5 Popular Audio Players - Compared and Tested [ Windows ]

Welcome to the second part of the series. Generally the very preliminary stage of every Geek is either a Music Lover or a Die hard Game Player, the first thing one learns to do on the PC is either of them. I not sure about other countries but probably in India the first software a child interacts with is none other than Winamp, so, here I am going to discuss and enlist the 5 most popular Audio Players with a comparison table at the end.

Winamp 5.52

Winamp is probably the most popular full-featured free audio player. It supports numerous audio and video formats, also plays streamed video and audio content, both live and recorded. It has an extremely customizable media library. Playlists can be saved and managed very easily, “Full-Featured Player with Highly Handy Controls” these words are efficient enough to describe Winamp. Setup file for Winamp is reasonably small i.e. 8.30 Mb. Features of Winamp

Audio support includes CDA, MIDI, MP1/2/3/4, AAC, OGG, WAV, AIF, WMA and more.
Supports video files like AVI, ASF, MPG, M2V etc.
Winamp Toolbar, Control your Winamp from your web browser.
Album Art
Completely New interface
Visualizations
Media Library

The only issue that bothers me in case of Winamp is it takes lots of resources, and slows down my computer. Want to know more about Winamp? Try These

Download Winamp 5.52: New Version Released by Nirmal
5 plus 3 Tips to increase productivity with Winamp by Ashish
Winamp 5.5 Beta: Bento Box Goodness by Brown Baron

Foobar 2000

Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform, developed by Peter Pawlowski. Foobar2000 is my favorite Audio Player, it is so light weight that the user never ever feels that he has dedicated some resources for audio playing, while working with other applications on his PC. Yet the interface of Foobar2000 is not as attractive as that of Winamp and other Audio Players. Features of Foobar2000

Audio formats supported MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, WAV, AIFF, AU, WMA etc.
Even large Playlists can be loaded instantly.
More audio formats supported through optional components, official or third-party.
Full Unicode support.
Customizable user interface layout (new in version 0.9.5).
Advanced tagging capabilities.
Support for ripping Audio CDs.
Replay Gain support - both playback and calculation.
Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.
Highly customizable Playlists display
Player approximately consumes 1.9 Mb of your RAM which is so much less compared to Winamp or MS Media Player.
Small setup download file i.e. 2.64 Mb.

JetAudio Basic 7

clip_image006 Jet Audio 7 is another multi-featured audio player. The long list of supported file formats includes WAV, MP3, PGG, AVI, MIDI and more, but some of them may require third party codecs to be installed. The Basic version of this player is free, whereas the plus version is not free. The best thing I like about Jet Audio is the audio file converter, you can easily convert one file format to other, like you can convert your mp3 files to wma formats in order to save space on your storage device. Features of Jet Audio 7

Rip audio CDs
Convert various audio files
Burn audio CDs
Record from various sources
Play a wide range of media files.
Quite Light weight
Visualization
Various sound effects
Alarm & Timer
Equalizer

XMPlay 3.4.2

XMPlay is a Win32 (Windows 95/98/NT/2k/ME/XP/etc…) audio player, supporting several formats. For this player a zip file download of 304 Kb is to be done, no installation required just unzip and start using. The unzipped folder also contains a text file which can guide you to several other features and also help you to reduce the size of this unzipped folder by removing some DLL files present in this folder. Features of XMPlay

Net streaming
Track information
Title formatting
Library
Saved/preset settings
Disk writing
Customizable Keyboard shortcuts
Visualization
No installation
Small Size
Very very Light Weight

Media Monkey

Media Monkey is also a light weight application, with a wide range of features. It is an easy-to-use organizer for serious music collectors. It catalogs your CDs, OGG, WMA, MPC, FLAC, APE, WAV and MP3 audio files. Its player automatically adjusts volume levels so that you don’t have continually fiddle with the volume control and supports hundreds of Winamp plug-ins and visualizations. Features of Media Monkey

Organize music and edit tags in your audio library with a powerful, intuitive interface
Automatically lookup and tag Album Art and other metadata
Play MP3s and other audio formats, and never again worry about varying volume
Record CDs into OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files
Convert MP3s, M4A, OGG, FLAC and WMA files into other formats
Create Playlists and music mixes quickly and easily to suit any occasion
Synchronize with iPods / MP3 players effortlessly and convert tracks

A Quick Comparison

Name of Player	Download Size	Launch Time	Features/Issues
	8.30 Mb	5	New interface, Toolbar to control player from web browser, supports multiple audio and video files, takes lot of memory in RAM
	2.64 Mb	2	Multiple file types supported, Unicode and Replay Gain supported, Open component Architecture, Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts,Less user friendly.
	Basic, free version is22.3 Mb	3	Supports multiple file types, File conversions, Alarm/Timer, Rip and burn audio CDs.
	304 Kb	1	Multiple file support, Very light weight, launches instantly, No installation required, visualization, library
	6.47 Mb	2	Multiple file support, Convert Audio Files, Synchronizes with iPods and other devices, automatically adjusts volume levels, automatically looks up album art and other metadata.

Which one would you vote for

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About The Author of this article:
Manav is one of the co-author of this blog and writes on various interesting softwares, PC tips and more. You can read more of his articles here.

