Comparison of audio player software

The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.

General

Operating system compatibility

This section lists the operating systems on which the player works. There may be multiple versions of a player for different operating systems.

1. ^ "foobar2000 for Mac". www.foobar2000.org
2. ^ "WineHQ - foobar2000 1.0". appdb.winehq.org

Features

1. ^ Basic function with NMM
2. ^ Context Browser uses CSS.
3. ^ UIs may be switched. Shares Windows' themes by default. Additionally, a plugin (foo_looks) can skin foobar2000.
4. ^ Using DCOP
5. ^ Flexible tagging is the ability to read or write custom tags, apart from the default ones like title, album and date. Users can use custom tags to provide additional information to media files. Custom tags work via ID3v2.4 (via the TXXX tag field), Vorbis comments and APEv2.
6. ^ Through use of the Advanced Tag Editor.
7. ^ "Repeat A/B"
8. ^ Paid version only
9. ^ Through Audio Pitch, Speed plugin

Audio format ability

Information about what audio formats the players understand. Footnotes lead to information about abilities of future versions of the players or plugins/filters that provide such functionality.

1. ^ Requires External Encoding App

Container format ability

Information about what container formats the players understand. Footnotes lead to information about abilities of future versions of the players or filters that provide such functionality.

Scalable, composite and emulation format abilities

Protocol abilities

Information about which internet protocols the players understand, for receiving streaming media content. Footnotes lead to information about abilities of future versions of the players or plugins that provide such functionality.

1. ^ Only WMA files are playable by foobar2000 through an RTSP connection. RealMedia, AAC, etc. are not supported.
2. ^ 3rd party plugin for 0.9 allows reading RSS 2.0 feeds as playlists. No subscription/automatic update features.
3. ^ Present in version 3.0 currently going through Alpha Testing.
4. ^ As of 0.9.2 it allows reading RSS as podcast source. Issues if links in RSS do not point directly to playable media. Automatic update of podcasts available.

Playlist format ability

Information about which playlist formats the players understand.

Metadata ability

Information about what metadata, or tagging, formats the players understand. Most other containers have their own metadata format and the players usually use them. Footnotes lead to information about abilities of future versions of the players or plugins that provide such functionality.

1. ^ Understanding of ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2 and Vorbis comments is handled by an external library called TagLib.
2. ^ Amarok does not understand embedded covers.
3. ^ Yes Archived 2012-05-12 at the Wayback Machine, but buggy.
4. ^ There is a plugin called CD-TEXT Reader adding such a feature.

Optical media ability

Information about what kinds of optical discs the players can play. Footnotes lead to information about abilities of future versions of the players or plugins that provide such functionality. Playback of Super Audio CD is not possible for any media player, because no suitable hardware exists. All media players capable of audio CD playback will also play the Redbook core of any HDCD disc, providing no sound-quality benefits over standard audio CDs.

1. ^ "DVD-Audio Decoder and Watermark Detector". SourceForge. February 24, 2024.
2. ^ "Foobar2000: Components Repository - HDCD decoder"
3. ^ Requires K3B
4. ^ "How to rip audio from DVD/DVD Audio"

See also

• List of codecs
• List of open-source codecs
• Comparison of video container formats
• List of podcast clients

Notes

1. ^ Plugin available.
2. ^ Available through a Winamp plugin.
3. ^ Amarok uses non-Amarok libraries to decode audio. It will play any file for which a codec is available on the system. The default libraries in Linux are from the GStreamer project, and in Windows from the VLC project.
4. ^ Available through a FFmpeg plugin.
5. ^ Available through the opusfile plugin.
6. ^ Available through a Gstreamer plugin.
7. ^ Available via plugins that can be automatically downloaded during installation.
8. ^ Provided by the "curl" plugins.
9. ^ Provided by the "ffmpeg" plugin.
10. ^ Provided by the "mms" plugin.

References

1. ^ "Audacious - An Advanced Audio Player". audacious-media-player.org. Retrieved 2022-09-08.
2. ^ "MusicBee help and FAQ". getmusicbee.com
3. ^ "Releases · clangen/Musikcube". GitHub
4. ^ Chow Loong, Jin (2012-01-02). "With plug-in remuco-exaile". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2017-04-18.
5. ^ Kuzník, Ondřej; Christine, Spang; Tristan, Seligmann (2017-01-23). "With plug-ins Ex Falso and Group Tagger". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2017-04-18.
6. ^ "Amarok/GettingStarted/Download/Windows". Retrieved 24 February 2013.
7. ^ "VLC playback Features". VideoLAN Organization. Archived from the original on 3 January 2010. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
8. ^ [1]. Spotify.com.
9. ^ Import and export m3u playlists. Spotify.com.