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October 14, 2003
Review: Music players
I really dig music.
More than that, music is essential to my view on who I am and what I believe humanity is. I have never heard a genre that didn't have some redeeming quality. I have, however, heard many players that didn't work at all
Mp3s (and WAVs and AACs and WMA), however acquired, represent a huge boon to the music consumer. They allow us to take files that are large (CDs run roughly 10 megs/ minute of music) and make them smaller, while keeping most of the original quality. Yes, there is a loss; that loss is usually small enough not to matter. I have a Huge Mp3 collection, most of which is even legal...
An Mp3 is only really part of the equation, however. One needs a player to listen to it on. For years WinampM was my player of choice. It is small, free, and has a high level of customization. The problem with it is that it cannot create Mp3s, leading me to either steal them or use another program to create them...
Windows comes with its own media player, the boringly named Windows Media Player. I am not fond of that one at all. It works well enough for the few video clips I watch, but it is bulky and non-intuitive for anything more than one file at a time. Also, it will only create windows-proprietary formatted files; thus locking me into it forever. No thanks...
realone has all the problems of the windows media player, without the benefit of being free
So far I have found only one program that I am willing to pay for, the ubiquitous Musicmatch. MusicMatch only plays audio files, and does cost money. But it organizes very well, creates ID tags like no one's business and rips CDs incredibly fast. There were a few days where I had deleted it from my machine, those days were rather unhappy... I recommend this product wholeheartedly...
What are the rest of you using?
Posted by Andrew at October 14, 2003 11:08 AM
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Comments
Well, I'm using iTunes, which has the ability to convert files to either mp3 or AAC. AAC has better sound quality, but some players can't play it.
Overall, I'm very satisfyed with iTunes -- which, by the way, is going to be available for Windows later this month. It was suppose to be released in December or Janurary, but a little thing called Napster 2.0 launched and, well, you can guess the rest.
Posted by: Ted at October 15, 2003 12:18 PM
Speaking of Napster, what is your thoughts on their new price...99 cents per song and 9.99 per album.
Think about what its going to do to music stores, they will be forced to sell cds cheaper (which is awesome). Whos going to pay 15-25 dollars per cd when you can get it for 10 bucks.
Its going to be rad!
Posted by: Mike at October 17, 2003 07:35 AM