Best Audio Player? Plugins? Best High Birate File Sharing?

[DentyCracker]

what is the hoopla surrounding ASIO. Is it important to normal users, or really to people connecting musical instruments to the computer? I think my soundcard is supposed to have decent ASIO or summat

[WyWyWyWy]

I don't think ASIO is supposed to have "higher quality", it is just lower latency, isn't it?

[Jammrock]

I use Creative MediaCenter that comes with the Audigy 2...but with my Audigy 1. CMS is really nice for SoundBlaster users.

Jammrock

[BuddMan]

Well, I guess no one uses Foobar. You guys might be interested in it though. You can get it here. Use the Kernal Streaming plugin, is as good as ASIO. I'm having a hard time deciding between Foobar with Kernal Streaming and Winamp with MAD + ASIO.

[BuddMan]

Originally posted by DentyCracker
what is the hoopla surrounding ASIO. Is it important to normal users, or really to people connecting musical instruments to the computer? I think my soundcard is supposed to have decent ASIO or summat

I think ASIO does the same thing as Kernal Streaming: direct kernal upload of audio stream to the audio card. Sound is less distorted with this method, and most people think it sounds better. IMO it does, but the difference is small--noticeable, but small.

[K6-III]

Also they allow you to bypass the EVIL kmixer.dll...

[DentyCracker]

I use a variety of players to play stuff. I must say I am not overly impressed by winamp + mad plugin, although it does sound slightly better than wmp9. (I really can't stand the square winamp look, but I digress). I find that sonique2 alpha sounds a tad better. The best sound I have heard is from gratisaudio, but the interface leaves a lot to be desired. (Tony can't be arsed to program it most of the time) Creative mediasource player is great for adding effects, like CMSS and CMSS2 to divx files, but doesn't full screen them properly

[Mehen]

i dunno about you guys, but windows media player 9 is fine for me

[BuddMan]

Well....Media Player 9 is ok, but it's too much if you know what I mean (too bulky, too many features I don't care to use, etc). I'll use it sometimes though. SRS enhancements are great, but for some songs the distortion doesn't do em justice. Basically I'm just looking for the cleanest sound out there, and looks like it's a tie between Foobar with Kernal Streaming and WinAmp + MAD + ASIO. I'll try some of the other players recommended though.

[Gurm]

Foobar, in my experience, makes things sound... umm... different. I've heard people try to explain HOW it makes things sound, but I don't like it.

- Gurm

[BuddMan]

Well Foobar seems to define highs a bit better, but I'm not sure if the highs are more distorted, or if it really is just that much clearer. I still can't decide which player I like better.

[DentyCracker]

My main problem with WMP8 and above is that once I've installed any video editing stuff on my machine (vegas, MSP, Premiere) it takes 14 seconds to start up on a machine with 512 MB RAM (was just as bad with 768)

[Gurm]

Yeah. WMP is a hog because it tries to load in ALL the video stuff, not just the stuff it needs to play the current file. Now, if they could just make Winamp dock to the taskbar...

- Gurm

[Nowhere]

foobar here. it's great
especially when playing mpc files (try it, this are really near cd quality, and not some silly mp3), although with mpc plugin winamp 2.xx is also ok

[thop]

MAD plugin does, in fact, suck. unless you listen to 8bit mp3s. mpg123 is what MAD was supposed to be. the default winamp one is good enough for everyone anyway.

btw. if you got desktop speakers, even some fancy 5.1, all plugins on this world won't help.