Whats the best media player for music [quality wise]?

[martian1]

I use media player at the moment but wondered if there is a better player out there [free]. I have pc connected to a good quality music amp..any suggestions!

 

[The Dude]

What soundcard are you using?

Does it support ASIO?

If so, then you cant go wrong with foobar I'd say...

media player is awful.. almost anything will better it, ASIO or not...

 

[Cable Monkey]

To get the best sound quality you need the following:

An ASIO enabled soundcard and drivers.

ASIO enabled player.

Essentially this enables the Kmixer component of Windows to be bypassed, avoiding the resulting reduction in quality.

I have managed excellent results using a M-Audio 24/96 card and Foobar2000. The sound card has no amplification. It simply passes the bitstream/PCM to SPDIF or a high quality analogue out. No bells, whistles or conversion to 48kb. It can be had for £60-£70.

 

[rmask]

esi and other manufactures pro series cards wdm drivers are built to bypass windows kmixer
so if hw is right, player doesnt matter that much

btw I still vote for foobar, as this is the best player so far

 

[CrispyXUK]

Running foobar2000 here with an M-audio 24/96

OT: - Cable Monkey, do you get windows sounds playing with your card? I don't seem to get any sound if the fequency is below 44,100khz for some reason, could you help at all?

 

[Mandarin Man]

Cable monkey and others,

What if you select one of your ASIO output drivers as the standard audio output under the sound settings in te windows control panel. Wouldn't Windows Media Player playback via your ASIO driver then, passing by the Windows kmixer?

I have a Terratec EWS88.

Thanks,

Roy

 

[Barbarosa]

foobar & flac through an m-audioo 2496

 

[The Dude]

Cable monkey and others,

What if you select one of your ASIO output drivers as the standard audio output under the sound settings in te windows control panel. Wouldn't Windows Media Player playback via your ASIO driver then, passing by the Windows kmixer?

I have a Terratec EWS88.

Thanks,

Roy

nope.. you can't select an 'ASIO driver' as such, just the parent device..
Media player doesn't support ASIO (which is effectively bypassing a core windows audio component)
ASIO compared to non-ASIO on a half-decent output system is alarmingly different...

 

[martian1]

Thanks DUDE my sound card is a HDA DIGITAL X MYSTIQUE 7.1 GOLD don't know if its capable with ASIO whatever that is, but the card has been rated highly for sound quality. My main use is Movies so i don't want to tamper with drivers at the cost of ruining my movie watching. Have not heard of Foobar before were do i get this and any others worth trying as you say windows media player isn't the best out there. Thanks

 

[The Dude]

Doesn't look like it, unless they've managed to include ASIO support in any new Mystique drivers....

Foobar2000

 

[Cable Monkey]

Running foobar2000 here with an M-audio 24/96

OT: - Cable Monkey, do you get windows sounds playing with your card? I don't seem to get any sound if the fequency is below 44,100khz for some reason, could you help at all?

None whatsoever. No great loss for me though. It is a dedicated FLAC player into my amp as long as I get the media I am playing back I am happy.

Cable monkey and others, Cable monkey and others,

What if you select one of your ASIO output drivers as the standard audio output under the sound settings in te windows control panel. Wouldn't Windows Media Player playback via your ASIO driver then, passing by the Windows kmixer?

I have a Terratec EWS88.

Thanks,

Roy

I did comment above that youn needed and ASIO capable card and software. rmask seemed to disagree but as The Dude confirmed, many players use Kmixer to provide built in equalisation etc. You then connect to the output, Kmixer and all. Usually ASIO capable soundcards tend to be generally decent quality so that is where an improvement may be heard. I tested using two players simultaneously and the difference between ASIO and non ASIO software was like removing a veil.

 

[Cable Monkey]

Thanks DUDE my sound card is a HDA DIGITAL X MYSTIQUE 7.1 GOLD don't know if its capable with ASIO whatever that is, but the card has been rated highly for sound quality. My main use is Movies so i don't want to tamper with drivers at the cost of ruining my movie watching. Have not heard of Foobar before were do i get this and any others worth trying as you say windows media player isn't the best out there. Thanks

Google an application called ASIO4ALL. The Mystique has support for it in the latest (June) drivers.

 

[probedb]

I'm more than happy with Winamp. ASIO4ALL running a Chaintech AV710 and using the Winamp ASIO plugin Use FLAC mostly...my CD collection is mostly for display now.

 

[DeeeKaaY]

I use winamp wav output with wav files ripped via EAC. I have just installed my new lynxtwo and I am wondering about the whole foobar2000 v winamp argument. Has anyone read any articles about this topic or have any advice? 24/192?
The new card sounds great but it was hard to justify to my partner...

 

[martian1]

Ok installed foobar2000 first impression..no better then i found i had to tell it to use my sound card much better!
I have downloaded drivers for my card but not tried them yet, how do i activate foobar and my card to run using ASIO mode. Will this improve quality enough to risk buggering up my movie playback?

 

[Cable Monkey]

I am not sure your movie playback is at risk (famous last words!) but if you create a restore point before making changes, you can always go back.

 

[martian1]

OK..But how do you enable ASIO mode? Don't want to install new driver for nothing just wan't to know how to make sure its ASIO enabled.

 

[Cable Monkey]

Once ASIO4ALL is installed there will be a PDF file on your desktop with directions on how to make it work with your soundcard. Essentially there are 2 methods. Support from within the souncard software or a standalone config menu on your desktop.

 

[oxygenuk]

use winamp and download the DFX plugin, ask me if u have any troubles registering DFX tho

 

[probedb]

ASIO4ALL can be funny sometimes depending on your soundcard driver. It will only work on mine if I leave sample rate set to auto, setting it to 44.1KHz stops ASIO4ALL working. There's normally some support around for your card though