MusicBee

I saw something on this forum about recommended apps, and MusicBee was mentioned. I gave it a download and I have to say I'm impressed!
It does everything a music player should, including WASAPI exclusive and lossless support - something the Microsoft media player is sadly lacking. Easy to set up and use to.
CD ripping, tagging, all in one free app. I did have Foobar installed but that's now gone, no need for it with this.

BrianInEngland said:

It does everything a music player should, including WASAPI exclusive and lossless support - something the Microsoft media player is sadly lacking.

Click to expand...

What "lossless support" are you talking about? Cause flac files are definitely lossless, and they play just fine. I know this because I tested it after reading your post, as all my music files are flac. No issues here.

Dru2 said:

What "lossless support" are you talking about? Cause flac files are definitely lossless, and they play just fine. I know this because I tested it after reading your post, as all my music files are flac. No issues here.

Click to expand...

Lossless as in Hi-res (higher than CD quality such as 24-bit 48/88/96/192KHz sample rates). I know FLAC is lossless but I don't know if the Windows media player supports hi-res, it certainly doesn't support WASAPI exclusive. I should've specifically mention 'Hi-res' in my original post, apologies.

BrianInEngland said:

Lossless as in Hi-res (higher than CD quality such as 24-bit 48/88/96/192KHz sample rates). I know FLAC is lossless but I don't know if the Windows media player supports hi-res, it certainly doesn't support WASAPI exclusive. I should've specifically mention 'Hi-res' in my original post, apologies.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's also playing my hi-res files. Here's a copy of Hiromi's Move album in 24-Bit / 192Khz (purchased from HDTracks) currently playing on Windows Media Player (Legacy)...



File Info as shown in JRiver Media Center (JRMC), which is my primary media player....



Album is definitely playing without issue, distortion, or hiccup. As for WASAPI, I can't say there; however, JRMC most definitely supports it. Also supports ASIO.

All that said, I don't use Windows Media Player as it has nowhere near the features and customizations that JRMC has.

Dru2 said:

Yeah, it's also playing my hi-res files. Here's a copy of Hiromi's Move album in 24-Bit / 192Khz (purchased from HDTracks) currently playing on Windows Media Player (Legacy)...

View attachment 45374

File Info as shown in JRiver Media Center (JRMC), which is my primary media player....

View attachment 45376

Album is definitely playing without issue, distortion, or hiccup. As for WASAPI, I can't say there; however, JRMC most definitely supports it. Also supports ASIO.

All that said, I don't use Windows Media Player as it has nowhere near the features and customizations that JRMC has.

Click to expand...

Yes Media Player will *play* them but can you confirm it's not down-sampling to 48KHz or 16-bit? I could be wrong, perhaps it does play them correctly. No exclusive output is a no-no from me anyway. I've tried JRMC, it is good but for my needs MusicBee is more than adequate, and free

BrianInEngland said:

but can you confirm it's not down-sampling to 48KHz or 16-bit? I could be wrong, perhaps it does play them correctly. No exclusive output is a no-no from me anyway. I've tried JRMC, it is good but for my needs MusicBee is more than adequate, and free

Click to expand...

I cannot confirm whether WMP is down sampling the files or not. I do know if sound settings are set to 24/196 the files play at that setting without issue. I can see this via my DAC displays the sampling rate a file is played at. I did however discover WMP doesn't support ASIO.

With that, I answer this way, the player will play files encoded in 24/196 flac format. Also shown on my DAC's display. Which is set to NOT oversample, so whatever the file is playing at is where it will sit.

All that, I'm in no way advertising Windows Media Player, I was just curious as to your statement. At the end of the day, we use the player that suits our needs. If MusicBee works for you, that's all that matters

BTW, to be clear, this was Windows Media Player (Legacy), I was toying with, so....