Best music download player?

I have a bunch of high-res download cards, which I never use because I am a vinyl-cd guy, but I want to get these files into my computer before they expire.

What is the best (simple) media player-program to play such files?

Some people rave about J River, but the interface looks daunting.

I just want a program that is easy to use to download and play these hi res downloads -- nothing complicated.

Thanks in advance.

 

Depends if you're a PC or Mac owner. I've been happy with Pure Music for the Mac.

 

Im a pc user and was wondering about Musicbee, Foobar and J. River.

 

JRiver or Mediamonkey works just fine!

 

I use Foobar 2000 playing thru Cambridge
Audio DAC Magic 100 to my '70's vintage amps etc. A bit of a learning curve but no difficult at all. Best part is that it's free and google will answer any questions you have.

 

For free Foobar2000 or Musicbee. Try both, pick the one you like better. I use both. Jriver is good also. SACD and multiroom applications especially.

 

Thanks folks!

 

Foobar for windows. Free and easy to use.

 

No additional player software is going to help with the downloads that come with LPs. You'll need to go grab each of them manually before they expire. Usually by visiting a web site with your browser and entering the code. Then manually downloading. Manually unzipping if the files are zipped. Manually copying the files to a directory folder tree where you keep your music.

There's many choices for software that will play the files and help tag and organize them after they're downloaded.

 

JRiver is very easy, don't let it scare you. I'm listening to Bridge of Sighs on it right now and a month ago I was in the exact same place as you are now. I am a vinyl guy myself and these Hi-Res files will amaze you once you get them tuned in. Already have a DAC and computer ?

 

iTunes is free and will play the high resolution files. I primarily use JRiver now and can recommend it but for simple to me its iTunes especially if you are a Mac user.

 

For PC, foobar2000.

 

I use J River Media Jukebox 14 and I have two questions, hope you can answer. The primary irritation is when I copy album art from Google and try and PASTE to the blank slot for the album, it works about 70% of the time, many times nothing appears, the image will not paste to the square, no matter what I do, from copying and pasting to save the image and try and insert that way, still nothing, the square stays blank. Some copy and paste in seconds, others will never work. The other irritation, I have to keep that overdrive or the Clip Protection turned on in the DSP Studio, or the sound is so over driven and sounds terrible. This is not a bad thing to have this clip protection on but it limits dynamics BADLY! Can you speak to these two problems with Media Center Jukebox 14?

 

I've done very little artwork with JRiver but it may be the file format of some of the cover artwork you are getting from Google is not an acceptable file format. I've run into this with other tools and images from Google. I'm trying to remember if it was a gif format that was the problem. Im sure it accepts JPEG, jpg and png.

 

JRiver,the front page has setup instructions. You'll get the hang of it.

 

JRiver shouldn't be clipping. Are you doing any EQ or bass boost or other digital processing? EQ and other digital processing can cause clipping if configured incorrectly.

Another possibility is that the Jukebox version is only able to use DirectSound for playback. DirectSound shares the audio device with the rest of the computer and doesn't allow for JRiver getting exclusive access to the audio device. It's possible that some other audio app or audio processing on the computer is doing some additional audio processing and causing the clipping. One possible source is the sound enhancements in the audio driver. Go to the "Sound" apple it Control Panel and select the audio device. Go to the properties page and disable any audio enhancements that the sound driver may be able to do. Those available sound enhancements can include things like bass boosts, dynamic leveling, reverb effects, and other things you don't want. Disable them all.

A limitation of the Jukebox version is that it can only use DirectSound which shares the audio device with the rest of the computer. The paid version of JRiver supports WASAPI or ASIO modes which allow for JRiver getting exclusive access to the audio device. Having exclusive access means no other apps on the computer can interfere and mix in additional audio or do additional audio processing. That gives you much more control over the audio and makes it much easier to prevent clipping. WASAPI and ASIO also make it possible to do bit-perfect playback.

 

I play MediaMonkey for a number of years on Windows and recently Android. They may also have iOS but I havn't tried that. It seems to be getting better every year, they recently added a lot of UpNP/DLNA features that seem to work nicely. I have a very large library, their scan is very fast and reliable. Friend uses JRiver but he's a power user. I can DLNA stream my large library to Android that worked straight away no messing around, as well as play local files of course. For a couple of dollars they have syncing features but I haven't tried it.

 

Foobar2000 for me. No frills, no BS. There aren't any superfluous bells and whistles by default, and it has excellent support for all the formats I use. FLAC/ALAC/WAV/APE/etc...

 

Well said! My player of choice as well.

 

I have MC20. It finds the artwork for you. I'm away from home until Saturday. I will take a look and try to tell you where it is when I get home. I am not good enough with it to tell you from memory.

 

I use TrackRack. http://trackrack.org/ Smart program which both download & play my music. It's suitable for PC & Mac, it also transfers music easily to all my devices. Quite happy with it

 

Forget foobar, I used it for years but the customization and coding required were just silly. Yes, it works fine as a plain vanilla player, but any sort of customization or library capability requires too much fiddling. Jriver was the answer, well worth the low cost. Ice you have a few files in your library you'll stay to use it more and wonder when you'll ever want to put in another cd.

 

Never forget foobar, it does too many things well. Jriver is equally as good, but no dvd-audio and foobar has simple automatic tag editing abilities that seem complicated in jriver. Throw in musicbee for the organization abilities and you have a triple threat that can't be beat!

 

And it's extremely easy to install the Darkone V4.0 skin...

http://tedgo.deviantart.com/art/DarkOne-v4-360862076

And stay tuned for my Darkone V4.0 Special Edition, coming soon at this link:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-foobar-setup-with-pics-computer-audio.242384/page-5

 

Not many users of MediaMonkey here, apparently. I've used it for years with much happiness. The iOS app MonkeyMote allows me to roam freely and change my mind willy nilly.