![]() ![]() There is one thing that make folks shy away from MediaMonkey though, and that is the lack of integrated VST support right out of the box. For me, sound wise, with one exception, it really APES the competition. It's just BANANAS how simple and reliable it is. I really enjoy Media Monkey being a friendly one-stop-shop. So, for me, I went with the best sound character I could functionally work with, plus when considering all those additional thingies: Library, Ripping, Tagging, et cetera. Despite it using SRC code, in software, on top of your output backend, and it having some other nifty sound processing enhancements that just gave it an edge in sheer clarity and detail to the sound. Its a RAFT of totally seperated modules that I don't want to deal with. For those of you that are familiar with Foobar 2000 having plenty of 3rd party components to manage, keep track of, and juggle to keep features installed, up to date, and configured to taste, XMPlay is like 50 times more complex. XMPlay, while it sounds the best to my ear, forced annoying file opening and selection characteristics. MediaMonke圓 had been my standard for a long time because, like Foobar 2000 it had that appealing "density" to the sound, though it added to it cleaner, more resolving treble that wasn't ever "brightish" MediaMonkey4 (once it came out of beta) sounded remarkably better on WASAPI than on ASIO4ALL or ASIO (which are the modes I used to use for Media Monkey 3 primarily). JRiver had decent resolution characteristics but was "brightish and colder" than the other players. That said it sounded smoother and lacking resolution below JRiver, then MediaMonke圓, MediaMonkey4, then XMPlay in that order overall. ![]() However it was a bit brighter in ASIO & ASIO4ALL than WASAPI, though WASAPI seemed to have slightly better "resolution" characteristics or "detail retrieval" that I felt I could perceive. It had a smoothness and a density that was pleasing. XMPlay sounded best of the bunch to my ear with every output backend, Foobar 2000 was very nice. The players I compared were Windows Media Player, XMPlay, Foobar 2000, and MediaMonkey, and JRiver Media Center, (I'd decided I hate iTunes for its refusal to play FLAC format at this point, plus the thing resets your encoder settings with every update. Mainly, just focusing on music playback, I did some testing with a few of my primary cans/IEMs on my main PC, with my Auzen X-Meridian Gen1 Soundcard, with the various audio backends (DirectSound (i know, its not bit perfect, but I was analyzing) and the three bitperfect Windows 7 audio backends (ASIO (implemented by my sound card's drivers via the C-Media Oxygen DSP driver), ASIO4ALL (open source ASIO replacement/analogue), and WASAPI (Windows Audio Sound API (for bitperfect, exclusive mode, low latency playback). Back to the topic at hand Additionally, when speaking of the Software Playback Software (ignoring the Library Management, CD Ripping & Secure Rip & Verification, Album Art Lookup & Tagging, and the Playlist & Portable Player/Phone/DAP sync via USB features). I ditched Linux after it was just too much manual hard work, when Win7 came out, never looked back and am glad to have functional WMV (vc1 codec) support, and lots of easy program installation (no fricking compilations for those "interesting" programs, on windows, even "beta" stuff comes with installers. MusicPlayerDaemon/MusicPlayerClient backend/frontend setup. Additionally I was on Linux for a while (yay Xfce 4.x!) and found some of the GTK+ players okay(ish) that were ALSA based (Rhythmbox usable but a bore, Quod Libet interesting but confusing, Exaile was really kind of nice, it had a 31 band EQ), I also tried and liked very much the venerable KDE 3 version of Amarok, and mostly I enjoyed the MPD/MPC setup. To me, iTunes is the doppleganger to Windows Media Player (they both are huge, resource hogs, with crap audio layers, and a pita to use). ![]() I've been through a gamut of PC/Windows based players (WinAmp, Windows Media Player (blech), Songbird, various others I cannot recall due to how long ago I tried them, and more recently Foobar 2000, MediaMonkey (MM3, bought the MM Gold Lifetime license, and am now on MM4), tried and despiesed JRiverMediaCenter, and the very nice sounding XMPlay, oh and like everyone went through my fits with iTunes. None of those shenanagins with MediaMonkey. Not just bc to my ear it sounds better via WASAPI output, but, fooPlacebo, being neat and all, is confusing to use. This fooPlacebo is very nice! thanks for sharing!! I'm a MediaMonkey guy myself, but this will definitely make Foobar a whole lot nicer to look at for me, and make playing with the ABX comparator & other things only Foobar can do much more pleasant!ĮDIT: while pretty, I'm fairly confident I'll continue to prefer MediaMonkey. ![]()
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