Best program to play music with on computer?

[camaross427]

So i am trying to get the most out of my computer's speaker set up...does what program i use to play the music (currently using microsoft windows media player) make a difference? if it does then what would be the best sounding and loudest program to use?
i will pay for a program too so it doesn't have to be free...
it just has to be able to play mp3 format music files...
thanks!

 

[michaelst_54]

So i am trying to get the most out of my computer's speaker set up...does what program i use to play the music (currently using microsoft windows media player) make a difference? if it does then what would be the best sounding and loudest program to use?
i will pay for a program too so it doesn't have to be free...
it just has to be able to play mp3 format music files...
thanks!

The player does make a difference in that they sometimes use different decoding software to render the file to sound. WMP is pretty good at nearly all formats. Another good one is WinAmp which comes in free and pay-for versions. The free version is quite good.

The clarity of a music file is dependant on it's bit-depth and it's sampling rate. A standard .wav file, the kind on CD's is sampling at 44KBps and has a bit depth of 16 bits. High-def audio, or S-audio runs at 192kBps or 96kBps, and 24 or 48 bits. MP3's range from 64khz/4bit to 320khz/16bit. A standard CD quality mp3 is 128/8.

The loudness is dependant on the recording. Many modern song files are compressed so heavily that there is very little difference between the loudest parts and the quietest parts, thus, they 'sound' louder.

To maximize the enjoyment of your PC sound, use the highest quality recordings you can find.

Also, I've used a nice plug-in for WMP call OzoneMP which gives some very nice options to enhance bad recording, and polish good one.

 

[rexter]

Try this plug-ins too. http://www.fxsound.com/dfx/pages/download/index.php?vendor=0&subvendor=0&plus=0&refer=0