Needing help choosing a new music player for pc

Recently, I had been using Sony Music Center as my player and to sync to my Walkman. Then the recent update completely f'ed it up. I've tried working with it, but it feels like it took a million steps back in usability.

What I'm looking for is something that's not too complicated and will allow me to sync to and from my Walkman.

 

Media Monkey, maybe? I used to use to synch to a old Cowon DAP. Worked great, but, I haven't used it in years.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to like my Walkman.

 

MusicBee may work for you. Depends on how you like the UI. MusicBee is free.

General media players usually need their syncing settings configured to work properly with different portable players. They usually don't come preconfigured to work properly with specific portable players. So you gotta go in and configure the settings appropriate for your portable and what it supports. There are threads in the MusicBee forum discussing getting MusicBee to work with the Walkman players. And there is a wiki page for some help.

 

Very happy with JRiver.

 

Foobar2000 here for over a decade, insanely customisable, regularly updated, and free.

 

Foobar2000 (with 'wasapi' plug-in)

 

There are ways of obtaining and reinstalling older versions of apps. It can get quite lengthy to discuss this on a msg board such as this but in the event you are far more comfortable with the version which was released prior to this latest one, it would be possible to reinstall that particular one.

In order to minimize headaches, I would strongly suggest having this done by a pro.

 

I really appreciate all the responses I got. I think I've settled on Musicbee. I had tried it earlier, but didn't see where I could send music from the Walkman if I needed to.

 

Although I'm late to the discussion I will add my comments since I recently had an issue with Media Center For PC (MCFP) and have been using MediaMonkey (MM) and it might help the Original Poster and others.

Due to upgrading my digital audio player to a Sony Walkman NW-A45, I tried MCFP and it seems they recently updated it. It now looks more like MediaGo (which MCFP replaced). While I like the looks of the program more, I found it to be very sluggish and they dropped support for many features that MediaGo did (including Views [the MediaGo version of autoplaylists], podcasts, tags, and the ability to change ratings in the list of songs).

Due to the above, I've returned to using MM. I've used it for years and found it easy to use with my various Walkman players. MM is a very powerful program with a large number of features. Once setup, the syncing process is very simple.

However, if your player is not recognized by MM (it shows up as a generic device) you will have to set it up. It is not difficult but does take a little bit of time but you only have to do it once. It consists of the following:

• Telling MM which types of files your player supports and at which bitrates and sampling rates.
  
• Where to put the files on your player.

I hope this helps.

 

I'm looking for a new music player, I'm now using Foobar2000 on a PC but I'm hearing there are better players around.
The player needs to play all kinds of files including DSD64 and 24-bit files, most of the players I see around only play 16-bit files.

Any suggestions?

 

Look at JRiver Media Center and MusicBee.

MusicBee can play DSD but doesn't have many options for configuring playback of DSD. It can send DSD to a DAC but your DAC needs an ASIO driver. Other playback options and methods will convert DSD to PCM. And there aren't options to configure how it does the PCM conversion.

JRiver Media Center has lots of configuration options for how it plays DSD. Can send pure DSD to a DAC using either WASAPI or ASIO. Can also convert DSD to PCM and there are options to configure how the conversion is done. Can also send DSD over DLNA to a network connected DAC. JRiver has lots of options for DSD playback. Their wiki page for DSD playback is here: DSD - JRiverWiki

 

Yeah, I was going to suggest Musicbee up until I saw your requirements. I was trying to research it before I answered as I don't use DSD, just FLAC.

 

What's your problem with Foobar? It's the best/most configurable player out there, been using about 15 years now, never any problems.

 

Have tried AIMP.

 

I just recently moved from MediaMonkey (MM) to MusicBee (MB). I have a Sony Walkman NW-A45 and tried to sync it with MM and it took a very long time even when just adding a few songs, and sometimes I'd have to give up syncing and try again. Plus, when I tried to safely remove my player from the computer, MM would completely lock up to the point that I had to go into the Task Manager to terminate the program.

Out of frustration, I decided to seek out other options and found MB. It works very well with my NW-A45 and with the exception of the first sync (I'm loading all of the music on my player when it takes about 90 minutes), it usually only takes a few minutes to sync my player. While there were a few bumps (such as having to set it to put playlists in the Music folder rather than in a Playlists folder [that it creates] so that they will show up on the player), I've found it a worthy replacement for MM.

 

Foobar is a very good player with some great playback configuration options. However, it's not so good at file/library management and for browsing/searching what to play. There are some neat looking skins that can make Foobar look neat, but good luck modifying those skins to display composer and conductor for your classical music.

 

Cool, I understand, I've always just been happy with FB2K as is, no need for skins.