When comparing MPV vs Dopamine, the Slant community recommends MPV for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Windows?” MPV is ranked 8th while Dopamine is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose MPV is:
When used with youtube-dl.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
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).
Pro Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
Pro Extremely responsive
Pro Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
Pro Fast
Pro Beautiful
Can play FLAC too.
Pro Light, easy to use and looks good
Pro Fetch artist biography or lyrics
Pro Play by folder possible
Pro Can use your Windows 10 theme
Pro 2 visualizer to choose from
Pro Can display lyrics
Pro Miniplayer mode
Pro Built-in equalizer
Cons
Con Minimal theme support
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.
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.
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.