< backYou must have a 486DX or better to play realtime on PCs, and will have to downmix from stereo to mono if you are using a 486-33. A Pentium 133 or greater is recommended for best performance and sound quality. At this point in time, this warning should be obsolete - if it applies to you then your computer is obsolete and you need a new one :-)
WinAmp is a "damned good" :) MP3 player for Win9x/NT. It has Graphical EQ, windowed and full screen visualization, playlist pditor within the program, volume and balance control, a spectrum analyzer/oscilloscope display and more. As of version 1.45 the player supports streaming audio. It can also play wav, mod, wma files and CD's and save any supported format to PCM .wav (including CD Audio for supported drives).
The best thing about it is the plugin architecture - it allows the addititon of audio processing features and new file formats, so you can use WinAMP to play AAC and VQF files too. This is the definitive standalone audio player on the internet. BTW, they got bought by AOL and the player is freeware now (again) and ships with Netscape (another 'acquisition').
Music Match This is a relatively new program which in addition to being a high quality mp3 player includes an mp3 encoder and a playlist maker - the playlists can include CD Audio tracks and mp3, mp2 and realaudio files from a local disk or internet location. Files can be named and categorized easily, and track information can be retrieved from the CDDB automatically. CPU reuirements are moderate, but you should be OK with a P133. Output can be saved to .wav format (for making Audio CD's). Can use WinAMP to play files in place of it's own playback engine. Try it out!
Soundserver adding data...This is a cool program.
Wplay is based on the excellent Xaudio decoding engine. It has 'skins' support and very low CPU usage. It is quite a good program and even the Xaudio developers recommend it over their own GUI (no longer available). It's available from it's home page at Xaudio.
WinPlay3 is available from Fraunhofer's site. A 32-bit version (wp32v23b5.exe) with long-filename support is finally available with this edition, as well as a new 16-bit version. This beta version is free and does not appear that it will ever expire. My testing indicates lower processor usage as compared to v2.0, on the order of 5-10%. About ~40% CPU usage while decoding 128k stereo .mp3's on my old P100 running Win95b with an ESS1788 sound card and ~4% CPU on my PII-300 running Win98 with a SoundBlaster AWE64Gold. Meaning it has the lowest load and highest output quality of all players tested (and I have tested about 35).
This is the reference for sound quality and has yet to falter on any compliant mp3 file. When variable bitrate was introduced, it was one of the only compatible players and it was already ~1 yr. old.
maPlay A freeware mp3 player available from Jeff Tsay's site has MP3 realtime playback capability on Windows 95 or NT. It requires at least a Pentium-75 CPU for stereo streams. Mono downmixing capability has been added and it can play MPEG-2 layer 3 files (used at lower sampling rates). A new playlist editor is included. The source code for the program is available and can be easily ported to other platforms. A command line version is also available.
Windows Media Player Versions 6/7/8, come integrated with various version of windows. This program utilizes Fraunhofers ACM decoding engine. It's easy to setup, works exceptionally well and is available from windowsupdate or Microsoft. Media player 7 adds some 'trendy' looks and playlist support as well as improved handling of Video files - WinME ships with it standard and updates are available for Win98 and 2000 (i.e. not 95 or NT4). Media player 8 (part of XP) adds some cool visualization and is actually good (where 7 was just annoying).
Windows Media Player 9/10, Microsoft's windows media audio/video 9 are very good. The WM9 media management is better, but still not all that good. Media Player 10 has a much nicer interface.
iTunes supports mp3, aac and apple's lossless format. The excellent integrated store and the support for the very popular iPod make using this application a no-brainer. Air-tunes support allows you to stream audio wired/wireless to another room. My favorite feature is the smart playlist. It can automatically select music based on any number of parameters (most importantly, your own rating of a song) and build a playlist that updates automatically. iTunes 4.6 and later have a party shuffle mode that lets you make an on-the-fly playlist from your library (or another playlist).
Quicktime 4/5 can playback mp3 files pretty well, and it also adds support for Mac audio types and the very common Quicktime movies (super-popular for movie trailers). Even if you don't use it for audio-only applications you will wind up using it for something. So, put some apple in your Win-box.
