2019

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. See More

Top Con

Lacks libraries and advanced music player features

VLC is intended to be a media player first and foremost. However there is no library management (aside from playlists), usage of tags is very limited, there is no rating system, and VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder (as opposed to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library). See More

Bùi Đức Trọng's Experience

I can easily speed up video See More

Top Pro

Simple to use

An incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music very straight-forward and puts the user in control. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't lock you into any specific devices

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. See More

Top Pro

Has playlists

Top Con

Absence of personalization

The player only has one basic interface in white or black, while overall opportunities to personalize are quite limited. See More

Top Pro

Built-in audio equalizer

Sometimes audio tracks on video files can be quieter than usual. With VLC, it is possible to boost the sound a little without major distortion. See More

Top Con

Some insignificant but irritating flaws

Despite all keyboard shortcuts, the width of the picture can not be controlled by trackpad. Besides that, the VLC start-up window does not open the same place or width at which it was previously closed. See More

Top Pro

Streaming support

VLC software is capable of creating and connecting to a video stream. See More

Top Con

Limited batch support

If you want to convert more than one file at a time, you have to use either the command line interface or resort to script writing. However, there is other software that can do this better. See More

Top Pro

Tons of advanced settings

Besides basic configurations, video player has a great amount of adjustable settings. See More

Top Con

Discards metadata on conversions

VLC does not keep original metadata when converting files. See More

Top Pro

Frequently updated

Top Con

Problems arise with video formats used on iTunes

If .mp4 & .mov do not prove problematic, then why should .m4P? Unfortunately, VLC video player can only play .m4A and .m4V files, whereas .m4p audio files cause some problems. See More

Top Pro

Large amount of extensions

VLC has a large amount of extensions. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Extendable with addons

VLC can be extended through scripting; it uses the powerful but lightweight scripting language, LUA. See More

Top Pro

Surprisingly light on resources

The 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 . See More

Top Pro

Can convert media

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Can be almost completely keyboard-driven

VLC includes keyboard shortcuts for most actions, giving the user control through simple and customizable keyboard commands. See More

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. See More

See All

Clementine

Top Pro

Stable streaming on poor connections too

Works a million times better than competing players like Aimp or Miro for streaming music and Podcasts. Very reliable connection to streams, almost never drops or stops, even on poor connections. See More

Top Con

Discontinued

EfficientHanXiangzi's Experience

doesn't fetch artist info and rarely finds lyrics See More

Specs

Release Date:2016-19-04

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Development:Open Source

Top Pro

Can automatically fetch meta information

Clementine is capable of editing and fetching tags, artworks, lyrics, artist biographies, and photos. See More

Top 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 (tagreaders). On the other hand, VLC uses 80 MB with no other processes. See More

Top Pro

Can play songs directly from some cloud storage services

Clementine can be set up to play audio files from Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Supports most common playlist formats

Clementine can export playlists to M3U, XSPF, PLS, and ASX. See More

Top Con

Default settings aren't great

Although this is subjective, you might have to do some tweaking before you like it. See More

Top Pro

Built-in transcoding support

Clementine can transcode Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, and AAC. See More

Top Con

No new plugins are being released

No themes, customization, or additional features which is a major letdown. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Con

Mood bar makes absolutely no sense

Random colors, no information to be read out of it, unfortunately. Mentioned because it is such a central element in the interface. See More

Top Pro

Plays any file

Clementine supports all popular lossless and lossy audio formats including Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, and AAC. See More

Top Pro

Tag editing

Clementine features competent tag managing for all music files, be it album art or just simple text entries. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Last.fm Scrobbler

Clementine has the Last.fm Scrobbler functionality integrated into its software. See More

Top Pro

Integrates seamlessly with internet radio servers

Clementine integrates with Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, JAZZRADIO.com, Soundcloud, Icecast, and Subsonic servers. See More

Top Pro

Can be controlled remotely

Clementine offers a very good remote app for Android. See More

Top Pro

Offers a global search engine

Clementine can find any music in any server/radio/streaming site (as long as the user is logged in to those services). See More

Top Pro

Fast

This is one fast player. Smooth animations from visualizer to search box and just overall feels very responsive. It's consistently fast even on sluggish PCs. There's no resource issues either. See More

See All

Winyl

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. See More

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. See More

HarmoniousAmunet's Experience

Good player With WASPI support to boot ! See More

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. See More

TallAhuraMazda's Experience

Good music player with a little system sources. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Album view

Shows albums, covers and tracks next to it, like Google Music. See More

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. See More

See All

MPV

Add Video or Image

JRiver Media Center

Top Pro

Powerful dynamic lists

Top Con

Not free

Most other music players are free and open source while this one is not and costs $49.98. See More

