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Best MP3 player...

Posted: 2005-11-09 07:28pm
by weemadando
Having subsisted on MediaPlayerClassic for a long while now, I'm currently ripping my CD collection to HD (seeing as I'm doing more and more work at the PC) and want to know if WinAmp is still worth getting, or has it become too bloated with stuff like spyware?

What is the best feature laden MP3 player out there? Not the bare-bones of MPC...

Posted: 2005-11-09 10:38pm
by Spanky The Dolphin
I don't recall Winamp actually having spyware at all...

Posted: 2005-11-09 10:40pm
by weemadando
Excellent - down it comes down the 56k pipeline!

Wheeeee!

Posted: 2005-11-09 10:41pm
by Datana
WinAMP works fine for most purposes, with only a few minor caveats. For instance, if you ripped a continuous-play CD to separate tracks, WinAMP always inserts silence in-between files, so you'd get interrupted play unless you found and added a plugin to get around this "feature." It also sometimes screws up rendering tracknames for non-ID3 tags (for instance, OGG and FLAC tags). Otherwise, it can be as light or as feature-rich as you need for most purposes -- all of the bloat (themes, visualizations, DSPs, media manager) can be disabled from the config menu. Don't bother with WinAMP Pro -- all you'll get extra are the ripping tools, of which there are several superior alternatives. Also, apart from trying to place AOL icons on your desktop (and some versions would add free.aol.com to your Trusted Sites list), WinAMP remains surprisingly spyware-free.

Personally, I've been using foobar2000 for most of my music collection. It's light, feature-rich, and while not particularly pretty, can get nearly any media-related task done (playback, format conversion, mass tagging, CD burning, etc.)

If you're not already using one of these, the best ripping tools for Windows, in my opinion, are EAC and CDex. Provided you've disabled Autoplay, EAC can tackle almost any CD or music-containing-silver-disc (waves to Sony DRM) you throw at it. CDex isn't as versatile, but is a bit more user-friendly at tagging and ripping.

Posted: 2005-11-09 10:52pm
by weemadando
I use audiograbber, its pretty damn good and freeware.

Posted: 2005-11-10 08:21am
by phongn
Exact Audio Copy coupled with LAME 3.97b is probably your best bet for high-quality MP3s.