Want an alternative to Winamp, UTF8 compatible players?

visuatrox · Post by **visuatrox** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:13 pm

I'm getting tired of Winamps dodgy way to handle UTF8 ID3 tags, even though there are patches and hacks avaible for it. I would rather use an application that supports it fully from the get go.

Well my only requirements are that the application is small (in otherwords not taking up half screen like windows media player) and simple, plays Mp3 files and handles UTF8 tags. I thought there would be plenty of alternatives out there, but searched and found nothing

So any suggestions for a good mp3 playing application?

(Windows Media Player would be good, if just microsoft could just slim it down visually, and cram the important information in a smaller space, but they bloated down the application with just too many features and visual junk).

freddiebamboo · Post by **freddiebamboo** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 3:14 pm

I used to use Steinbergs MyMP3 Pro, it's very useful for capturing live streams and editing along with managing and playing your tunes. Not the easiest thing to use, but makes most other players seem a bit lacking in options.

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/con ... 836,00.htm

I'm not entirely sure what UTF8 is though, so don't know if this has it.

visuatrox · Post by **visuatrox** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 4:57 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take a look at that application.

UTF 8 is a sort of standard character encoding. I need support for that so that I can see the Japanese characters of my JPop MP3's. If the application does not support UTF8, you just get a bunch of random characters or completely fails playing the files.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:24 am

Oh, I got it. Yeah, pain in the ass when I can't see the characters of Japanese songs. I know what I've downloaded and know what it is when I've loaded it up, but a line of ????? is annoying.

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 10:02 am

I switched from winamp to Foobar a long time ago and haven't looked back. You can customize your playlist in many different ways, it has a nice built-in mass tagger, and supports Unicode characters.

The default playlist displays "artist - [album][tracknumber] - title" which can require a fairly wide window, but it's easily changed to contain as much or as little info as you want. It can definitely be made as small, or smaller than winamp. I've seen a lot of cool customization of playlists before, but I prefer something clean and simple so I haven't strayed much from the defaults.

visuatrox · Post by **visuatrox** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:43 pm

Thanks, I downloaded foobar, and so far I'm pleased with the features. Full UTF8 support, tagger that does not mess up foreign characters, and gapless playback.. Basically it does just about everything better than winamp.

The only thing I don't like is that the player is a bit too plain looking and a bit chunky, and lack of fast access to volume control.. But browsing their forums I noticed a thread with screenshots, and there looks to be endless possibilities to configure it. So I will fiddle around customizing it and hopefully I will get the looks to what I want too