HarmoniousAmunet's Experience

way way OVER PRICED heavy on cpu See More

Top Pro

Can play almost every type of music file

Top Con

JRMC 24 causes problems with toolbar disappearing also opens each time at download jriver page by design hence

CourageousFides's Experience

Interface is kindof hard to get used to but the sound ouput to my usb dac is superb. See More

Top Pro

Natively suports ASIO/WSAPI playback for external soundcards/dacs

VivaciousAstraea's Experience

Fantastic quality via dlna. See More

Top Pro

Natively supports VSTs

Works like a DAW (digital audio workstation) in that you can add VSTs to the signal flow for anything you want like compressions and equalization. See More

CulturedCizin's Experience

I have used this player for a few years. I have not found any thing that comes close to this. DSD,FLAC MP3 and everything in between. DSD through DoP including MP3 though DoP. Yes it uses lots of memory, but it needs it for music. I am a music lover, sound quality is a must. This is pricy but so worth it. if you are looking for the best and ease of use and have i decent P.C, especially if you have an external DAC. This is a must have. I used foobar2000 but it doese not come close to JRiver. See More

InquisitiveMaia's Experience

always works. sounds great See More

TallAhuraMazda's Experience

The best music management and sound quality . See More

See All

DeaDBeeF

Top Pro

Lightweight

DeadBeef uses few system resources, making it great for low end systems and for those requiring a media player that uses as few resources as possible. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD

Top Pro

A lot of plugins

DeadBeef has a lot of different plugins users can use to customize the interface, controls, and options. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones. See More

Top Pro

Open-source

See All

Resonic

Top Pro

Clean interface

Top Con

No playlists

Or not yet, at least in the forums they say they're working on it See More

DependableHaurvatat's Experience

must have. one from the best sound free players. More wide dynamic range, more details, space can be heared in hardware, that cost little more than built in motherboard . See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32 and 64-bit)

Portable:Yes (ZIP download)

Price:FREE (Player)

Minimum free storage:11 MB (Player), 50 MB+ recommended

See All Specs

Top Pro

Fast

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). See More

Top Pro

Portable version available

Top Pro

Pure sound

Top Pro

Has a waveform seekbar and analyzers

Has a big single-click waveform seekbar and three real-time analyzer visualizations by default. See More

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. See More

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 See More

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. See More

See All

Spotify

Top Con

Free version includes unavoidable ads

If you hate commercials, it would be advisable to buy Spotify premium or use something else. See More

Top Pro

Huge collection of music and fast access to newly released songs

Spotify has over 20 million songs and has arguably one of the largest collections of all its competitors. It also has extremely fast access to new music. See More

dalekmighty's Experience

Best Player with Best Auto Suggestion See More

Specs

Platforms:Web; Android; iOS; Linux; Windows; MacOS

Playlist Sharing:Yes

User-Created Playlists:Yes

Offline download:Yes

Top Con

Shares data with facebook

Top Pro

Has a free version

A free, ad-supported account allows streaming from an extensive library of music. See More

TallAhuraMazda's Experience

The best music streaming app plus free and really smart UI. See More

Top Con

Free version only works with internet

Top Pro

Curated playlists

Public playlists on Spotify created by other people are great for finding new music. See More

Top Con

Not available in many countries around the world

Top Pro

Native client loads so fast that content feels local

Compared to other web-based options, Spotify feels more like an infinite iTunes than a streaming service. See More

Top Con

Unable to play local files

Top Pro

Radio stations allow discovering new music

Radio stations can be created from playlists and albums to queue similar but new music. See More

Top Con

No lyrics

Spotify does not provide the lyrics to songs. See More

Top Pro

Social music discovery

Spotify allows users to easily browse the music collections of their Facebook friends and share music. It has an influencer follow system in place that allows following certain people and getting their recommendations. See More

Top Con

Sound quality limits in the free version of Spotify

Without a Spotify subscription, computers and tablets are limited to 160 kbps. While on smartphones, sound quality is limited to 96 kbps. See More

Top Pro

The ability to share and subscribe to playlists

Spotify allows creating, subscribing to, and sharing playlists. See More

Top Con

Relatively slow

Top Pro

Social network integration

Spotify is the largest social network music service. Facebook integration allows users to follow their friends and see what they are listening to, even in real-time. Of course, Spotify allows you to hide your music activity as well, but by default music history is shared. See More

Top Con

Offline download limit

Spotify Premium only allows 3,333 songs to be downloaded for offline use on a device. See More