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Tags: audio content, compared and tested, download winamp 5, featured player, foobar 2000, free audio player, media library, mp3 files, peter pawlowski, visualizations
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31 Comments and Link-Backs to “5 Popular Audio Players - Compared and Tested [ Windows ]”

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28 Comments from Friends and Readers

Jack Morgan, February 7, 2008:

Manav, It will depend on user choice to use winamp or not. Basically winamp has lot of features and if I want to maintain a complete media library which one is good

Winamp or Media Monkey

Thanks
Ashish Mohta, February 7, 2008:

Foobar seems to be a good choice. I just need to listen , no time for making and maintaining a library and size is cool
Mahesh, February 7, 2008:

I am using Xmmplay. It really solves my purpose but seeing the comparison table….I am just thinking should I switch to foobar or media monkey.

Can you suggest ?
Kunal, February 7, 2008:

I dont think, I will switch from Winamp. Its heavy for sure but I have like 4 gb of ram . On top of that I am using both shoutcast and Sarch online video and audio with it.

None of the other listed players have that cpapability.
Jasmine, February 7, 2008:

Really good post manav. I just read your post on pdf readers too. I never knew there are so many options availble. Its more like we are in a trend to use the best and dont think if our computer can tke the load and we complain our system is slow.

I will go for monkey :
Mac, February 7, 2008:

Jet audio sucks , I have seen on one of my friends system. Any players you can suggest for MAC?
NirmalRaj, February 7, 2008:

I am using windows media player. Its comes integrated with windows and is not heavy. Real audio is a good choice but I am not sure if it supports every thing
Madhur Kapoor, February 8, 2008:

i would go for Winamp . Got some good features.
Nirmal, February 8, 2008:

I would go for Winamp. BTW thanks for the mention.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Jack, Both have the Media Libaray feature, I have started using Media Monkey lately so I am exploring it, so I m not sure which one is better, Winamp certainly is a good choice in terms of Media Library.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Ashish, no-doubt, as far as just listening is concerned, Foobar is the best. Thanks to Peter.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Mahesh, if you really want to switch, managing your media files with Media Monkey is better, else Foobar is also a good option.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Kunal, yes, you dont need to switch at all. Only issue with winap is its heavy weight, else its a perfection.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Jasmine, Thanks for the comment, its like we generally dont have enought time to devote for searching best option for us, we simply go with the trend.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ NirmalRaj, Real Audio is lighter than Windows Media Players, and I think it has everything.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Madhur, Thanks for the comment, I agree with you.
Manav, February 8, 2008:

@ Nirmal, You are welcome, The post was really nice. Thanks for the comment.
Rakshit, February 9, 2008:

Although, I haven’t tried all of them. But still, I prefer Winamp over other audio players. Basically, I use it for streaming audio over my college LAN.
Ashish Mohta, February 9, 2008:

Hi Rakshit, Thats pretty intresting what Do you exactly do and If you can tell us how it will be superb.
Manav, February 9, 2008:

@ Rakshit, Winamp is best, no-doubt, well i m not aware of this streaming thing, can you please educate us on this?
Thanks for the comment.
Rakshit, February 9, 2008:

@ Ashish and Manav
Yeah, for sure.
Streaming audio over Lan/Intranet is pretty easy. In fact, I have written an article related to this on my own blog as well. Since, you asked for better explanation, hope you don’t mind if I share the link here. ( Of course, you can delete it if it does not suit your terms and conditions)

Here goes the link:-
http://www.rakshitk.com/blog/2008/01/19/streaming-audio-over-the-lanintranet/
Ashish Mohta, February 9, 2008:

@Rakshit: Thanks for sharing the info with us. Any link which is related and help others are never removed.

Your article is really awsome. I went through it and its clear and through the point. Thanks for this . We will share your article with our readers.
Manav, February 9, 2008:

@ Rakshit, Great Post buddy, Thanks for educating.
patrick, February 10, 2008:

Manav,
Great post. I’ve been using Media Monkey for a little while now and I have to say it’s pretty amazing. The fact that it doesn’t hog resources is pretty big for me as I tend to be doing many other things on the computer and don’t really want my music to slow me down. It manages a large amount of files with very little effort, you can automate tagging (or you can do it manually if you want) based off of online databases, and it prevents duplicate files from being added, say if you copy a file to another location.

I also find myself using their browser to stream music off of a shoutcast…super easy there too. I’m probably going to go ahead and buy the gold version and give the burner and converter a go…would be nice to have it all in one. Anyhow, nice to see some of the other options out there. Again, great post.
lucky v, February 10, 2008:

I personally use VLC media player.. it supports formats which are even unheard off!. Foobar is really light on resources and my all time favourite.
Manav, February 11, 2008:

@ Patrick, Thanks for the appreciation , Well I too like Media Monkey, but as my desktope is very old, and has 256 Mb ram, i prefer Foobar.
Manav, February 11, 2008:

@ Lucky v, Vlc is like an Elixir, Foobar is my choice as well. Thanks for the comment.
Marc Savoy, March 28, 2008:

Jet Audio 7 is the weakest of the five and shouldn’t even be included as part of any comparison. Your inclusion of its file converting capabilities as part of its features is unfair because it is not available in the basic download only in the upgrade.