Free Alternatives #6 - Media Players

Post #6 in the Free Alternatives series is Media Players. All the descriptions have been taken from the relevant websites.
It is impossible for me to test all these apps alone, so any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Any app that you review as being bad will be looked at and removed from the list if necessary. Any app you think should be included must be FREEWARE, if it fits the criteria say so and we will include it if it meets the criteria.

1by1 is a small, fast and handy audio player which is not only small: it provides a smart and versatile environment to handle your file collection and listen to your tracks - with no need for playlists or databases.

AIMP Winamp-like mediaplayer, based on BASS audio library with support for large number of formats and playlists. It works with multiple playlists immediately (tabbed window), allows creation of bookmarks and also has a playback queue. Crystal-clear sound, technology of reproduction essentially differs from Winamp and WMP.

ALLPlayer is probably the most popular program for watching movies with subtitles. The program is 100% Polish, written and updated by Arthur Majtczak. It plays all known media formats, and futhermore has an implemented LiveUpdate function to update the latest codecs if there is a problem with opening a movie file. The program also searches for matching subtitles in all languages automatically.

Amarok is a powerful music player for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface. It makes playing the music you love and discovering new music easier than ever before - and it looks good doing it!

Apollo is perhaps best recognized by its playlist oriented interface. Playlists can be created and modified with standard Windows methods such as drag'n'drop and context menus. The main playlist will be shown as a tree, which may contain nested playlists. This makes it possible to have multiple playlist files open at once, yet having the possibility to handle them as separate entities.

Aqualung is an advanced music player originally targeted at the GNU/Linux operating system, today also running on FreeBSD and OpenBSD, with native ports to Mac OS X and even Microsoft Windows. It plays audio CDs, internet radio streams and podcasts as well as soundfiles in just about any audio format and has the feature of inserting no gaps between adjacent tracks.

aTunes is a full-featured audio player and manager, developed in Java programming language, so it can be executed on different platforms: Windows, Linux and Unix-like systems. Currently plays mp3, ogg, wma, wav, flac, mp4 and radio streaming, allowing users to easily edit tags, organize music and rip Audio CDs.

Banshee Sync your music and videos to your Android, iPod, iPhone, or other device - or import its media. Files are transcoded as needed. Choose to sync your entire library, or just one playlist.

BBox Player is a music player for the PC that lets you play, edit, convert and manage audio files, rip CDs, and enjoy all the free music to the maximum. An authentic music center with numerous possibilities to take control of almost any task related to digital music. BBox is also designed for the more advanced users as it offers some interesting utilities beyond its intuitive interface.

Billy is an audio player that allows you to quickly play an entire directory of MP3 files. It can usually load files 2 to 8 times faster than winamp or media player. Billy plays music albums without any gaps between tracks, so an overlapping applause or beat will continue. The player is 100% controllable by keyboard and its easy finder and special rename functions help you to find and organize your files quickly.

Clementine is a multiplatform music player. It is inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music. Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX Visualizations.

CopyTrans Manager Sick of iTunes? Is it too complex and slow for your needs? Looking for a faster, lighter and free alternative iPod manager? CopyTrans Manager is the perfect iTunes replacement for your iPhone or iPod. Add music & videos to iPod, edit song tags and artworks, create and organize iPhone playlists, preview tracks with the integrated music player. It has never been this simple! Manage your iPod without iTunes, it’s a reality now!

Cuberok is a music player and a collection manager based on Qt4. It has lightweight interface, music collection support and many features, e.g. music autorating and Last.FM scrobbler.

DéKiBulle is a multiformat audio player for windows. One of the special features of DéKiBulle is to directly use the directory structure where the audio files are stored, so as to be very quickly able to select the songs of an album or an artist.
The interface - although "skinnable" - is voluntarily straightforward and simple in order to assist the beginner and to speed loading.
DéKiBulle is normaly made to be launched automaticaly at windows startup and to go in the taskbar. It takes aproximatively between 5 and 7 MB of memory once launched. It can also be used as a classic audio player once the audio files are associated to it.

DivX Plus Player Don't just play your videos — play them well. Whether it's a DivX®, AVI, MKV, MP4 or MOV file, DivX Plus™ Player is built to give you the best video playback performance and media management on your PC. And with the addition of DivX To Go™, DivX Plus Player is the easiest way to transfer your videos to a DivX Certified® device.

Eina Current music players are focused on managing your music collection, while using mandatory criteria about how they organize it. Eina does not care about it at all. If your are an organized person, chances are your music collection is organized too, and you won't like to spend your time rearranging it to follow your player's specific rules. In addition, having those players to arrange music that's randomly stored, named or tagged, is usually counterproductive.