Top Pro

High quality sound

Spotify Premium offers the super high quality 320 kbps audio on all devices. Of course, on mobile devices, extreme quality streaming must be enabled. See More

Top Con

Some albums have missing tracks

Due to copyright issues, some albums on the service have tracks missing, which begs the question as to why list the album if it is not complete. See More

Top Pro

Student discount

Spotify offers a discount for students. See More

Top Con

Bad quality

Streams or sells music at 320 Kbps cap. See More

Top Pro

Supports offline playback

Unlike most other streaming media services, Spotify supports playback while offline. Spotify enables premium users to mark a playlist to be available offline on their desktop of mobile clients. This allows Spotify to act as a user's primary media player even when no internet connection is available. See More

Top Con

Uploaded music is not in the cloud: it is only local

Users can upload their own local files to Spotify, but it is not stored in the cloud. As such, using another Spotify app on another device will not show those uploaded files. Users can sync those local files to a mobile device, though it takes time just as syncing any local music to a mobile device does. See More

Top Pro

Ability to import local files mitigates issues of missing artists

The Spotify desktop client allows local music files to be imported with the option of syncing with a mobile device. This largely mitigates the issue of missing artists. See More

Top Pro

Generous free streaming

With a free Spotify account on a computer, all music is available on demand or in personalized radio stations. Tablets share the same freemium experience, while Spotify on smartphones is limited further. The full on demand experience on computers and tablets is not available for free on mobile phone devices. Smartphones can only play personalized radio stations or playlists in shuffle mode. However, if your playlist has less than 20 songs, Spotify will add suggested music and songs that can only be skipped six times per hour. See More

Top Pro

Great design

Spotify overhauled the user interface of all Spotify applications with an all new "painted in black" look. The new design aims for minimalism with a focus on bringing content (like album art) to the user's attention. The result is a very appealing interface. See More

Top Pro

Supports wireless streaming to other devices

Spotify is leading the pack when it comes to streaming its service to other devices: from AppleCarPlay using AirPlay to Play-Fi and Sonos systems. See More

Top Pro

Client's functionality can be extended via third-party apps

Spotify desktop client allows for third-party apps. They extend the functionality of Spotify and many of them offer new ways of discovering music. Noteworthy apps include Moodagent, Last.fm, Swarm.fm, ShareMyPlaylists, The Hype Machine, We Are Hunted, Shuffler.fm. See More

Top Pro

Exclusive content

New content exclusive to Spotify. See More

Top Pro

Utilizes peer-to-peer networking

Spotify utilizes peer-to-peer networking to reduce server and network strain and offer a stable service. However, to some users this may also be seen as a con. By using the service's app in online mode, you are allowing yourself to become a part of a node in their network. This can chew through uploads and place limitations on personal network bandwidth. See More

See All

Quod Libet

Top Pro

Great builtin Tag Editor

It has a great builtin tag editor - Ex falso. See More

Top Con

Can't play files from network drives

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. See More

Top Con

Uses quite a bit of memory

Quod Libet can use up to 130 MB . See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins available

Quod Libet offers many plugins including Last FM sync, lyrics support, and iOS sync. See More

Top Con

Uses GTK

So it won't integrate well into non-GTK desktops like Windows and needs plenty of dependencies. GTK3 has also some weird behaivor. See More

See All

Nuclear Music Player

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under AGPL-3.0. Everybody can inspect the code, use it and improve it. See More

Top Con

Can't play local files

TallFebris's Experience

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

As an Electron app NMP runs on GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows. See More

Top Con

Resource intensive

Just like any other web app. See More

Top Pro

Streaming and playing local files within a single client

Top Pro

Plugin system allowing for easy addition of more streaming sources

Top Pro

Looks beautiful and modern

See All

Dopamine

Top Pro

Beautiful

Can play FLAC too. See More

Top Con

Doesn't support Album titles that are shared among different artists

"Greatest Hits", for example, will be treated as a single, huge album with different artists' tracks and a single album cover that will be wrong for most. See More

ResponsibleSiliniez's Experience

Just awesome See More

Top Pro

Light, easy to use and looks good

Top Con

When track ends, next alphabetical track plays automatically, even when playlist empty

This app will continue to play unrequested music until you press the stop button. See More

Top Pro

Fetch artist biography or lyrics

Top Pro

Play by folder possible

Top Pro

Can use your Windows 10 theme

Top Pro

2 visualizer to choose from

Top Pro

Can display lyrics

Top Pro

Miniplayer mode

Top Pro

Built-in equalizer

See All

I Recommend...

