Explorer-like music player/organizer

[arcanjoloco]

I´m in need of a good player to browse my large sample/music library. I´ve tried iTunes / media player 11 / media player classic / winamp and all those I didn´t liked. I just want one with an actually file system browser, not that artist/album or folder import that those mentioned have. Any suggestions ? I appreciate your help.

[chrishansson]

I assume you're in Windows? In Mac you can just browse your library the way you have it organized and whatever audio clip you want to listen to just hit spacebar..

[theblue1]

I know you said you already tried and rejected MPC and WinAmp but I couldn't help but wonder if you'd explored them thoroughly...

When I want to browse my file system for media files I just open Media Player Classic, put it in 'always on top' mode and just drop files I want to hear into it. I have it set so that they stop whatever was playing and play right away. It's actually easier than right clicking to hit the play command (which, of course, will send the file to whatever you have your default set to for that file type).

As you probably found out, the problem with using the 'mini-explorer' that a File Open window in a player is, is that, once you close the window, depending on how the software developer set things up, it can lose however you configured it (date or alpha order, etc, often even window size; much depends on the app developer for how it behaves).

However, if you approach it the way I do above, your window stays open as you wish and playing a file is as simple as whisking it into the player... a quick gesture, if you will.

Still, if you'd rather click to play it's easy enough to set up MPC or Winamp or some of the others to play the new click immediately.

I have a 'multimedia' keyboard so it's got media player controls at my finger tips (in case I want to stop or pause, etc) whether or not the player has the system focus. (But, of course, either of the two mentioned can be set to stay always on top if you wish, too.)

[audiopablo]

Have you tried Foobar? It's great: simple and easy. It's free, too, I think.

[arcanjoloco]

theblue1: I work almost like this, but for example media player classic don´t play 24bit audio. iTunes don´t play FLAC, and when it comes to small drum files for example, it sucks.

audiopablo: foobar looks good, I liked the feature of creating playlists tabs, maybe will be good at some kind of needs but not what I look for yet...

I found a app that is very good, but I´m having little problems with the audio when I stop the playback, but I didn´t t ested on the studio yet, just here on the internet computer. It´s called EUFONY. Simple and good. I also found a good app to rename audio files: File Audio Processor. It do a lot of other things but for me is just good to rename audio files.

I´ll also try Helium and Media Monkey. If someone got some other suggestion I appreciate.

[arcanjoloco]

HEY, FOOBAR IS THE SHIT !!! Tottaly custumizable, fast open... really good. Will replace Media Player Classic on my workflow.

Thanx audiopablo !

[theblue1]

Wow... looks like it's time for me to update my Foobar... I'm back a ways. That looks pretty cool. (Another killer little feature for folks like us is its ABX utility, although it's hidden away, IIRC. I had to go looking.)


arcanjoloco, I'm surprised I hadn't run into that problem with MPC on 24 bit files. I'll admit that I've mostly used it going through my way-too-extensive Mp3 collection. It is my movie player of choice, though, because of the myriad of controls, screen formatting options, and wide choice of rendering filter options. Since my TV died, MPC has been my friend and companion, playing my DVDs and other media files. (I really wish there was some way of configuring it to work on Hulu and other TV-on-the-web type services.)