Hi-de-ho! I have a new Android phone, and I’m looking at player apps, preferably compatible with flac files. MusicBee, BlackPlayer, Media Monkey….lots of ’em out there, many free – any personal recommendations?
Might also be an opportunity to upgrade the desk player from WinAmp (no longer supported, I believe) to something better/more seamless. At the moment, all the mp3s are in iTunes and the flac files (all cd and lp rips at the moment) just sit in a folder – nice to have something which consolidates and lets me play both.
All suggestion gratefully received….many thanks in advance.
By far the best music player for me has been Roon.
https://roonlabs.com
It’s basically the same team that developed the Meridien Sooloos system and is both a player and a database. It finds all your music – be in in iTunes, on a NAS, external Hard drive and even Tidal and consolidates into a database that has all the artwork, credits, hyperlinks, recommendations etc etc. It plays virtually all music file formats (or a least everything I have). It can also stream that music to any number of endpoints – hardware (more and more players are now Roon certified), multi room systems, and even phones.
But, and it’s a big but, it is not free – far from it in fact at about $100 a year (or about $500 for a lifetime membership). But given that I have a large music collection that is all digital and I stream around the house in high quality (I.e, compared with how much I spend on music and HiFi), to me it’s worth it.
There’s a 14 day free trial you can have a play with.
Chris has provided the correct answer.
For those of us with smaller budgets, VLC is good (also an Android app) and Foobar2000 plays everything with numerous plugins (might be Windows only).
I don’t do playlists, but just play albums which are kept in separate folders, which makes my requirements fairly simple – play by track number tag, and gapless playback.
Seems to me that the amazingly free VLC will meet all your needs. A true product of Open Source, able to play any music format as well as any movie/DVD format.
Have a friend who uses Roon but even he admits he’s a certified obsessive – it’s a brilliant player but too much for most of us?
If importing from itunes is where you want to start have a look at musicbee as as a ‘post itunes’ test I did the import and playlists and playcounts all copied across correctly in around 5 mins (for 24k tracks). Drag and drop for Android I am guessing, though don’t sync a phone with it.
Roon looks really good. Shame about the price.
I’m amazed it still seems impossible to access the original sleeve artwork and credits for digital sources. It’s something Steve Jobs said they were about to launch, and he’s been dead 6 years now. Maybe Roon does that? Lavish website, but just the merest hint about “Credits”.
The record companies who own the copyright on the artwork don’t trust us punters to have acquired our music legally and they probably want software developers to pay them fees for accessing it too.
If you buy mp3/FLAC/WAV files from legal sources they usually have artwork embedded in the files or included in the download these days. The resolution is not always very good though.
It used to be possible to get artwork semi-automatically from the likes of Amazon or Discogs in some players, but they both seem to be blocking this now.
Exact Audio Copy automatically finds artwork for a lot of the albums that are in it’s database as you rip them, but the artwork is all 250x250mm or thereabouts lately.
Discogs are still a good source for better-quality artwork, but it’s a faff to transfer it once you have it. Credits are harder to source. I expect they would cite Lack Of Demand as their excuse if pressed. Us folks who want all the info -are- in a minority, but still..
Front cover art is included, but I’ve never seen anything else except in illegal downloads (also the first to go to 360Kbps IIRC).
I presume Steve Jobs was alluding to the extra artwork and sleevenote files provided with some iTunes downloads, which goes under the name iTunes LP.
That’s it. Does it actually exist?
A few albums have them, usually big reissues, but they’re somewhat rare.
The thing with sleeve notes for digital files is where do you draw a line?
I just got a s/h CD copy of Steely Dan’s “Two Against Nature” today (£1.74) and in the 12-page booklet, apart from all of the song lyrics, I noted a full listing of players on each track (6 different drummers on the album!) most with picture backgrounds. Also a page with the full technical credits for recording, mixing, artwork, photography etc. and 3 separate lists of thank-yous. One from the pair of them, then one each extra from Mr. Fagen & Mr. Becker. Also 2 more pictures in the jewel case (back and CD tray).
Preparing all of that and including it with the download could be time-consuming and therefore expensive.
I’d have thought a photo copier could handle it.
They’d have to be high enough quality scans to be easily legible (around 400×400 would be good – by no means guaranteed on current digital cover art) and for that particular album there’d be 14 of them to encode.
Doesn’t actually sound like a problem to me.
Just something they’re never likely to ever bother doing.
Probably a time thing, as any CD release in the last twenty-thirty years will have had the album artwork created digitally, and able to be changed from one image format to another.
Might possibly be a metadata issue too, though that’s above my pay-grade. You can attach loads of data to a tiff or jpeg, readable if you look for it, but I dunno what you can attach to a wav, aiff or other audio format.
The tags of .mp3 .Flac and .Wav files can all hold album art. As can the tags of Apple’s and Microsoft’s various proprietory file formats. Any decent music player/library software or standalone tagging software will do this for you.
I use Neutron, not free (A few quid) but lots to fiddle with. Pre Amps, Equalisers, DSP and lots of stuff and I’m not clever enough to understand.
Perfect for the long working hours.
On me dog and bone I use a player called Jet Audio and I’m happy with it. It plays all types and is easy to use and has plug ins etc.
Many thanks everyone. Lots to consider, and one or two freebies to download and try, before looking at the more costly options.