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Microsoft gets an Urge

Saturday, May 13, 2006 by Draginol | Discussion: iTunes

Andre from Windows Connected has spilled the beans on Microsoft's "Urge" (our NDA wouldn't let us talk about it). 

Urge is a new music service that will come with Windows Media Player 11.  It is a team up of Microsoft, MTV, VH11 and CMT. According to Andre, the goal is to provide a better experience for users to download music with more detail about the content, albums, and artist information.

Another interpretation is that it's a "better iTunes than iTunes" though the model seems to be more akin to a combination strategy where users have the choice of subscribing or buying content per piece.  Other information we cannot say due to our NDA (we can only repeat what's been made public so far).

It appears iTunes is going to have some serious competition. Windows Media Player 11 not only has key features such as this, it also has a streamlined user interface that makes using it far more appealing than previous versions.  The WMP team has really outdone themselves this time.  

We'll have more details on Urge as they're made public.

   

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BlueDev's PC media player smackdown - Part II

the verdict is in!

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 by BlueDev | Discussion: iTunes

Untitled It is time for part two of BlueDev's incredibly long and drawn out PC media player smackdown! I do feel I should clarify that I am focusing on audio players in this competition. Some of the mentioned entries play video as well, but since I just don't watch videos on my computer (with the exception of an occasional funny clip or while transferring our own), I really don't care about that. So there.

Also, since audio quality will be a large factor in every player's evaluation it is worth noting that testing was made using professional Bose headphones.

Today I will probably be a little more succinct with the entries as I am attempting to cover more ground. So bear with me. These entries are what I refer to as the dark horses: players that are perhaps not as well known as the ones I mentioned previously, but they deserve a good look as well. So here they are, in a bit of a random order, but also based on how well I know the program (ones I don't know as well come first).

CoolPlayer: A free, open source little audio player that has a fair number of fans. I had checked out CoolPlayer a while back and thought it was a pretty solid audio player, but very stripped down (At the request of dabe I decided to take a look at it again). CoolPlayer has a lot of capabilities for such a small file. Freeform skinning, plenty of file types supported (especially with plugins since it is open source), it starts up nice and fast, and is simple to use. The graphic equalizer is nice as well.

Pros:
  • Freeform skinning
  • Small file that runs very quickly and uses little system resources
  • Good audio codec support
  • Open source (this always earns bonus points with me)
Cons:
  • No media library management
  • All playlists must be created by the user (as opposed to WMP, iTunes and Winamp that can generate dynamic playlists from your library based on artist/genre/album etc.)
  • Sound quality is while not terrible, is not terrific either. Lacking in clarity in the higher frequencies and depth in the lower frequencies
dbPowerAmp: From Illustrate, the folks who make the dbMusicConverter (one of my favorite little programs) comes dbPowerAmp. Sporting freeform skinning, media library management, wide codec support and a graphic equalizer I was hoping for a great player. Sadly what I got was a program that felt unpolished, ran sluggishly when managing my library, sounded pretty weak and locked my volume control from being adjusted with my hotkeys (even when it wasn't running). As much as I wanted to like this program it was uninstalled after testing.

Pros:
  • Efficient resource use by only loading the components you need as opposed to everything
  • Wide range of supported codecs (if it is audio dbPowerAmp probably can play it)
  • Freeform skins
Cons:
  • Installation locked my system from responding to volume control hotkeys. Maybe this isn't a big deal to others, but I hate having to open the volume control on my taskbar when I have nice little keys on the front of my laptop that do it for me. It also would not respond to Fn F5 or F6. This was not limited to when the program was running. I had to uninstall it to restore function
  • Sound quality is muddy and weak, even with excessive equalizer tweaking
  • The media library does not group well according to album, making media library management cumbersome
Quintessential Player: I gave this one a spin also on a recommendation. Free form skinning and lots of plugins are the big draws according to the front page of the site. It looked promising. There are quite a few very nice looking skins available for it, and it ran quite nicely. But media library management fell short as did the other common theme for the day: sound quality. Even with some of the DSP plugins I could not get QCD to sound up to par with some of the other players.

Pros:
  • Many high quality skins available
  • Good plugin support to extend the capabilities of the player
Cons:
  • Poor audio quality was QCD's biggest downfall. It would have stayed on my system if it didn't sound so muted an gummy.
  • Media library management was lacking. You can add many files, but the playlist just isn't set up to handle a long playlist and keep it nicely organized.
The Core Media Player: Part of CoreCodec.org, a pretty expansive team of media codecs/players, The Core Media Player is a solid little player that impressed me enough to stay on the system for a while. Touting good skin and plugin support, sadly I have had troubles accessing those libraries and so cannot give definitive word on how well they work. Good media library management and sound quality work in this player's favor.

