From reading over at other forums i've come across the following two players. One for cd's and the other for mp3's that i find to be the best software for music playing avialable on the pc. And best of all both are 100% freeware. Check these out and post your opinions, after coming across them i'll never go back to other players. Especially looking to hear Fatburger's and AMD_Man's comments on these as i've valued your opinions on sound before.

Coolplayer For mp3's: <A HREF="http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/coolplayer/CoolPlayer205_Bin.zip?download" target="_new">http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/coolplayer/CoolPlayer205_Bin.zip?download</A>

Quintessential Player For CD's: <A HREF="http://www.quinnware.com/news.html" target="_new">http://www.quinnware.com/news.html</A>

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by williamc on 06/14/02 00:17 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

Read Hercules' FAQ on what software correctly uses their MP3 acceleration.

I normally use Winamp, but I don't really listen to music on my computer much.

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>

Herculees actually has a FAQ? They didnt even include a 1 page installation guide with the sound card=)

Cool Player is a ~350kb program unzipped. Takes extremely few resources and little processing power to run=) It has MAD built in and working better than the plugin for winamp and still includes all the nifty features i ever used from winamp.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out

Running Windows 2000 on 512MB of memory, I check Task Manager, and it's reporting this:
Winamp Mem Usage = 5,056 K
Coolplayer Mem Usage = 6,600 K

I have to admit, it sounds similar to Winamp. But with this evidence, I'll stick to Winamp. Of course, there might be better reasons, which is why I'll switch if anyone shows better reasoning.

Bryan

<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com" target="_new">btvillarin.com</A> - Host fixed network problems; I'm back up

If you have 512 memmory you shouldn't be using it all anyhow unless your playing Everquest...hehe.

The reasons i have for loving coolplayer are 3 part.

It has the MAD plugin for winamp built into coolplayer as default which means it has the best possible sound for mp3's right out of the "box". This gives a much higher quality sound when playing mp3's than a default or even modified winamp setup can.

Second is that winamp includes spyware and bloatware which i'd rather not put up with and do not need doing wierd things to my pc configuration. Coolplayer doesnt have that, its a simple little program that just does what its advertised to do.

Third is that on my machine it does in fact use fewer resources than winamp and it is also more compatible with game when i'm running it in the background, i've had problems with winamp before doing that.


But, above all, coolplayer just flat out sounds better and thats most important=)

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out

Yeah, I know I have more than enough. I was just comparing it...

I have no idea about the MAD plugin. Can you explain what this is and what Winamp uses (out of the box)? (PM if you don't think you should here)

I haven't read anywhere that says Winamp includes Spyware. Did Ad-Aware or SpyChecker.com catch something with it? I know mine didn't.

I might try running it while playing Counter-Strike, though. Hehe...

I guess just looking at it, I don't need the mini-browser. The good thing about CoolPlayer is it's small size.

Thanks,
Bryan

<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com" target="_new">btvillarin.com</A> - Host fixed network problems; I'm back up

reply was PM'ed.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out