11 ms·

Interesting quest. But princess is in another castle, in bed with Peter Pawlowski, listening to Zelda soundtrack in foobar2000.

pit 12y ago
foobar2000 is the best reason to use Windows.
- aaronem 12y ago
  I've had good results running it over Wine on OS X. I see no reason why it shouldn't work at least as well under Linux, subject to that platform's perennial audio output woes.
  - pit 12y ago
    I'll give it a shot. EDIT: So far, so good (on Arch Linux + GNOME + Wine). Thanks for the tip!
    - aaronem 12y ago
      Glad to help!
AndyKelley 12y ago
What are the killer features of this princess?
- aaronem 12y ago
  The ability to play every music format under the sun; an infinitely configurable UI; a reasonably broad plugin ecosystem, albeit not one which encourages new developers very well.
- dsirijus 12y ago
  I can tell you some things that appealed to me initially, if it helps - OS native UI, lightweight, nice separation of core and plugin features, core working flawlessly, very extensive plugin ecosystem, customizability, automatic tagging, fast media library indexing.
EC1 12y ago
For the love of god, WHAT is a good music player for Mac? Going from Foobar2000 (PC) -> iTunes (MAC) is awful.
- iloveyouocean 12y ago
  Enqueue is fantastic. Simple, efficient, plays a wide range of formats (including FLAC, APE), auto-scans music folders, etc.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  iTunes killed all competition for a long time, but a lot of smaller players without all the baggage are popping back up these days. I haven't tried most of these, but Ecoute is well done. http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/alternatives-to-itunes/ http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/alternatives-to-itunes/ http://pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/
- TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
  iTunes is still a serviceable player and works well for standard formats. Vox is lightweight and can read a ton of file formats, as well as load up your iTunes library. I think you can set it to auto-load a directory at launch as well. Audivarna is also supposed to be pretty good.
  - anomaly_ 12y ago
    Vox is probably the best alternative I've found, particularly with its support for FLAC (I know I can transcode to ALAC).
- coffeedrinker 12y ago
  I really like Clementine and since I triple boot (Linux, Mac, Windows) I wanted a player that would work the same regardless of OS.
  - jonathansizz 12y ago
    I agree. Clementine is similar to older versions of Amarok. It's clean and fast, with just the right amount of features. I didn't realize that it was multi-platform. Anyone on KDE should definitely install it, but apparently it's more widely available than that.
aaronem 12y ago
I'd like to agree with you on that, and a year ago I would have done, but foobar2000 has some problems which, combined with its closed-source nature, have driven me out of bed with it and back to the music-player equivalent of Match.com, with occasional late-night trips to the corner of YouTube and Audiobox.fm, when I'm looking to play something right now and can't find satisfaction anywhere else. I think that metaphor sort of got away from me toward the end. In any case, foobar2000's support for HTTPS streaming is lousy ranging to unusable; specifically, there is no mechanism, including the Windows CA certificate store, by which foobar2000 can be induced to accept a self-signed certificate as valid. When you can't stream music from home over your Comcast circuit without getting throttled because Comcast assumes MP3 data going upstream means BitTorrent, this poses a problem. There's also the problem of the playback queue not working the way it should. In theory, a playback queue is to a playlist as a lambda is to a named function; in practice, when foobar2000 reaches the end of a queue, it blithely continues playing tracks off the playlist whence came the last item in the queue, which is frankly ridiculous. I can understand from an implementation perspective why it works that way, but that doesn't make it any less broken. These are the reasons why I'm looking for a better music player. I wish I had any hope of ever finding one.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  > Comcast assumes MP3 data going upstream means BitTorrent They actually scan TCP segments for MP3 headers or something?
  - aaronem 12y ago
    I can only conclude they do that or something like it, based on the following observations: 1. When I stream MP3 content unencrypted from home to any other location, everything works well for up to the first half hour or so, and then packets start coming through so slowly as to result in about five seconds of buffering per second of music played. Once this starts to happen, I'm similarly unable to access, due to timeouts, any of the other services I host from home for my own use. If I stop MP3 playback and wait a couple of hours, the problem clears up, but only until I start streaming music again. 2. When I stream Ogg or FLAC content unencrypted &c., &c., I always get smooth playback for as long as I care to use it, and all my other home services work fine. 3. When I stream MP3 content via HTTPS &c., &c., I always get smooth playback for as long as I care to use it, and all my other home services work fine. Of further note: All the locations from which I've observed this problem offer sufficient downstream bandwidth to support streaming of 320Kbps CBR MP3 files, as indicated both by the fact that doing so over HTTPS works fine, and that streaming FLAC at much higher bitrates also works fine. I used to stream MP3 (but not FLAC) over Verizon DSL, which had barely enough upstream bandwidth to support it (and not enough for FLAC), and never had this sort of problem. The only variables in the admittedly informal tests I've run have been transport encryption and content encoding; in particular, all the content, regardless of format, comes from the same hardware, through the same HTTP server, across the same path through my local network. I suppose these observations might plausibly lead to some conclusion other than the one I've drawn, but I don't see how; if you do, I'd like to hear about it.

pit 12y ago

foobar2000 is the best reason to use Windows.

aaronem 12y ago
I've had good results running it over Wine on OS X. I see no reason why it shouldn't work at least as well under Linux, subject to that platform's perennial audio output woes.
- pit 12y ago
  I'll give it a shot. EDIT: So far, so good (on Arch Linux + GNOME + Wine). Thanks for the tip!
  - aaronem 12y ago
    Glad to help!