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4.7 star rating

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score 233 · Accepted Answer

AIMP

Top Pro

Multiple audio codec compatible

AIMP supports a huge list of audio formats and several playlist types. See More

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

RationalDirawong's Experience

Winner See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Android

Release Date:January 13, 2020

Windows Versions Supported:Vista/7/8/8.1/10 (64-bit)

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. See More

Top Con

Buggy, bloated and obfuscated options

Seems to hang when adding a large number of files. See More

DazzlingOeyangganshin's Experience

Likely the best free audio player for the serious enthusiast. On top of all of the necessary audio features and then some, it includes an extremely useful built-in tagging tool and conversion tool. I use these all the time, especially tagging as I like all my files to be tagged in the same manner, along with album art etc. Foobar is likely the other option I'd use. It's just not out of the box easy to use and feels somewhat tired. That said, once set up the way you like, it certainly does contain all the essential ingredients! See More

Top Pro

Lightweight skinning

Even with lots of skinning options, AIMP is lightweight and works on the smallest computer. See More

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. See More

KindThanatos's Experience

Classic analog hifi component skins, especially several outstanding renders of reel-to-reel gear. Since 3.0, on Dell D800 laptop with XP Pro --> W7 Ultimate. HTPC build with W8.0 Pro OEM 64-bit....every AIMP version, and 95% of noted skins, flawless. 10/10 See More

Top Pro

Mini Player support

AIMP can be maximized, restored, sent to the tray, or switched to Mini Player for your convenience. See More

Top Con

Russian content

Supporting this is also supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See More

CourteousSuleviae's Experience

Multiple file type support stable frequently updated See More

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. See More

Top Con

AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English

AIMP's "Help" included in the software itself is only available in Russian and English. See More

DreamerSlaineMacDela's Experience

Less problematic than foobar. See More

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 Con

BEWARE FRAUD, MALWARE, TROJAN, BACKDOOR

Download only from the actual aimp site See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Multiple playlist management

AIMP can manage multiple playlists by a tab system, similar to web browsers. See More

Top Pro

Delete files from player

Simple and good working ability to delete files right away from the player. See More

Top 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. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top 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. 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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Icon sets available for download

The user can download icon sets for different audio formats. See More

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. See More

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. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Handsome design See More

See All

What are the best audio players for Windows?

The Best 2 of 37 OptionsWhy?

AIMP

My Recommendation for AIMP

My Recommendation for AIMP

Multiple audio codec compatible

Not open source

Useful audio library

Buggy, bloated and obfuscated options

Lightweight skinning

Cluttered and confusing interface

Mini Player support

Russian content

Internal updater

AIMP "Help" only in Russian and English

Among the best audio quality for Windows audio players

BEWARE FRAUD, MALWARE, TROJAN, BACKDOOR

Multiple other features

Tag Editor + Audio Converter can carry out a multitude of tasks

Multiple playlist management

Delete files from player

Supports audiophile-level playback quality

Multiple languages available

18 band equalizer + 22 presets + preamp

Built-in scheduler

Waveform seekbar

Allows for radio capture

Icon sets available for download

DSP manager allows for sound effects

Support for several WinAmp's plugins

Easy to use

MusicBee

My Recommendation for MusicBee

My Recommendation for MusicBee

Customizable look and feel

The UPnP plugin is still buggy

Can autofill information on songs

Doesn't integrate with system media playback interface

Lots of ways to organize media

Extremely buggy.

Remarkably responsive interface with small to medium numbers of files

Installs pictures that are irrelevant to the artist being played

Portable version is available

Does not handle large numbers of files very well

Synchronized lyrics

MP3 and AAC transcoding requires installing separate encoders

Simple interface

Plays same tracks repetitively , even when marked for skipping

Auto-playlist creation with powerful rules

Integrates with Last.fm

WASAPI/ASIO support

Good podcast support

Functionality can be extended via plugins

Can convert media

MiniLyrics integration

Waveform seekbar

iOS sync support

Does it all better than any other app .... still.

Supports Winamp visualizers

Ability to lock down access to settings

Supports seeing time on seek

Runs well under WINE in Linux environments

35 Other Options Considered

foobar2000

My Recommendation for foobar2000

My Recommendation for foobar2000

Functionality can be extended with components

Not easy to skin

Plugins can be used to bypass Windows mixer to output a bit-exact signal

Provides little in terms of hand-holding

Supports a wide variety of audio formats

Outdated Plugins

Lightweight

Locks files and folders, making it hard to manage them

Highly customisable

Cumbersome start-up

ReplayGain support

The previous button doesn't work in random playback

Variety of skins available

Breaks existing components every few updates