Music player for Windows like PowerAmp on Android

mrk

mrk

mrk

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I like PowerAmp on Android and have been looking for a similar player for Windows as I have always retried Foobar and various skins to get it similar and to the most degree it works but Foobar doesn't list untagged songs in the album librarry properly, it lists them under "?" instead of their filename/folder name like PowerAMP does.

Here's how I have PowerAmp so if anyone knows of a player similar for Windows that would be awesome :)

 
There's a folder structure view on the standard Foobar Album List component which you can get to by using the drop down menu underneath

Foobar%20album%20list.jpg

I hope this helps.

Otherwise I use Mediamonkey, which can be set up to view by folder structure.
 
The Foobar one is what I tried but as mentioned, with untagged music it puts them under "?" still which was a bit weird - I'll check out MediaMonkey though cheers.

I think if that doesn't work what I'll do it just stream from phone to PC over Wireless or something - I can bluetooth to my amp but that involves switching source input and losing PC sound while playing music unless I connect the bluetooth in on the PC's line in socket - Extra hassle.
 
Hmm I'm sure I did but was still seeing ? for music with absolutely no tags :(

I've tried MediaMonkey with some sample music I have on my phone at work and it seems to do exactly what I want and has a very good Android remote app as well:

mediamonkey.JPG

The additional metadata appears to be more robust and accessible than on WinAmp too. I think this will be what I switch to :D
 
Not sure what happened with my image sharing in Dropbox... oh well :)

Glad you like Mediamonkey - while the interface is a bit cluttered, it's very good for managing music on devices and sorting tags out. I've been using it for years, although I now use Foobar as a pure player.
 
It's mainly the "All" sections in each tree parent that work well for me as I'll be using that to take a grand view of each genre or everything in one go, queue them up and then browse selectively afterwards. Just a bit nicer to manage playback this way - Like a broader version of PowerAmp really which is exactly what I was after :D

I'll declutter it a bit though as I see you can remove various modules and have alternate views but the above screen is the layout I do like, album art+details so can quickly skim scroll a big list and find the artist I want by album art alone.
 
mrk said:
Hmm I'm sure I did but was still seeing ? for music with absolutely no tags :(
Click to expand...

well you are mistaken. foobar only displays a ? when it's configured to show a tag that is missing - for example

Code: 
%album%

displays the album if present and a ? if not

Code: 
[%album%]

only displays the album if present and nothing otherwise.

this would display the containing folder name if the album is missing.

Code: 
$if2(%album%,%directory%)

or you can tell it to display any arbitrary text like this..

Code: 
$if2(%artist%,Unknown artist)

obviously it's not particularly user friendly as it does require time and effort to learn all the syntax. but when you know how, you can make completely custom layouts tailored for your exact needs.

anyhow, it looks like you're happy with MM so stick with that. it's obviously more user friendly out of the box. :p
 
I didn't customise the syntax because it isn't immediately obvious what syntaxes are available, I wanted directory view but it only went only so far - I tried PanelsUI and a few other 'top rated' skins and plugins that seemed to be what I was after but on this one occasion a nicer out of box experience is the best experience with mediamonkey :)
 
MediaMonkey uninstalled :(

Something broke on it stopping some albums from displaying artwork even though when you play the tracks the artwork does display on the player bar area (bottom right) - The same tracks play in WinAmp and display artwork fine in the player window.

MediaMonkey_2.jpg

Reinstalled and reset settings for artwork in options but still the same. Gonna try Foobar again!
 
mrk said:
I didn't customise the syntax because it isn't immediately obvious what syntaxes are available, I wanted directory view but it only went only so far - I tried PanelsUI and a few other 'top rated' skins and plugins that seemed to be what I was after but on this one occasion a nicer out of box experience is the best experience with mediamonkey :)
Click to expand...

the full reference for everything can be found here:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Title_Formatting_Reference

obviously you can't customise the folder directory view because it uses folder/filenames only. but you can customise/create new views based on tags under file>preferences>media library>album list.

if you want to browse your library by album cover then i recommend the EsPlaylist component. you can right click it>browse>browse library. mine looks like this.

foobar2000.png

you can configure how files are sent to a playlist under file>preferences>tools>esplaylist>behaviour and look at the various mouse handling options.

for artwork display, you can configure the filenames it looks for under file>preferences>display>album art

additionally, you can look under file>preferences>advanced>display>album art>embedded vs external should you need to.

these options are only for current versions of foobar though. if you're messing around with PanelsUI, then you're using a very outdated version of foobar which doesn't have these options.
 
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Im sure you'd probably have just as much success in what your looking for my installing something like winamp or musicbee and skinning / addon etc
 
I've not heard of musicbee (the next point of call should the below not work out cheers!) but have tried endless skins/plugins for Winamp to try get it how I want with not much success.

I've now got Foobar back and have it like this:

Foobar.jpg

Which is actually better a start than what I had before thanks to the above information, I used the custom syntax %directory% which allowed grouping by folder structure in the playlist view so now untagged tracks are grouped by folder name which is fine since my folders are named correctly.

marc2003 that album art playlist view is just what I could do with, awesome! All my album art is embedded into the tracks whether they are tagged or not so this would work well - Just going to play around to try and get it to work as per your screenshot.

If Winamp's playlist window had grouping like the above then all my problems would be sorted really because essentially that's all I want, to be able to group in the playlist view like above.
 
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From all the messing around in Foobar the past couple months I've grown accustomed to the columns and panels system although there are some bits still unfanmiliar I think.

ESPlaylist view works fine but It's showing question marks next to items not tagged:

foobar2.jpg

Also, I swear every time I play using Foobar the sound quality is just nicer than with Winamp/MediaMonkey? As far as I can see all 3 are using DirectSound out and I'm not using any replaygain/DSP effects on either.

I am happy with just the structure view though, as long as album art shows in the bottom left for playing tracks (which it does) I'm good I think.

Edit*
Is there any way to get it to resume from after the last played track once it finishes the last song on the playback queue? At the moment I play a song but want to queue up a few songs on the playback queue, this is fine but once the last queue item finishes it won't resume from the last track before the queue was added - In WinAmp it will return to the previous track and the same in PowerAmp on Android. That's a hugely nice feature.
 
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http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ

Does foobar2000 sound better than other players?

No. Most of “sound quality differences” people “hear” are placebo effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). foobar2000 has sound processing features such as software resampling or 24bit output on new high-end soundcards, but most of the other mainstream players are capable of doing the same by now.
Click to expand...

you can configure what EsPlaylist displays by right clicking>grouping>preferences. then select the preset you're using and then double click the preset setting to edit it. then under side info, you can use the examples i posted above to display stuff in place of the ?

this dialog can be buggy at times when switching presets so sometimes it's necessary to close and then open it again.
 
Really bizarre then that :p I'll play around more with ES but would be cool to have on playback queue end for it to resume from where it left off in the playlist before the queue started.

Thanks again.
 
Have you looked at MusicBee? I tried it ages ago but moved back to foobar, but I preferred it over all of the other 'full' players.
 
I have it downloaded on my work PC to check out, so far I like it a lot, the skin is nicer than Mediamonkey and Foobar - I'll test it out on my home PC after work :)
 
Good news :)

MusicBee appears to be far more powerful than MediaMonkey and I know Foobar can reach awesome power once you've customised it with everything but for me Bee is way more functional, queue return after playback works out the box :D

So far:
ssdCaw3.jpg

Obviously spent some time learning the column options and settings pages but there's loads to fine tune readily available. No need to add syntax. Also an Android app is also out.
 
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