Hey folks. I’m looking for suggestions on two things:
1). a good Windows-based music player application (not a streaming service) for managing my music library
support for hi-quality audio formats
bonus points if it supports easy import of an itunes library
2). a new portable music player
ample storage size
support for hi-quality audio formats
Some folks have suggested MusicBee, which I intend to check out. On the portable music player side, I’d prefer not to use my phone as I’d like a separate device.
All the similar threads seemed to be ~2 years old, so I figured I’d make a new one. Does anyone still use a dedicated portable music player?
I use GmusicBrowser for my music player but that is Linux. For windows I would check out foobar2000.
For music players check this thread out there are also dac and amps so you might need to sift through some of that but they review some high end music players.
I do use a dedicated portable music player still. Not when I'm walking around though. For that I use my phone with Google Play Music and Spotify.
However, when I'm in the car I like to use a dedicated audio player. I do this because I don't have to worry about data, music playback interfering with my phone calls, and most importantly battery life. I don't want my phone getting drained. Yes I could charge it in the car but I don't like wires all over my dash and it is just easier to have a dedicated device.
I use an iPod Touch 2nd Gen for the task. It has plenty of space for me, sounds good, and is easy to just set and forget. The battery lasts fairly long too. I had it for a while before I had a smart phone. Now I just use it to play music in the car.
I'd go with MusicBee. I just got into it again and it works well. Foobar2K is okay. I'm honestly not a huge fan. Yeah it is hugely customizeable but setting it up is finicky, takes time and I've found modules break for no reason. It is also ugly as fuck IMO. Give it a shot but I'm not a fan.
MediaMonkey is really useful for managing music, exporting it to mobile device and pretty much ready to go (I recommend you to change the skin though). It's the one I use. Don't know about the easiness of importing itunes library, I'm staying away from that shit named itunes. Foobar2000 is apparently really good but requires a lot of customization before being well fit to you (someday I will maybe get into it)
I know HEXcellerate and I have already put our ballots in for MusicBee in other threads, but I still think anybody, not just Alamar, who's looking for something between iTunes and Foobar should look into it. I just installed it earlier today on a fresh W8.1 install, and it took only a couple minutes from opening the .exe to having it setup to the way I like it. Luckily I already had my music files organized so I didn't have to do anything about that, but even if I had to that would actually only take maybe a minute for 10 GB of music to be organised. It also has the option to import iTunes libraries and even Windows Media Libraries. There's a bunch of skins included as well, so it can look like anything from iTunes-esque, to dark and sleek, to rainbow vomit. The downsides I find are that the standard hotkeys are a bit weird and it isn't open source. The former takes a couple seconds in the settings window, but the latter is up to each individual.
I use Foobar2000 solely and I like it, some don't give a few a try and see which you like. Literally everything @anon59440203 said also applies to Foobar, the just do them different ways, actually I am not sure about the iTunes part, never used it, I would imagine it can without any great issues. Worth looking into.
I know you said not your phone, just putting this out there. I use my phone both a 64gb card and most of that is for music, played through N7Player.
