A Better Lossless Player
Wed, Mar 7 2012, 10:39PM
I swear every single lossless player available for download seems to be the same: you want to hear songs from an album file? 1st you must go to the player, then hunt down and bring over the files to the player! They all seem to doing it this way since Microsoft is running the show. Every one of them follows their lead. You have to bring the files in and build a "play list" within the player. What I want is the same thing but in reverse... I go to the folder. I click on the 1st FLAC file from the folder that I want to hear and the thing just starts playing. The common sense way! I mean, when I'm browsing thru my album files, I decide there and then what I want to hear. Not the other way around! The question is, are there any software programs out there that play lossless files like this? It's the same as when you click on a MP3 or WAV format file. Up comes your ‘Windows Media Player’ and It just starts playing. But it will not work on anything that Microsoft didn't invent.
Any solutions? Thanks. RAT BASTARDSON will be watching ;)
Thu, Mar 8 2012, 1:35AM
#2
RE: A Better Lossless Player
hate to insist but Media Monkey will play FLAC files. You can disable Windows
Media Player. You can even uinstall it as it is no longer bundled with Windows. ITunes will play Apple Lossless or ALAC files plus MP3s.
Thu, Mar 8 2012, 9:32AM
#3
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Download foobar2000, it's excellent. You can customise it to your heart's desire. Make it your player of choice, and it's click-and-play.
Thu, Mar 8 2012, 3:41PM
#4
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Here is how to disable Windows Media Player if you are using Windows 7
Go to Contro Panel, click on Uninstall A Program
Click on Turn Windows Features on or Off
Uncheck Media Features
Hope that helps.
Thu, Mar 8 2012, 6:49PM
#5
RE: A Better Lossless Player
RAT SAYS:
Thanks all for the immediate feedback. I will try the tricks and software that you have all taken the time to recommend here. Then I will get back to you and tell you what I think. I currently use Windows Vista so I'm hoping it will have the same way to disable the WMP that was mentioned here for Windows 7. I do have the Monkey player already installed. Haven't had to use it since I learned long ago how to convert APE files to FLAC. The other player recommended here sounds even better so I will look into that first. I have often regretted not converting all my lossless downloads to WAV right off from the get-go, but that was three years back and now I have thousands and it is no longer practical.
Thanks again, and rest assure that RAT will return! I hate people who ask questions in forums and then never come back to give the results. Not just for the sake of those who took the time to unselfishly give their help, but also for the future searchers out there that will have the same dilemma. I will be back. Besides... I like it here :)
Thu, Mar 8 2012, 10:39PM
#6
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Fri, Mar 9 2012, 8:39AM
#7
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Hello all... RAT here.
I found what I was looking for, though not in the way that I had imagined. I tried the foobar download and it installed and it worked fine. With individual FLAC files, that it. When I tried to right-click on a folder in order to play an entire album, it would not allow me a "name your own program" option. One of the choices that was present in the dialog box was "Play with VLC media player". It turns out that I had already installed the VLC player a few months ago in order to play the bigger 96,000hz 24-bit HQ audio files that you run into from time to time. Still in the 'footbar completion' mode though, I found that there was no place to remove the VLC choice from the dialog box (so I could insert the footbar program instead). That's when it hit me... Just use the VLC program and be done with it all. Which is what I did. Now I have it handling all of my lossless files, both when played as individule songs or entire album folders. Both ways. And it does so simply by right-clicking on the album folder and then selecting VLC to play. Bingo! Instant music without having to create any of those silly stupid playlists (designed for the short mentality of the 20 and 30-sumtin crowd, I personally feel). Once the thing materializes on the desktop, I can just sit back and dig the sounds, or I can select "playlist" in order to display the entire album content. Just in case I don't like the first song and want to skip it, or select any of the others in combination or whatever.
Again, thanks to all who replied. I guess that sometimes we find answers to our questions in funny backwards ways, and I'm very glad I did. I was getting very of re-locating all of those lossless files over to my Efony player. Especially when I am three sheets to the wind :). Plus now, even the wifey thinks she can do it! (Efony is a great converter tool but not too hot on the playback, it seems).
Cheers!!
RAT BASTARDSON
Fri, Mar 9 2012, 4:16PM
#8
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Nice to read you have solved your problem. But strange that you couldn't make foobar your player of choice. Oh well... You now can listen to your music!
Fri, Mar 9 2012, 11:58PM
#9
RE: A Better Lossless Player
I could make foobar my default program, but only on the individual FLAC file level. When I right-clicked on the entire album folder, there was no choice for making anything my default. But the funny thing is, the VLC program that I had previously downloaded was there in the dialog box as a choice to play the entire folder with. I don't know how it got itself in there. It must have automatically done it when it downloaded originally. Regardless, I couldn't find a way to oust it and insert the foobar program instead. So I just went with the former and it's really working great! Now it's just as easy to play a lossless file as it once was to play an MP3. Nothing to it. The VLC player plays everything, BTW. Even those high-quality lossless files that I spoke of earlier. And it was right there all along. I just never noticed it. Thanks for your time and your comment.
RAT
Sat, Mar 10 2012, 12:03AM
#10
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Could you share the download link for the VLC program? Thanks.
Sat, Mar 10 2012, 7:40AM
#11
RE: A Better Lossless Player
RAT here...
Got you covered.
http://www.downloadster.org/vlc.php
Great trippy graphics, too.
RAT over and out
Sun, Mar 11 2012, 5:26AM
#12
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Nobody seems to have mentioned that the VLC player does not support gapless playback so you may find that playback of continuous music which is divided into individual tracks is unlistenable.
Foobar 2000 is much better in this respect than any other media player that I know of - it has completely gapless playback.
It's also very easy to create a playlist in Foobar 2000 if you don't already have one for a particular album - so that you can start the playback of the complete album with just one click.
Mon, Mar 12 2012, 8:17PM
#13
RE: A Better Lossless Player
I have no problems with VLC, gapless or othewrwise. It plays fine. Right thru each track, or you can skip a track or two or whatever. It plays just like Windows Media Player, almost . It creates its own playlist so I don't need to mess with that anymore. I don't even need to enter the album's folder to play the music files. Right click on album folder... click Play with VLC player.... Boom. End of story. I don't know about this problem having to do with gapless playback. Never heard of it. What's that all about?
RAT BASTARDSON
Mon, Mar 12 2012, 10:03PM
#14
RE: A Better Lossless Player
Gapless playback is crucial when you are playing opera for example. With iTunes or Media Monkey for example tracks will play seamlessly without any interruption or gap. Let's say you are listening to The Ring of the Nibelungen. You wouldn't a gap between the Prelude and when the Rhine Maidens start with their Weia Weilalala because it would spoil the continuity of the music. Hope that helps.
Tue, Mar 13 2012, 1:12AM
#15
RE: A Better Lossless Player
I have no problems with VLC, gapless or othewrwise. It plays fine. Right thru each track, or you can skip a track or two or whatever.
VLC does not claim to have gapless playback and there are many
comments on the VLC forum about this. As parisboy42
says, gapless playback is crucial when playing classical music where a
movement
is split into a number of tracks.
WMP is only virtually gapless
if crossfading is implemented
What I want is the same thing but in reverse...
Any solutions? Thanks. RAT BASTARDSON will be watching ;)
Oh Rat, Rat, may I call you Rat. I've been wanting the same thing in reverse for years, years I say. But will we ever get it, can we ever get it, should we ever get it. I fear the powers that be will never give us the same thing in reverse. But I'll be watching too, just like you and hoping.