AndyKelley 12y ago

What are the killer features of this princess?

aaronem 12y ago
The ability to play every music format under the sun; an infinitely configurable UI; a reasonably broad plugin ecosystem, albeit not one which encourages new developers very well.
dsirijus 12y ago
I can tell you some things that appealed to me initially, if it helps - OS native UI, lightweight, nice separation of core and plugin features, core working flawlessly, very extensive plugin ecosystem, customizability, automatic tagging, fast media library indexing.

EC1 12y ago

For the love of god, WHAT is a good music player for Mac? Going from Foobar2000 (PC) -> iTunes (MAC) is awful.

iloveyouocean 12y ago
Enqueue is fantastic. Simple, efficient, plays a wide range of formats (including FLAC, APE), auto-scans music folders, etc.
wlesieutre 12y ago
iTunes killed all competition for a long time, but a lot of smaller players without all the baggage are popping back up these days. I haven't tried most of these, but Ecoute is well done. http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/alternatives-to-itunes/ http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/alternatives-to-itunes/ http://pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/ http://pixiapps.com/ecouteosx/
TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
iTunes is still a serviceable player and works well for standard formats. Vox is lightweight and can read a ton of file formats, as well as load up your iTunes library. I think you can set it to auto-load a directory at launch as well. Audivarna is also supposed to be pretty good.
- anomaly_ 12y ago
  Vox is probably the best alternative I've found, particularly with its support for FLAC (I know I can transcode to ALAC).
coffeedrinker 12y ago
I really like Clementine and since I triple boot (Linux, Mac, Windows) I wanted a player that would work the same regardless of OS.
- jonathansizz 12y ago
  I agree. Clementine is similar to older versions of Amarok. It's clean and fast, with just the right amount of features. I didn't realize that it was multi-platform. Anyone on KDE should definitely install it, but apparently it's more widely available than that.

aaronem 12y ago

I'd like to agree with you on that, and a year ago I would have done, but foobar2000 has some problems which, combined with its closed-source nature, have driven me out of bed with it and back to the music-player equivalent of Match.com, with occasional late-night trips to the corner of YouTube and Audiobox.fm, when I'm looking to play something right now and can't find satisfaction anywhere else. I think that metaphor sort of got away from me toward the end. In any case, foobar2000's support for HTTPS streaming is lousy ranging to unusable; specifically, there is no mechanism, including the Windows CA certificate store, by which foobar2000 can be induced to accept a self-signed certificate as valid. When you can't stream music from home over your Comcast circuit without getting throttled because Comcast assumes MP3 data going upstream means BitTorrent, this poses a problem. There's also the problem of the playback queue not working the way it should. In theory, a playback queue is to a playlist as a lambda is to a named function; in practice, when foobar2000 reaches the end of a queue, it blithely continues playing tracks off the playlist whence came the last item in the queue, which is frankly ridiculous. I can understand from an implementation perspective why it works that way, but that doesn't make it any less broken. These are the reasons why I'm looking for a better music player. I wish I had any hope of ever finding one.

MichaelGG 12y ago
> Comcast assumes MP3 data going upstream means BitTorrent They actually scan TCP segments for MP3 headers or something?
- aaronem 12y ago
  I can only conclude they do that or something like it, based on the following observations: 1. When I stream MP3 content unencrypted from home to any other location, everything works well for up to the first half hour or so, and then packets start coming through so slowly as to result in about five seconds of buffering per second of music played. Once this starts to happen, I'm similarly unable to access, due to timeouts, any of the other services I host from home for my own use. If I stop MP3 playback and wait a couple of hours, the problem clears up, but only until I start streaming music again. 2. When I stream Ogg or FLAC content unencrypted &c., &c., I always get smooth playback for as long as I care to use it, and all my other home services work fine. 3. When I stream MP3 content via HTTPS &c., &c., I always get smooth playback for as long as I care to use it, and all my other home services work fine. Of further note: All the locations from which I've observed this problem offer sufficient downstream bandwidth to support streaming of 320Kbps CBR MP3 files, as indicated both by the fact that doing so over HTTPS works fine, and that streaming FLAC at much higher bitrates also works fine. I used to stream MP3 (but not FLAC) over Verizon DSL, which had barely enough upstream bandwidth to support it (and not enough for FLAC), and never had this sort of problem. The only variables in the admittedly informal tests I've run have been transport encryption and content encoding; in particular, all the content, regardless of format, comes from the same hardware, through the same HTTP server, across the same path through my local network. I suppose these observations might plausibly lead to some conclusion other than the one I've drawn, but I don't see how; if you do, I'd like to hear about it.