MP3 players – one good program?

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I have several MP3 players, mostly Creative models. I’m happy with the players, but not with the bundled software or with using Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.

Are there any good apps out there, freeware or otherwise, that I can obtain to manage my players? Preferably, they wouldn’t freeze in the middle of transfers or give obscure error messages. Even better would be software that would allow me to create a database of the files on the players.

I used to use Notmad Explorer for my Creative Nomad Zen Xtra (or whatever order those words are in), but Red Chair Software disappeared and I could not reinstall the product when I had to. Creative Centrale is too buggy for my tastes, WMP and CC both freeze at inopportune times and Winamp simply doesn’t work for me after multiple installations.

Please let me know if you know of any good programs out there that handles MP3 players, period. Thanks in advance.

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I really don’t have any recommendations for you, but I thought I would let you know how I handle MP3 devices; perhaps that will give you some ideas on alternatives.

I have an 8GB Sansa, a really old Pocket PC (with a 1GB SD card) and an Android phone (with a 8GB mini SD card). I wrote a PowerShell script that copies random MP3 files based on rating. I usually copy the files to a temporary location on my hard drive and then use Explorer to drag-and-drop the files to the players (or to their SD cards). I don’t care that much for playlists because I use shuffle play all the time, but I did find a .NET app that builds Sansa playlists and do use that but hardly ever use the playlists it generates. I keep all of my MP3s is a special location that I never let any software (WMP, iTunes, Winamp, etc) access – I hate it when such software thinks it owns the files and insists that it knows better than me on how those files should be handled. Yeah, it takes extra disk space, but at today’s disk prices, who cares?

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vt10002, Welcome to The Lounge.
This is a good program http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli2/files/ or get it by installing K Lite Codec Pack (any version)

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I use MediaMonkey. Handles any media player AFAIK, and it’s free.

cheers, Paul

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I’ve been using WinAmp for my Sansa player and my ipod for years.
It works great for both and even has specific plug-ins for most players.

Don

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Thanks, everybody, for your suggestions. I have a couple of programs to try out now.

One point, though, is that I’ve had problems with Winamp in the last couple of editions. It doesn’t seem to recognize my MP3 players. I’ll try uninstalling and reinstalling one more time.

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It’s MediaMonkey for me as well..!!

Regards

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Red Chair Software is here: http://www.redchairsoftware.com/

IMHO Anapod Explorer is still the best app for the iPod. Foobar 2000 has an excellent plugin for the iPod (foo_dop) but AFAIK nothing for Creative players.

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one of the best free ones i have found is COWON Media Center – jetAudio never had a file it can not play and the sound is great if you want more you can buy it as well.I have the paid version but found that the free one is just as good.

I have been using it for about three years and never had a problem with it.
There are so many out there the best you can do is play around with them and find the one you like and ease of use for your media type

good luck and have fun out there on the big bad web

nigel

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VLC media Player plays anything.

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Try j river media jukebox version 12 (Their FREE version) which handles only music files:

http://www.mediajukebox.com/

or j river media center (not FREE but has free trial) which handles many different types of media including graphics, television, and video:

http://www.jriver.com/

http://www.jriver.com/download.html

Here is what they say:
Media Center — Audio, Video, Images, & Television
It’s the best software available for media. Play your media wherever you are.
Media Center is
More than a world class player. It’s also a Media Network, a whole house music, movie, TV, and photo solution.
The leader in audiophile quality sound.
The most powerful media database available; an essential tool for large collections
An endless source of satisfaction for tweakers and developers
Media Center plays
More file formats than any other player
Connected media from Last.fm, Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube. And it sends to Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.
Supports more cell phones, MP3 players, DLNA, and other devices
Powers an HTPC to entertain your family. Even different playback in multiple zones.
And
It can record high definition TV, and provide a replacement for cable TV. It has a Theater View interface, controllable by a Media Center Remote, an iPad, iPhone, Android, a Windows netbook or Touchscreen. MC is a DirectShow player.
Obsessive taggers will be delighted with cover art and metadata options. And MC backs up your work so you can sleep at night. Until MC wakes you up again.

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Another vote for Media Monkey. It also syncs to mass storage devices. And its the only one that I’m aware of that can rip from Sony DRM enabled CDs. I am not advocating using this feature for anything but personal use. I have one CD that has this DRM on it (Bela Fleck and Flecktones’ “Ten from Little Worlds”), and it was nice to finally have a copy of it in my MP3 collection.

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How do you get these to work with an Ipod? I tried Winamp with my daughters Ipod Shuffle and we just get a message that we need to use ITunes, which I hate and don’t want to use.

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In regards to your difficulties installing WinAmp, you can try setting up a new Administrator account. Sign out out of your usual User Account and sign in to the new Administrator’s account and try installing it for all users within that account. Could be you have something in your usual User Account that’s causing a conflict and this is an easy work around

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Hi,
I have been using aTuses for some time now and have been happy with it. It’s a free program available here : http://www.atunes.org/

Basic info – aTunes is a full-featured audio player and manager, developed in Java programming language, so it can be executed on different platforms: Windows, Linux and Unix-like systems, …

Currently plays mp3, ogg, wma, wav, flac, mp4 and radio streaming, allowing users to easily edit tags, organize music and rip Audio CDs.