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

Helium Music Manager takes care of all of your needs when it comes to enjoying your music - playback, tags, album art, sync, and CD burning. You can take control of your music collection. Stop spending time looking for files on your computer or hunting through CDs, vinyl records and tapes - instead, simply enjoy and explore your music! Helium Music Manager can replace your ripper, player, tag editor and other audio related software.

iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application by Apple, used for playing and organizing digital music and video files. It also manages the contents on iPod music players, iPhones, and iPads, and hosts the iTunes Store, which sells music, videos, applications for the iPhone OS, and ebooks.

Jaangle (formerly Teen Spirit) is an open source, free, music player and organizer software. It categorizes your mp3, ogg, wma, avi etc collection and displays it in easy to browse, user interface. It has a quality audio - video player and also an integrated tag editor.

Jajuk is software that organizes and plays music. It is a full-featured application geared towards advanced users with large or scattered music collections. Using multiple perspectives, the software is designed to be intuitive and provide different visions of your collection.

JetAudio is integrated, multimedia software made of a single compact rack. Not only does it play various music and video files, it also has features such as CD burning, recording, and conversion to other file formats. You can create your own Internet broadcast by using JetCast, provided with JetAudio, and you can play all major file formats, including WAV, MP3, MP3Pro, OGG, WMA, MPEG, AVI, WMV, MIDI, RM, and video and audio CD tracks.

Juice - Want to listen to internet audio programs but can't when they are scheduled? This program lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere. Really. If you want to listen to podcasts, this program is for you. Juice is the premier podcast receiver, allowing users to capture and listen to podcasts anytime, anywhere.

Kantaris is an all new media player based on code from Videolan client (VLC) and Bass audio library. Kantaris has a graphical user interface similar to that of Windows Media Player. In very simple terms, Kantaris modifies and upgrades the celebrated VLC player with a slick new user interface. It also integrates several new functions, like support and integration of Last.fm and Apple Trailers.

Media Jukebox is an all-in-one media player, music collection organizer, iPod connector and music store with extreme tagging techniques. This music player can pretty much do it all. While not as small as VLC, it definitely does have a bunch of features. It can even be used to sync your phone, find tags for your newest imported songs, and simultaneously downloading the newest plug-in to customize your user experience.

MediaMonkey is a music player and a music library manager with support for 50,000+ files and many features for organizing, tagging, converting and burning your music. It also has advanced podcasting and syncing features. MediaMonkey syncs with iPhones, iPods, and most other MP3 Devices. MediaMonkey is an All-in-One music manager solution with many plugins available.

Miro (formerly Democracy Player) is a free and open source internet TV application that will play virtually any video format. It integrates a bittorrent client, a RSS aggregator, and a media player. You can subscribe to any RSS feed, podcast or video blog and explore hundreds of free channels with the built-in Channel Guide. It is fully BitTorrent capable, but also allows you to subscribe to videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo.

MOD Player is a compact media player for uncommon file types. It has only basic audio player functions to keep it’s small size (it could fit into your taskbar). It plays .MOD, .S3M, .XM, .IT, .MO3 files. You can also colorize the player by pressing C.

MusicBee - If you are looking for an application geared toward managing extensive music collections, easy to use and with a comprehensive feature set - MusicBee is that application. MusicBee makes it easy to organize, find and play music files on your computer, on portable devices and on the web.

musikCube is an mp3 player for the modern generation. It helps you just listen to what you want to hear, while offering innovative features not seen elsewhere. For the technical user, musikCube is based on an embedded SQL database engine known as sqlite. For the non technical user, that means its fast. Really fast. "Dynamic playlists" allow fully automatic, randomized playback of songs based on your observed listening habits. The more you listen, the smarter it gets. It also features browsable, user reorderable playlists.

Quintessential Media Playeris a feature rich media player for Microsoft Windows. It supports all popular audio formats including MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and CDs. QMP is highly skinnable and has a robust plug-in architecture.

quodlibet - Are you sick of audio players that think they know how to organize your music for you? Do other media libraries choke and die after a mere 10,000 songs? Do you often find yourself thinking Boy, I wish I could grep my music? Or are you just looking for something that can tag your audio files?

Real Alternative allows your system to play Real Media files (.ra .ram) without having to install the full version of RealPlayer Includes Media Player Classic - a freeware media player that supports both Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative.

SE-MediaPlayer - free portable player for media files. Also includes codec configuration utility for quick audio and video codecs installation and removal.

