Music Player Suggestions

[Lee DeRaud]

I've been using Windows Media Player for years (decades?), but have recently run into some issues with it and am looking for some alternatives.

I have a dedicated Win7 netbook hooked to my receiver and the big speakers in the living room, a couple of Win7 desktops with speakers upstairs, and the Win10 Surface Book in the kitchen, with everything networked. Up until now, I've kept the 120GB or so of MP3s on one of the desktops up stairs, but I'm averse to having that machine on 24/7, so there's also a copy of everything on the netbook downstairs that gets synched up whenever I get new music. The Surface Book only has a 256GB SSD so I really can't keep a full copy on that one...I'd certainly like to, since the Bluetooth headphones I got for Christmas work great with that machine. (The less said about my experiments with Bluetooth dongles on the other machines, the better.)

I recently added a Synology NAS with 8TB of storage. Since that runs 24/7, it's the obvious place to use as the master repository. But I absolutely hate the streaming apps that came with it, so for now I'm just mapping the 'Music' folder to an "M:" drive on every computer in the house, and telling WMP to get its music there. That works fine except that WMP doesn't seem happy with using playlists from machines that didn't create them: it keeps reporting that it can't find the song files, even though they clearly exist and can be played if selected individually or as albums.

I'm currently trying the Groove player on the Surface Book, waiting patiently for it to build its database from the NAS. Problem is, it won't run on the other (Win7) boxes.

Any suggestions for an alternative? Note that (1) it doesn't need to handle video and (2) I have zero desire to stream music off the internet.

[Paul F Franklin]

Take a look at Plex. It's main purpose it to be a media server, which works great for serving music from my NAS to my network receiver on my main music system, but also will stream to just about any device on the network and works fine as a web based player. You don't need apps on computers or devices, just a web browser. I have lots of playlists and it handles them nicely. It also works with Alexa on all my Echo devices if you care about that. "Alexa, tell plex to shuffle the background music playlist", etc....

[Chuck Wintle]

I've been using Windows Media Player for years (decades?), but have recently run into some issues with it and am looking for some alternatives.

I have a dedicated Win7 netbook hooked to my receiver and the big speakers in the living room, a couple of Win7 desktops with speakers upstairs, and the Win10 Surface Book in the kitchen, with everything networked. Up until now, I've kept the 120GB or so of MP3s on one of the desktops up stairs, but I'm averse to having that machine on 24/7, so there's also a copy of everything on the netbook downstairs that gets synched up whenever I get new music. The Surface Book only has a 256GB SSD so I really can't keep a full copy on that one...I'd certainly like to, since the Bluetooth headphones I got for Christmas work great with that machine. (The less said about my experiments with Bluetooth dongles on the other machines, the better.)

I recently added a Synology NAS with 8TB of storage. Since that runs 24/7, it's the obvious place to use as the master repository. But I absolutely hate the streaming apps that came with it, so for now I'm just mapping the 'Music' folder to an "M:" drive on every computer in the house, and telling WMP to get its music there. That works fine except that WMP doesn't seem happy with using playlists from machines that didn't create them: it keeps reporting that it can't find the song files, even though they clearly exist and can be played if selected individually or as albums.

I'm currently trying the Groove player on the Surface Book, waiting patiently for it to build its database from the NAS. Problem is, it won't run on the other (Win7) boxes.

Any suggestions for an alternative? Note that (1) it doesn't need to handle video and (2) I have zero desire to stream music off the internet.

If its only for MP3 and such files I like Foobar2000. Its has a very straightforward interface and it does what it claims it can do. Aside from a somewhat funky name I find it works well for me.

[Jon Nuckles]

. . . I like Foobar2000. Its has a very straightforward interface and it does what it claims it can do. Aside from a somewhat funky name I find it works well for me.

Surely the makers must be aware of FUBAR? I wouldn't want that homonym associated with my software!

[Chuck Wintle]

Surely the makers must be aware of FUBAR?

Very unlikely they were aware of FUBAR and its meaning. But I can tell you the program does work very well and is not FUBAR at all.

[Lee DeRaud]

Ok, a couple of updates:
1. Groove was a waste of time. It seemed to work ok, until I discovered a bunch of missing music: 10 hours of runtime, it had only gotten about 40% of the collection indexed. And of course it doesn't work on Win7 anyway...so it goes.
2. I discovered that there's a "portable" version of MusicBee that keeps everything except the music files themselves in one place. I mapped my "home" directory on the NAS to drive "A:" (seriously, when was the last time you saw a PC with a floppy drive?) and installed it there. It took some key pounding to get all the WPL playlists converted to M3U format, but now every machine in the house is working off a single copy of MusicBee, playlists, and the library, so playlist mods and added albums are available everywhere instantly.

I suspect foobar2000 et al could be set up the same way, so I'll keep it in mind until I see how this lashup works out. If I run into any conflicts, there's also the option of keeping a copy of the app and a set of config files on each machine: it uses text config files which include pointers to the various key files, so I'd still be able to keep a single master playlist directory on the NAS. The UI is a bit fussy on the tiny netbook screen, but I usually don't do any real work on that machine, just select playlist and hit start.

I think Plex will work on my NAS, as it has an Intel CPU, but using a browser-based app has potential for the same things I hated about the native Synology audio streamer.

Thanks for the assist.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

I have been using iTunes. For a long time I thought you could only use music from the Apple store on iTunes, but that is not correct. You can use your own CDs. Sounds like you have everything already on disk.

[Kevin Beitz]

I went a different way...
I bought a FM MPG 12 volt transmitter made for a car cigarette lighter
and bought a 120 volt to 12 volt DC power supply for in my home.
I down load my music onto a SD card that fits in the FM MPG 12 volt transmitter. Now all my music is broadcasted all over my home to my FM receivers. I can also pick it up in my shop 1000 feet away.