My vote has to go to http://www.kantaris.org/, it is VLC with a GUI, and a few other goodies. I really like it and it totally free, like VLC.

chinarabbit wrote,
" and did someone say winamp has "real sound"? how do u figure that? the sound quality is so weak and bland and colorless compared to ALL the other programs...it sounded like it was designed for use with laptop speakers or something.."

Precisely why " What is best of anything" should no be used/asked......
As CC and others including myself stated ,whatever works for your particular sys/configuration...Don't knock something just cus it won't suit your purpose......

I think people are giving opinions on what works best for them, it is always up to the individual user to make up his own mind. Most if not all of these mentioned are either free or have a free trial so there is no harm with people giving suggestions.

I always used Cyberlink PowerDVD

I use songbird...VLC is messed up for me at the moment...so Songbird does well I guess.

See my comments below.

Alan, you better take a look at the Kantaris advisory from Secunia (see below).


I never heard of Quintessential until chinarabbit2008 mentioned it, and after looking at the website, I may try it. Are there any reviews of it? I haven't seen it mentioned on some of the major freeware sites.

Next...Why do you conclude that VLC is a virus? Videolan.org has become a highly referred to site, the program is open source and they even link to the source code. There may be problems with builds that cause security problems that need to be fixed, and a trojan or virus could result, but certainly not from the intention of the software authors.

However, I will add that if you check Secunia.com, you'll see that there was a bug in the latest build. and VLC was quick to work on it.

http://secunia.com/advisories/29878/

If you go to the VLC wiki, you can even track the bugs and nightly builds:

http://wiki.videolan.org/Main_Page

One question I have is why there isn't mention of a build upgrade to the latest version 0.8.6f with patches that fix the vulnerabilities mentioned on Secunia.com. A search for Kantaris comes up with several vulnerabilities related to VLC.

http://secunia.com/advisories/29974/

Sure enough, if one checks the Kantaris site, it states that they are using souce code from VLC. I think I'm going to stop using VLC until I find out if the current download build is safe.

I agree with you regarding Foobar. It's a very nice little program.
I can't agree with you regarding Winamp, though. If you add some very nice plug-ins such as Enhancer and a few others, the sound is excellent. It's only problem is that it seems to get slower with each build, and you have to make sure your firewall so that it doesn't constantly contact the net for updates. At least they're quick to notify users of an update as soon as an exploit is found.

Even though I feel you may have been hasty in thinking VLC may contain a "virus", I want to to thank you as it encouraged me to research the program. You may have been on the right track as the code exploits in the program could lead to one:

http://secunia.com/search/?search=vlc


While VLC is definitely clean, just like Winamp, when an exploit is found, it certainly needs to be updated regularly. I never realized that some builds had several vulnerabilities and possible exploits.


I may just wait for a Secunia report before I try Quintessential.

i remember in the early days i used to use winamp, and I support all programs which are not windows, such as netscape, firefox, winamp etc.. really liberates us... and in fact I was just going to DL winamp again because i was sick of WMP, and then i started thinking that winamp wasnt so appealing because im not a big fan of the interface, so i looked for whatever else other people might be using, and i was really surprised at all the great programs that are out there.

i know winamp has a zillion plugins, but I only liked the very early versions of winamp..the later versions are too big, too slow, too messy, overcrowded, troublesome, inconvenient, and too much of a headache for me,

anyway, its just my opinion, im aware you can make it sound better simply by adjusting the eq but one has to wonder about the legitimacy of the programming when it installs so weak..

im not COMPLAINING, as I was about to use it again before i found all these other ones.. by the way, I hate programs that self update all the time without giving you options to turn it off, i find it malicious.

well, i was about to try VLC again, but that last post turned me off to it.. i think it was a virus.. it corrupted my antivirus software which had to be reinstalled...

maybe it was, maybe it wasnt.. i launched the installer, DOS opened up, nothing was installed.

BEO got me thinking about organizing my music files better, onto a specific audio-only drive, into genre folders, making multiple copies of each song for filing in different categories, and retagging everything neatly. some sort of really well organized system on one drive just for organizing music.. but i dont really get too crazy about my music collection.. but i really like the idea of such an organization.

so anyway, I tested the media players that i found were recommended in other forums around and posted my results here.. of course, depending on your system, speakers, genre, collection, etc your result may or may not differ.

i dont think jetaudio is the best program, but i do like the menus and "jetcar"-style interaction, i use it because it plays all 5 of my speakers loudly.. so i cant even compare any other programs to it... but if all the programs gave me the same 5.1 matrix i'd probably use foobar or quintessential for my audio..

again this was an audio only test, not a video test, i'll probably do a video one sometime soon and post the results here as well

I think that sums it up nicely.

B]
If you take a look at their webpage you will see that they released a new version almost immediately. I think they are up to V.37 now. I checked it with Kapersky and found no Malware or Viruses and it seem to be fine, so like I said, people will use what works best for them. Thanks for the headsup Wilton.

I use Media Player Classic

does anyone know any programs to get 5.1 speakers to play 5.1 ALL the time?

