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 :)

 
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
 
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.
 
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!
 
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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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.
 
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.
 
Aye really impressed so far.

I'm also half tempted to systematically go through all untagged albums and tag them all which will take ages but should be worth it now that I've got a well laid out player!
 
I have not but I will now!

Also the library stats part of musicbee is immense, so much information is available about your playback history there. Can't believe all this is available for free. Also windows taskbar controls in the thumbnail all customisable.
 
Sorry for the bump but I have to say thanks to you guys (Window first mentioned it!) for MusiicBee - It's astonishing, I have it set up and am using MusicBrainz (have been all night) going through all untagged tracks and tagging them, it's such a good app so thanks for that as well benjo :D.

Here's how it finally looks:

Main player:
MusicBeeMainPlayer.jpg


The dynamic Track Playing tab:
MusicBee_NowPLayingInfo.jpg


The playback queue screen:
MusicBee_NowPlayingQueue.jpg


The compact player mode which cycles random artist pictures and also has the lyrics tab which works brilliantly:
MusicBee_CompactPlayer.jpg


I am over the moon :)
 
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It's just so good I would definitely recommend giving it a go :)

There's so much to tweak all readily there in the settings and panel option areas without having to install any plugins.
 
Hey,

The skin in my screenshot is actually the built in one under the 2nd "Dark" skin section and it's called "Burnt Orange" :)
 
It has built in FLAC encode support support but I have not checked the other formats although options are there. Does your phone not support FLAC??

MB supports MTP devices as well which I thought was neat.

Having now used the MB Android app, it does the job but is a bit basic, you can't browse the playlist grouped, it's all one big list which is a bit tedious but for controlling active playback or queued playbck it is fine.
 
Ah of course, forgot about storage. My Micro SD card in the phone has 24GB free and I can see that being filled quickly the more FLAC albums I put onto it. 128GB cards need to come faster :D

Yeah it is more polished and with more options inside the settings and panel pages :)
 
There are a lot of options but the time taken to get it like above has been far less than what I attempted in foobar for example purely because everything is readily there just waiting to be changed - Alternatively 90% of the look is out of the box anyway, just set the correct columns and group by artist album, enable album art and apply the built in skin. Job done :)

WinAmp was great but nowhere near as organised in terms of grouping music.

The player is much bigger than how I had WinAmp but then again it's small on my 1440P monitor.
 
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