When comparing Audacious vs Windows Media Player, the Slant community recommends Audacious for most people. In the question“What are the best audio players for Windows?” Audacious is ranked 20th while Windows Media Player is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Audacious is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro Tons of plugins
Pro Lightweight
My audacious uses only 18.5 MB of RAM. It has a Winamp visualization style that's very minimized and convenient.
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.
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.
Pro The easiest player for multiple types of files
It plays dts, aac multichannel, etc.
Pro Compatibility with most media formats
It's able to reproduce most of media formats without external plugins.
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.
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.
Cons
Con No manual sorting fields
There is no option to add one's own categories to the sorting fields.
Con Updates are not very frequent
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.
Con Buggy
For example when using Visual Studio Code and Audacious you get flicked out to the gnome login screen.
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.
Con Sluggish
Con Large cluttered interface
It's hard to find needed options.
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.