I downloaded a "free" program called DFX which claims it can make all your 5.1 speakers play simultaneously, even if the source is stereo mp3 but the surround feature, and most of the slider features are NOT free and need to be purchased...

i used to have a cheaper set of "5.1" speakers that played 5 speakers all the time.. my new creatives dont, they only play all 5 speakers when there is "5.1" input, otherwise its the 2 front channels.. which REALLY sucks

does anyone know how to play 5.1 in all 5 speakers, even if its just 2 channel input?

I tried changing all my configurations to 4 channel but still the front 2 speakers only play...

jetaudio works but not after i restart my computer.. its some bug maybe that makes it work.. everytime i unistall then reinstall the program they all work again..

my 5.1 speakers work fine with 5.1 input, such as 3D games, but on mp3s it just 2 speakers..

does anyone know how to work around this??

is there something wrong with my speakers?

thx

nevermind, i updated the soundblaster drivers and i get 5.1 on all the programs with anything, as I thought i should

so i think im moving to BEO, eventually, after I rename and organize everything properly

dont install that DFX... it doesnt uninstall... it conveniently has a fatal error during uninstallation

that jetaudio can edit as many tags as you want at the same time, you just select all your songs, right click and select jetaudio then edit tags, and you can simultaneously rename whatever fields you choose, like genre, group, picture, etc... wow.. are there other programs that do that too? its cool because its right from your right click menu, you dont have to open jetaudio to rename everything...

just thought i'd mention that for anyone else that has been procrastinating for how many years because renaming every single tag seemed like an overwhelming pain in the butt

i'm using at the moment vlc hasn't ask for any codecs.

Hey guys I have a similar question, I am currently using windows media player with a 7.1 Creative Inspire, However I am quite sure that while I have made all the necessary changes to media setting not all seven of my speakers are actually working properly if at all.

Any feedback would be very helpful

i had the same problem, its strange, but after I updated the driver from the creative.com website everything worked perfectly...

but you have to be sure all your creative settings are set to play equally from all speakers, creative has different settings, check CMSS 3D to enabled, but NOT on the CMSS 3D mode, use the Stereo Surround option under CMSS 3D instead, otherwise it will try to make some 3d matix which travels to different speakers at different times.

and i think JetAudio is the best Audio player yet, though not perfect... it has dual diplay support, and alot of other cool options as well

i prefer winamp media player as the best player. As we can have the different music effects by using this player.

as far as a all-in-one media player that plays pretty much everything (for the most part) i would recommend...

"The KMPlayer" ( http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/ ) ... cause it seems like VLC is pretty popular but primary reason i like The KMPlayer more is when playing x264 video files VLC has issues skipping forwards and backwards with the slider bar which KMPlayer does not... but i think KMPlayer just has all around more options and i think it even uses less memory to.

plus KMPlayer has a all around solid interface to... and best of all is you dont need additional codecs installed for it to play just about any format.

p.s. in order to test the issue i was saying above about VLC player not skipping forward properly you will need to have all other media players uninstalled and then reboot and then install VLC and then test it... cause i noticed VLC works fine if i have other stuff installed like KMPlayer etc etc... so thats the only way to test it to see if the VLC app itself is working properly which i tried quite a few versions of it with the same results.

cause on all the 4.7GB x264 movies i played on it.... it cannot skip forwards or backwards properly with it's slider bar.

KMPlayer is quite good at playing many formats, and it provides a lot of options for tweaking both audio and video. I have encountered a minor problem with it playing in full screen--Icons on the desktop show through while playing. I looked through KMPlayer's forum but haven't found a way prevent this small issue. All adjustments I have tried in options don't help much either. NBR if you know about this and know a way to fix it that would be great. (sorry if a bit off-thread)

I tried Kantaris on the recommendation above, which appears to be a front for VLC. The UI will definitely attract some people who may be turned off by the ultra-generic VLC UI. Kantaris does add some things to VLC, but it also seems to omit a great many Options available in VLC as well. After about 10 days trying it I decided, for me, VLC is superior.

I am currently trying MPCStar which appears to be an enhanced version of Media Player Classic (or the next generation of it.) At present it seems about equal to Media Player Classic as I haven't managed to use all its additional features (the installation is about 3 times the size of Media Player Classic).

I seen references to a future release of MPCHomeCinema which will have full support for HD-Audio/Video playback, and probably eliminate the need for PowerDVD for that.

To make a long story short--at present I still prefer Media Player Classic.

VLC , no doubt unless you are watching BLURay or HighDef.

i have MPC which i use for Quicktime and Real Alternative.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...lternative.htm
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...lternative.htm

typically i use VLC for everything else. just for fun i tried playing some mp3's, VOB's and ISO's with MPC. the memory usage was slightly higher with MPC compared to playing the same files with VLC. also i had problems playing an ISO, the file opened and played okay until i tried to change the window size, went full screen and lost picture. exited full screen successfully but MPC froze. opened up VLC with the same ISO and no problems.

oh well just reporting my personal experience. have fun.

this was with MPC 6.4.9.1 and VLC 0.8.6i

VLC #1, Power DVD #2 IMO

Here is my list of Media Players and my personal favourite: http://www.driftingdots.com/float/mediaplayers.html