I've Been WMP-Free for at Least 6 Months Now (Foobar2000 & VLC FTW!)

**Drew Wilson** · February 24th, 2011, 01:04 AM

I honestly can't remember when I stopped using WMP, but I'm pretty sure I've been at it for 6 months now. What I do remember is that I was using WMP because it never really had a problem playing audio and video. That changed one day when all of a sudden, it started kicking out error messages saying that WMP can't communicate with the server.

I'm like, "Well, so what? I don't need it to not find album covers for CC licensed and indie music, let me play my damn music!"

No, it wouldn't even let me play anything because it couldn't communicate with the server. I then got to thinking, "wait, what is it trying to tell this server anyway?"

So, I let a sense of paranoia get the better of me and downloaded Foobar2000... OK, paranoia and the need to have a music player that will play music nicely. Never had a problem with Foobar2000 and have since converted any audio files over to automatically play in Foobar2000.

What I've also done on my computer was make all video files play in VLC. So, between the two players, the setup to play media has been immaculate! Never went back to WMP since and WMP seems to be some useless proggy I'll probably never remove completely from my system. Oh well, ain't bothering me now that I've wired everything over to the other two players.

I know some people like WinAmp, but I hate having that stupid WinAmp agent on start-up. I thought I disabled that in the install, but it still pops up on start-up. Grr.

Anyway, thought I'd share my experience just for the heck of it.

**Signa** · February 24th, 2011, 05:21 AM

It's not much of a music player, but damn I fanboy Media Player Classic something fierce.

**mountain_rage** · February 24th, 2011, 06:12 AM

I've been WMP free for about 6 years now, if not longer. Could never stand the program, always found it to be so bloated.

**Boomer The Dog** · February 24th, 2011, 06:53 AM

Oh yeah, it's Media Player Classic for me when listening to single tracks, and I have it to
open most all sound files using FFDShow, both found at free-codecs. It looks like an older
version of Windows Media Player from before it had all of the glossy, glassy surfaces.

If I click on a single track it pops up in an instant and gets to work, woof. I've been using
it Media Player Classic for years.

For albums and playlists I use VU Player, freeware from vuplayer .com. It's also simple, and
it has very good gapless blending between songs, and I even use it to run tracks on my
radio station it's that good. (WKND and The Dog Stereo FM) Total non-bloat, if you just
want something to bang out your audio.

I've never been a fan of Winamp, it has such a little dark interface that's not pleasing to
my eye, and has little separate windows for EQ and playlist, and so tiny. Windowing is
totally out in interfaces now, look what happened to Ubuntu getting rid of the Xsane
scanner program and The Gimp.

Maybe some do like it.. but I think the only part of Winamp that's not pants is the plugins,
you could do some fabulous things, although most of those DSP plugins have been
replaced with other programs by now.

Boomer

**napho** · February 24th, 2011, 07:19 AM

I have about 8 video players, so not much use for it. I find some players work better with certain files for whatever reason, so the more the better. I use the Tiny Billy player sometimes, or Winamp, or whatever player is open.
btw the Nucleo skin is the antithesis of the dark default Winamp skin.

**Boomer The Dog** · February 24th, 2011, 08:50 AM

Much better Napho, that looks like old stereo equipment, and not an Apple 2 monitor like
the default.

Like I barked Winamp was seen as a good thing for small radio at one time because of the
plugins. Someone had a radio skin that would take Winamp and make it look like a DJ setup
with cart deck players and other ideas for live assist. That actually didn't look that bad.

I like that bright player though.. The one interface that I really did like was the CD player
from Windows 2000, which also might have been in Millenium.

At the time I had more CDs, and I did use it, and it was the size and the look that I think
that Microsoft should have kept with for simple file playing. Here's what it pretty much
looks like, I don't think mine was called Deluxe though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:De...screenshot.png

I'm sure that anyone working in an office with 2000 and a computer that had a CD drive
will remember this.. ;)

Boomer

boomerthedog.net

**RACKnRAIL** · February 24th, 2011, 09:23 AM

I've found most of my players are buggy with .mkv files. Any suggestions? Right now, believe it or not, Windows media player seems to work the best for them. I use VLC and/or media player classic for everything else.

**mfgbypooter** · February 24th, 2011, 09:52 AM

I use BS Player Pro for playing all of my .mkv files which plays 99.9% of them just fine.

*

**RACKnRAIL** · February 24th, 2011, 11:52 AM

I hope that's not BS??

**napho** · February 24th, 2011, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by RACKnRAIL

I've found most of my players are buggy with .mkv files. Any suggestions? Right now, believe it or not, Windows media player seems to work the best for them. I use VLC and/or media player classic for everything else.

The successor to the KMPlayer works well with .mkv. http://www.digital-digest.com/software/PotPlayer.html

**Boomer The Dog** · February 24th, 2011, 12:28 PM

Ha ha ha ha-larious, Pot Player, I know someone who is going to really love this!.. :)

Actually that Pot Player interface looks nice, not a lot of chrome around the screen, like
Gxine on Linux.

Keep in mind that most of the time any given player is going to the stash of codecs already
on your system and loading one of those. That means that sometimes a player can seem bad
when really it's the codec needing an upgrade.

Boomer