audio players

[Six Eyed Smily]

anyone know a high quality mp3 player?
i have got fed up with winamp as the quality is poor, but i cant seem to actually find a decent alternative.
i have a fiarly decent seperates sound system, and an audigy 1 sound card, with high quality cables. the only thing im missing is the software
any suggestions?

[confus-ed]

Are you talking about just playing them back ? .... as in, are you ripping them to mp3 with win amp & playing them back or are we just 'obtaining' them & the playback is rubbish ?

Look at the compression ratio of the tracks, mp3's can be recorded at various levels of quality ... quite a lot of the 'stuff' floating about on the net is in the maximum compression ratio which is slightly less than 'radio quality' .... so indeed if you have decent hearing & something like a decent audio setup they sound 'pants' !!

If you really want some other software look at mp3.com for suggestionss .... I've never heard anybody gripe about win amps quality, the interface yes ... but playback no...

[Six Eyed Smily]

just playing them back. am very happy with exact audio copy for extraction, and 256kbps high quality mode.
although its still an mp3, the quality is actually pretty good. not perhaps up to the quality of a cd, but not bad.

most audio players do not take advantage of the 24 bit playback that my soundcard allows, and i would like to find one that does.

[kato2274]

I like music match . . . but not so much becuase of playback but more because of managment . . . being able to change artist tags on multiple tracks at one time etc.

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by Six Eyed Smily
just playing them back. ...
...most audio players do not take advantage of the 24 bit playback that my soundcard allows, and i would like to find one that does.

The 'quality' of the original rip is what's critical ... not the playback software & 'speed' whilst ripping is the deciding factor ... its all about timing ... Read this (old but still true)

There's not just mp3 for 'compression' there's other formats which 'allegedly' produce better clarity with the same kind of compression like dare I say it M$ own Windows Media Audio & others, for these you different codec's for both encoding & decoding.

24 bit or 16 bit or even 8 bit playback(onboard s/c) is a feature 'beyond' any compression & is part of producing the final sound ... bit like playing your original cd on a $19.99 stereo & then moaning it doesn't ssound as good as it does on your Bang & Oulfsen $2999 system !

[Six Eyed Smily]

Thus, the short list of truly good rippers. I think easyCDDA is one of them, as well as cdparanoia (linux/unix), Exact Audio Copy (windows, but a painful program to learn and use),

- from the site you linked. as aready stated, i use exact audio copy.

the rips are reasonable quality, and the codec i use is one of the better ones, particuarly in hq mode. (radium)

while obviously the codec cannot actually record in 24bit (96khz) mode, is is possible to 'grow' the data which gives a warmer and smoother sound.
db power amp has a plugin that does this, sadly db poweramp doesnt support plugins yet (yeah i thought this a bit odd too...) plus its possibly one of the worst written players i have had the pleasure of uninstalling. its one of those lovely bits of software that has lots and lots of useful features, none of which work properly, and all of which are a pain to use.

there is a plugin for winamp 2 that does it, but only the source files are availiable, and im dammned if im going to find, install, learn how to use and compile a plugin that should be disributed compiled in the first case.

[inferno_gn]

Hi there,

I don't know why you say Winamp isn't so great. It's the best MP3 player out there. Did you get the 2.91 version or the 3.0? The 3.0 sucks, I rather keep the old 2.91. It might be your MP3 files as well. It plays just fine here.

Jules...