RDR

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I’ve been using Winamp Pro for years and I love it. You can organize your music by genere and artist, it displays album cover art, you can tag the metadata in songs, and it can play any music format including of course, mp3, and ape, flac, wav, wv, mfsl, dts, ac3, among others. It can play cue files for albums. You can listen to Internet radio stations. You can play videos but I prefer PowerDVD for that. Winamp is a fantastic media player and I highly recommend it.

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Media Player Classic is definitely worth checking into. It plays and works with a ton of formats and has a simple, yet effective, interface. No need for Real Player, WMP, Quicktime or basically any other media player on the market. Plus it’s free.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/media_player_classic.htm

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I agree with nigel. Jet Audio is a great player. I discovered it a long time ago when I refused to install Real Player.
Cowen Media Jet Audio plays all formats and has a ton of great features.[/size][/size]

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VLC will not play g2m3 files which are the Go2Meeting format that is often used for saving Webinars. You have to download the codec to play these on Windows Media Player.

That said, I use VLC for anything that it will read because it works on several platforms and looks the same in Windows or Ubuntu.

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I have a Creative Zen Mozaic, and the Creative Centrale software that comes with the player is top notch. Drag & drop to create playlists, rearrange songs in a playlist, drag & drop new songs on to your zen player. It’s easy to use and awesome software.

You can get it for free here:

http://software.informer.com/getfree-download-creative-centrale/

or at the creative website.

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I like Music Bee. It’s free and organizes music the same way my brain does. Under active development by a very responsive developer.

http://getmusicbee.com/

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For me a Linux user Rhythmbox works well. No need to run MS Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmbox

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

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So far, I’ve tried many media players and they’ve all fallen down on one or more of these points:

Must deal with WAV and MP3 files without problems.

Most cannot read the tags in WAV files, or
Cannot PLACE tags in WAV files,
in a way that’s compatible with files ripped by Windows Media Player.

Most, including WMP, cannot support “continuous play”. They insert a gap between each track, and many albums do not have gaps between tracks (ranging from Simon & Garfunkel to Pink Floyd) so the music players insert a “skip” that’s just as bad as a scratched LP.

Most do not recognize album art, or “albums”, as created by WMP ripped WAV files.

And the creative ways they fail to recognize albums….UGH.

The only thing that is worse is the Samsung Galaxy-S class phones. The volume control is hard-wired to 16 steps (from “off” to 15) and the defautl Android music players bomb out after more than 64(?) artists are on the phone. They’ll play music, they just won’t compile of recognize playlists, or artist/album lists, once they hit that low limit, which seems ot be either 64 or 128 artists. (One good “best of” box set can exceed that.)

Apple & iStuff…they really make a lot of other music player look like high school computer class projects.

Anyone know a Windows music player that will deal with all of this–especially tags & albums & art in WAV format–like a professional?

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If it’s just MP3’s we are pretty limited (iTunes has been pretty much forced upon a lot of us), but if its Media we are talking about then Windows Media Center is the most underrated technology ever for everything from live and recorded TV to video, movies, music and pictures with an interface suitable for the living room and compatible with a wmc remote control available for £20 in the high street.

It’s already BUILT IN to premium versions of Windows 7 and Vista!

Many users of Media Center actually use it for its main purpose – recording and watching TV. Few have yet realised that you don’t even need to install a tuner card to go through the process of watching TV on your PC. Not only can you set up Amazon video-on-demand inside of Media Center and watch built-in Netflix, but there’s a great selection of internet TV available as well plug with other plug ins like TunerFreeMCE or even You-Tube using Yougle Vista.

Hook your laptop or desktop up to your flat panel and enjoy EVERYTHING on your Computer from your armchair!! All the free HD and Radio channels too by using an inexpensive add on tuner. Please don’t tell me you’re paying through the nose for the likes of a set top box that enables you to only record by subscription?

WMC embedded is apparently soon to be available on the likes of set top boxes though, I believe. I wonder if it will also be FREE!

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VLC may be a good media player, but you have to wonder about their simple attention to detail when ALL links to download are broken.
http://www.vlcmediaplayer.org/download.html
Not very together folks IMHO.

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Bob, not sure why you have a problem, I just tried using the link you gave and downloaded a 198 kb file called VLCSetup.exe.

Graham

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Make sure you’re getting the VLC Media Player download from the legit Video Lan site, which is at http://www.videolan.org/. I’m not sure of the veracity of the site mentioned above by Bob and Graham ( vlcmediaplayer.org) with the broken links. As with any popular program, rogue download sites can spring up to get you to download their “infected” software.

Get the real thing from the videolan.org site. I can vouch for VLC’s great usefullness without all the marketing bagage of other media players like Microsoft’s Windows Media player, Winamp and RealPlayer to name a few. VLC media player works great on both my Mac and Windows computer systems. I highly recommend it. And I think after you try it, a donation of your time or money to the videolan open source non-profit team is a wise choice for the betterment of computing.

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I’ve found Creative players to be the main issue in seizing up during the transfer of files to the player irrespective of the media software used. Creative tend to nickel and dime users, charging for returns and also with their data-lines-must-be-active-to-charge mentality so they can charge you extra for a special charger. Being an anything-but-IPod person I use Sansa players and a Zune (for capacity and HD radio). MediaMonkey seems to be very rich in features and becomes a must for my 2000+ collection of mp3 files

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