Music player that DOES fsck up music -- in a good way

[Jafo]

Hello, all. In reference to this thread, which was about music players that don’t fsck up the sound, I decided to spin off a new thread rather than hijack the old.

TL;DR version: I want a modern Winamp with Ozone Free.

Normal version: To me, they all seem to fsck up sound. Winamp, VLC, Dopamine, foobar, classic, next gen and Super Deluxe Happy Fun Time WMP, iTunes, Audacity, and they all sound pretty much exactly the same — hard, sharp, squared, cold, precise, digital, whatever words we choose to use, it all means the same thing. They all suck. Moreover, once you correct for volume and EQ and all those little things that actually make a huge difference, there isn’t much difference left. (Probably by design, just as with most digital EQ designs — maybe the devs all share the same cookbook.)

It's probably more accurate to say that they're accurate, and that that behavior sucks.

Maybe what we really need are pluggable players? I’ve stuck with Winamp for subjective centuries, simply because of Ozone Free for Winamp. I’d go Pro or buy the actual VST plugin if I had any free money, but I don’t, so I can’t. I’d just stay with Winamp, but it’s unstable and not cross-platform. Or VLC, but it only seems to let you write plugs for craptacularly stupid things like visualizations and library manipulation. I found foobar to be little better than Winamp, so it’s out. iTunes plays Microsoft’s ‘I AM the OS, Thy God!’ power game, and who needs that kind? But I digress. Rant in a faintly paranoiacally and sacrilegiously manner, rather.

So… Is there a free, stable music player which allows for plugins that actually affect (heh, or “effect”) the sound, instead of just the look and feel?

One which is cross-platform would be great, so I could use the same player on all my boxen, but I that would make writing plugins a challenge.

One which doesn’t want its database to become your filesystem? (I’m archaic; I dislike fragile systems. iTunes took forever to assimilate my pitiful 100GB music collection, and it had to update its database several times a week. A purely filesystem-based browsing would have completely eliminated that.)

One which is preferably 64-bit. (Yes, I’m an irrational snob, but in my defense, Winamp became unstable as soon as I switched to a 64-bit OS.)

And this is just a personal taste thing, but I also prefer a player that doesn’t look like Fischer-Price or Washington made it or its interface.

[BertKoor]

they all sound pretty much exactly the same — hard, sharp, squared, cold, precise, digital, whatever words we choose to use

My conclusion is that the tracks you play DO SOUND hard, sharp, squared, cold & digital. Not the fault of the audio player

maybe the devs all share the same cookbook

that IS right!
Like there is only one recipe to boil water (heat it until it boils) there also is just one to play audio:
* If not PCM stream: decode it!
* Forward raw PCM stream to a socket (through WDM, ASIO, WASAPI, whatever) that ends at the DAC & audio plug.

[Jafo]

they all sound pretty much exactly the same — hard, sharp, squared, cold, precise, digital, whatever words we choose to use

My conclusion is that the tracks you play DO SOUND hard, sharp, squared, cold & digital. Not the fault of the audio player

I completely agree; that's why I'm hoping to find something to soften them up a bit. Even just a simple tube or tape saturation plugin would be nice. Ah well; maybe it's time to learn to code for real.

[ablaut]

Get MusicBee (Windows only) and you can even use VST FX plugins!
https://getmusicbee.com/addons/plugins/ ... s-support/