Pros:
  • Good skinning capacity (from the shots I have seen, haven't had a chance to use them myself)
  • Good media library management
  • Good sound quality, but still lacking in the clarity of the high frequencies
Cons:
  • High resource use. Using the default skin I am hitting nearly 40 megs of RAM while not minimized
  • Sound still lacks some clarity
  • They do cripple the player a bit, wanting you to purchase the pro version (this isn't the only player to do so, and isn't major, but worth mentioning)
WX Musik/Musik Cube: I am going to consider these together as WX Musik was the precursor to Musik Cube. Very similar in both their layout and their features, I actually prefer WX Musik a bit as Musik Cube seems to lose my equalizer settings every time I close it. The layout for both is very similar to that of iTunes, just without the Macish look to it. Media library management is solid and allows for easy access to your different albums, organizing according to Artist>Album. Solid programs, but sound quality is the major downfall here.

Pros:
  • Clean, efficient layout and library management makes these both easy to work with
  • Open source
Cons:
  • Poor sound quality, even with equalizer tweaking
  • Resource management issues. Musik Cube only used around 11 megs of RAM when not minimized, but was using an outrageous 60-80% CPU at all times. Bad sign
Apollo 37z: The homepage says "Sound quality is not skinnable" and they weren't kidding. One of the worst looking players I have used (it even ignores Window Blinds!). I could forgive all that in favor of top notch sound quality though. But I just didn't get it. It sounds good, but not as good as it should for basing itself strictly on sound quality. Apollo opens exceedingly slowly if you have a large playlist, and it has no media library management.

Pros:
  • Sound quality is what Apollo is all about (even though I was non-plussed)
Cons:
  • Looks very ugly, ignoring even Window Blinds
  • Very poor handling of large playlists
  • No media library management
Jet Audio: Jet Audio is a sleek looking player with some great skins and even the ability to set up your own Jet Cast (shoutcast) internet radio stations (once I had the port forwarding configured on my router, it was pretty easy to do). Sadly, underneath that there just isn't much reason to recommend this player. Sound quality is very sub par, even with all the options for environment and such. Media library management is there, but is cumbersome to set up your albums initially. Once that is done it is great, but it took me too long to set up, so I never did.

Pros:
  • Very good looking player. Lots of eye candy here
  • Jet Cast is fun (but I was never sure about the legality of it and so never really broadcast)
Cons:
  • Difficult media library management
  • Poor sound quality, sounding shallow and muddy no matter how I tweaked it
VU Player: A free audio player that supports multiple codecs and doesn't promise anything extra. VU Player is a simple, fast, resource lite player that wins big bonus points thanks to its really good audio quality (once you tweak the eq). It handles large playlists with ease and doesn't have any extra eye candy. Media library management is really nonexistent though, as are any skinning hopes. That said though, I really like this player.

Pros:
  • Excellent sound quality
  • Low resource use
Cons:
  • No skinning whatsoever (though at least this will us Window Blinds skins)
  • No media library management
foobar2000: I have to admit up front. I am totally foobiased. I will try to be as objective as possible, but my love of this little player will undoubtedly color my summary. At least you know I am biased. foobar2000 is a small, resource lite audio player. "Out of the box" it supports many audio types, and an available special installer will install plugins that cover just about anything out there. foobar2000 does not support any sort of skinning, but does accept WindowBlinds skins. At first glance foobar is pretty plain to look at, but it handles large playlists flawlessly. And audio quality is what foobar is all about. No media player I have ever heard has both the clarity in the high frequencies or the richness in the low ones that foobar2000 does. Its open component architecture allows for many plugins and this player is incredibly customizable (there is an almost 90 page thread at Neowin about customizing foobar). One of the coolest things is as long as someone has the same plugins as I do, all they have to do is copy the foobar.cfg file to their folder and they can have things set up exactly as I do. There are lots of folks who will work on a particularly nice config and then share it.

Pros:
  • Amazing audio quality. Second to none in all the players I tested
  • Very resource lite
  • Can handle media library management nicely once the database is set up
  • Extremely customizable
Cons:
  • Plain and boring to look at (at least until you tweak it, then it can look pretty nice - see examples)
  • Because it is so customizable it can be a little daunting to jump right in and start using
Here are examples of what foobar2000 looks like after a fresh install and what you can do with pretty minimal tweaking, first the default interface and second my current config:





The Final Verdict: So after all this I feel that I must elect a winner. I am afraid I cannot say without hesitation which one is the best though. I am going to have to direct myself at two different groups. First, if all you want is an all purpose audio player that works well, manages your music with minimal effort and sounds good I have to give the nod to Windows Media Player. However, if you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty a bit, play around with things, sacrifice a bit of eye candy, and have the best sounding player out there then I recommend foobar2000 without hesitation. Taking into consideration my personal preferences I would call foobar2000 the overall winner. It is simply an outstanding player, with the best sound quality and customizable to my hearts content.

If you stuck through and actually read this entire thing, just let me take this last line to say thank you.
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