1.) What player software do you use (by default)?
Foobar2000 is my default player.

2.) What other ones have you tried/used in the past?
Windows Media Player 10 & 11
Winamp 2.XX
Winamp 5.XX
MusicMatch 7.5
itunes 6.0
XMPlay
Creative Media Center
MediaMonkey
The KMPlayer
VLC Media Player,
Cyberlink PowerDVD

3.) Why did you choose the player you use now?
I find that foobar does all I need it to do...and that is play music in the background without sucking 65mb of RAM to play a 3mb mp3 file (ala itunes).  I still use an old version (0.8.3 special release) because I don't want to dump my spectrogram plugin I use every now and then to confirm lowpass filters and the 0.9 branch doesn't support this plugin.  Additionally, if I ever wanted to turn on things like dither and noiseshaping filters for a theoretical improvement in sound accuracy foobar does offer many ways to get the very best out of your soundcard and speakers.  (BTW, I think dither/noiseshaping is worthless to untrained ears but you're given the option nonetheless).

Why did I not like the others?  Windows Media Player screwed up the headers in many of my mp3 files so the time display is messed up.  Winamp started getting really slow with later releases even if you didn't install the options to watch video.  Don't ask me why...ask AOL.  itunes is a resource hog and Quickime runs in the background at the same time.  XMPlay can't read all the file formats available that I've on my computer (namely m4a, aac, mp4).  MediaMonkey, couldn't stand the colors.  Creative's is bare bones and I dumped that long ago.  The KMPlayer, VLC, and PowerDVD are all better at video and should just stick to being video players.

1.
I tend to use Winamp (5.xx) for most of my music and video playback.  I'll use VLC or Creative Media Center in the cases that Winamp can't do what I need it to.

2.
I have also used:
Windows Media Player (Too clunky, too big, overly complicated, slow, memory hog, I don't like the User Interface.  I do use it for ripping CDs though )

Quicktime (Having Quicktime installed interferes with my default MIDI synth when clicking or autoplaying a midi file on the internet (quicktime takes over as my default no matter what I tried).  Also, I saw nothing special from this player).

The KM Player (Seems decent but too complex for what I need.  I never use sound manipulation inside of a player; that's what editors are for .  I want a player to look pretty, have a few customizable features, but not go overboard with them.

Foobar2000 (I didn't use it enough to really appreciate it.  Mostly I didn't see a reason to switch from Winamp to this.  The memory usage of Winamp isn't an issue for me (4 GB of RAM goes a long way most of the time) and I couldn't justify getting used to a whole new system to save a couple of MB of RAM.

VLC Media Player (Decent but not very pretty.  While it is fairly useable, I find fast-forwarding and rewinding within a file a bit clumsy and setting up a playlist isn't as friendly as I'd like to see either).

Creative Media Center (Useful for one type of audio file: AC3.  That's all I've ever used it for since no other player on my computer can properly play AC3 files.  No visualization for frequency analysis.  Not my favorite playlist system.  All in all, not my favorite user interface.)

3.
I've stuck with Winamp because I picked it up many Many years ago and learned it, mainly.  I enjoy the features such as the frequency analysis bars in realtime (up to 70 frames per second).  Plugins seem to be available in large quantities for Winamp, including support for .nwc (Noteworthy Composer project files).  I find it powerful enough and user-friendly enough to warrent the slight cost of memory which could be saved in other apps (See The KMPlayer).

I've got a 32.7 MB MP3 that's 14:18 in length. How would iTunes respond to that?

I've got one that's 183 minutes and 290 MB
(Techno megamix )

Creative Media Center (Useful for one type of audio file: AC3. That's all I've ever used it for since no other player on my computer can properly play AC3 files. No visualization for frequency analysis. Not my favorite playlist system. All in all, not my favorite user interface.)

foooooooooobarrrrr  

Windows Media Player isn't bad--if and only if, you live by Microsoft's audio codec, WMA.  At one time, I had WMA Lossless and Windows Media was great...until I got an mp3 player and going from WMA Lossless to mp3 wasn't a walk in the park because nothing could properly decode and convert those...that's why I switched to FLAC.