Songbird is an open-source customizable music player thats under active development. It is based on the Mozilla platform and the ability to customize the program is huge. Loads of add-ons available! NOTE: While Songbird previously supported Linux, support has since been removed. An alternative project based on Songbird has cropped up for Linux support (called Nightingale).

Media Go software connects and enhances your digital entertainment world. Music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, games, photos, and more—Media Go helps you find, organize, and optimize it for playback on your PC or your mobile device.

Soundbase was created as a free alternative to the large amount of commercial mp3 players and mostlikely it will fit somewhere into your mp3 playing experience. As a player, as a tag editor or as an organizer. It will always give you a quick way of doing common tasks. Read the tutorials, the help files and give it a try!

Sound Vibe is a powerful freeware audio player for PC. Some of the basic features include supporting a huge variety of different audio formats, full unicode support, multiple hierarchical playlists, media library with advanced directory monitor, ability to download album covers from the internet, last.fm scrobbler, queue manager, audio converter/ripper, etc.

Style Jukebox is the next generation media player for Windows, allowing you to organize your audio and video library under an easy to use and unique user interface. Audio/video support. Organize all your songs and videos under the same user interface. You can view your items in list view and grid view, depending on what you choose.

Total Video Player is a media player supporting 3gp, Mp4, H264, Mov, Flv and all other popular video and audio formats (Mp3, Wma, Ogg, Mpeg-1,Mpeg-2, etc.) as well as DVDs, CD Audio and Swf Flash Files.

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.

VUPlayer is a freeware multi-format audio player for Windows supporting the following formats: MOD • Sound/Noise/ProTracker MTM • MultiTracker S3M • ScreamTracker XM • FastTracker IT • ImpulseTracker MO3 • MO3 Packer MP3 • MPEG Audio MP4 • QuickTime MPEG-4 (AAC/Apple Lossless) MPC • Musepack OGG • Ogg Vorbis FLAC • Free Lossless Audio Codec APE • Monkey's Audio WV • WavPack AIFF • Audio Interchange File Format WMA • Windows Media Audio WAV • Windows PCM/ACM MIDI • Musical Instrument Digital Interface CD • Audio CD

Winamp is a highly-extensible media player that supports a wide range of audio formats, including MP3, Ogg, MIDI, MOD, MPEG, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and WMA. In addition, Winamp can play and import music from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, and can burn music to CDs. Winamp also plays video, natively supporting WMV and Nullsoft Streaming Video.

Windows Media Player is the all-in-one media player that provides the best experience for discovering, playing, and taking your digital entertainment anywhere.

Winyl this is new audio player for windows with media library support. This is very fast, very simple, full skinnable. Winyl offers great new ways to organize and enjoy all your music. Listen to music, set rating of your favorite songs, create playlists, all of this in Winyl is very simple, just download and run it. Winyl is automatically organized your media content into categories in the library, which makes it easy to find and play.

XMPlay is an audio player, supporting the OGG / MP3 / MP2 / MP1 / WMA / WAV / AIFF / CDA / MO3 / IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD / UMX audio formats, and PLS / M3U / ASX / WAX playlists. A load more formats are also supported via plugins. When XMPlay was first released in 1998, only the XM format was supported, hence the name "XMPlay".

XULPlayer is an open-source media player and converter built on Mozilla XUL and MPlayer. It intends to be a flexible, user-friendly desktop media center with support for most popular audio and video formats and rich user experience.

Zune - Software for the Zune media player from Microsoft. Works as a stand alone media player also, managing music, movies, photos and podcasts.

 

Alan,

I think I've got a problem. I installed all of the programs you recommended, and now my computer is acting very strange.

It is very slow completing the boot cycle and I am having trouble finding my usual program icons on the desktop.

When I finally do launch a program, it takes ages to come up and then takes over five minutes for each additional step.

Could I have done something wrong?? (All of the programs really sounded good!)

 

ROFL and to think I was just about to post #7 Burners LOl, I think I will wait till you get a bigger hard drive.

But seriously I try too much software etc, nearly time for a format and start again.

 

Richard I don't think that Alan intended that you install them all. If you do that there is always a very good chance for conflict particularly if they have all invaded your starups. Do a system restore and back before you installed them all and then maybe try just one of them.

Alternatively use Revo uninstaller and do them one by one.

 

Barry,

Don't worry ... :lol: Just yanking on Alan's chain.

 

Hmmm and to think I was worried about your infamous hard drive.............................. ROFL. But then again I wonder who is yanking who's chain. LOLOLOLOLLOL