1.) Windows Media Player


2.) I have tried:

Winamp. I used to love this music player, but I only enjoyed the older versions. I felt the older versions, with just one playlist, were better and easier to handle. But once they released the..5.0 or 6.0 version, where multiple playlists were now possible, I got confused really quickly, and many times accidentally erased Jana's or Kylie's playlists. So I abandoned Winamp.

RealPlayer. With a lack of a playlist feature more like Windows Media Player or Winamp (unless I am mistaken) playing music on this program is a bit tedious because I have to individually open up any song I want to listen to. Nowadays I rarely use RealPlayer at all unless if I want to burn a CD.

CD Player. Very limiting program. I can only play one CD at a time (obviously) and each disc may hold only about 20 songs or under. I used to use this before I knew about downloading songs. The last time I used this program was on the old computer before it crashed.


3.) To be honest, I don't think I can give a legit reason why I prefer Windows Media Player over Winamp, RealPlayer, and CD Player. I just...like it more. That's all I can say.

My Primary program:

DVDX player.  It will do such things as have it's own intigrated dvd decoder and built in sound amplication.  It also has cool video set options and plays a dvd smoothly even on a computer with 450mhz and 288mb ram :

Other Programs I've used:

VLC media player.  I used to use this all the time.  Now I just use it to test video files and to play mp3's.

Quicktime player.  In my opinion, it's a piece of crap.  It uses a lot of resources and gives little in return.  I try to stick away from it at all costs, but I'll keep downloading new versions as they come out, but truthfully, I"m not optimistic.

Windows Media Player 11.  I hate the interface and intigrating things such as codecs and dvd decoders is just a pain in the ass.  Not to mention how badly it plays on a computer with less than 512mb ram and a 1.2hgz processor <_<

WMP 10 and below.  Same crap as WMP 11, except that it's even harder to add codecs and dvd decoders.

Full Screen Player.  I couldn't get any decoder into this player except my one for mpg's.  It wouldn't play any of my files! :angry:

DIVX Player.  This is a very good player, I just find VLC and DVDX to be a bit better.  I always use the divx codec though.

A buttload of other players I tried but can't remember cuz they sucked so bad.  I have probably tried every single player out there and the only one's that were acceptable were DVDX player ($60), VLC (free), and DIVX (free).  For the regular person, I'd recommend VLC, but if you just got some spare cash lying around, go for DVDX.  You won't be sorry.

Interface meaning the position and look of the play button and stuff.  In general, the overall look and feel of the program.

Intigrating codecs and dvd decoders? Why do you need to do that?

When you have a newly wiped computer, it can't play any video or audio files in special formats.  A video codec makes it so you can play the file in all programs.  Even if you install the codec, most of them don't automatically intigrate into the WMP program.

A dvd decoder is a piece of software that allows you to decode the dvd and play it in the computer.  without a dvd decoder, you can't even make use of your dvd drive to play movies.

It only affects computers that didn't come with a buttload of codecs from the factory.  You'd hate WMP if you had a computer that was custom built.

I've got 3 WMA files in my ever-growing archive of music that has reached 1,314 files of 1.60 GB of space, so I don't know if, by your reasoning, I'm smart or an idiot. Which one is it, Petrie?

Depends...what do you have in terms of a music collection and filetypes?  B)  You can impress me (by telling me things I like hearing ) or I can tell you again what my beef is with WMP (which I stated in the first post).

I'll have to check it again (I'm away from my main computer right now), but I think it's a fairly even split beteween MIDI, MP3, and WAV. MIDIs have the majority and MP3 the minority (besides WMA, of course). One thing's for certain, though: I don't "live by WMA" by any means.