Quicktime 6 supports mp3/mp4-aac. In fact, as of now it's the best quality low-complexity AAC encoder available - which is a good thing, since that's one of the formats used in iTunes.
iTunes supports mp3, aac and apple's lossless format. The excellent integrated store and the support for the very popular iPod make using this application a no-brainer. Air-tunes support allows you to stream audio wired/wireless to another room. My favorite feature is the smart playlist. It can automatically select music based on any number of parameters (most importantly, your own rating of a song) and build a playlist that updates automatically. iTunes 4.6 and later have a party shuffle mode that lets you make an on-the-fly playlist from your library (or another playlist).
Quicktime 4/5 can playback mp3 files pretty well, and it also adds support for compressed movies (super-popular for movie trailers) and even editing and content creation. Even if you don't use it for audio-only applications you will wind up using it for something. You should already have a copy, but make sure it's up-to-date at the homepage.
Quicktime 6 supports mp3/mp4-aac. In fact, as of now it's the best quality low-complexity AAC encoder available - which is a good thing, since that's one of the formats used in iTunes. OS X ships with it AFAIK (if you update it, careful Final Cut users, sometimes it will hose your system).
SoundApp adding data...
MacPlay3 The first MP3 realtime player for Mac is available from Fraunhofer's site (mpl3_14b2.hqx). The current release is v1.4b2 (updated 97/05/27). You must have a PowerMac and System 7.5.2 or later to use Fraunhofer's realtime player. For best performance, SoundManager 3.1 is recommended.
Mpecker This program was originally based on Tobias Bading's maPlay - it is a PPC MacOS program designed to either play audio MPEG files through the CPU's audio device, or to write the decoded information to a storage device in either PCM or AIFF form. Mpecker can decode MPEG Layer I, II and III files and recognizes both the MPEG-1 algorithm and the MPEG-2 LSF algorithm. A tracklist can be maintained and played sequentially or in a random order. Tracklists can also be loaded and saved.
Xaudio Now in version 1.0. This program is available for Linux 2.0 (x86), FreeBSD, Solaris (Sparc and x86), Irix (6.2 or 6.3) and BeOS (DR9). Future versions are planned for Linux (Sun Sparc/DEC Alpha) and NextSTEP.. It is available as a free download (version 1.0 - this version will not expire). Xaudio also supports MPEG Audio Layer 1 and 2. Support is planned for Dolby AC-3 and .wav, .aiff, .au, etc. in future versions.
maPlay A freeware mp3 player available from Jeff Tsay's site is available for many systems. Mono downmixing capability has been added and it can play MPEG-2 layer 3 files (used at lower sampling rates). This program is available for Linux, OS/2, BeOS, HP-UX, and FreeBSD. A new playlist editor is included and the playlists are portable between platforms. The source code for the program is available and can be easily ported to other platforms. A command line version is also available.
mpg123 co-authored by Michael Hipp and Oliver Fromme, is a fast, free, and portable MPEG audio player for Unix. It supports MPEG 1.0 layers 1, 2, and 3, and has been tested on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX and others. For full CD quality playback (44 kHz, 16 bit, stereo) a Pentium (133 or better), SPARCstation10, DEC Alpha or similar CPU is required. Mono and/or reduced quality playback (22 kHz or 11 kHz) is possible even on 486 CPUs. TK3play is a front-end for the mpg123 program with interface customization.
mpeg3play Johan Hagman has written this decoder/player for Solaris. It is an MPEG layer 2 and 3 decoder/player based on public ISO/MPEG decoder source code. The original software was a slow but portable MPEG to AIFF decoder, impossible to use as a real-time player. Johan optimized the source code to the point where it became possible to use the decoder for real-time playback, and he modified it for output to the Solaris audio device. mpeg3play binaries and source code are available. The source code can now be compiled to run also on Linux (since version 0.9.1), HPUX 9.05 (version 0.9.3), Amiga (version 0.9.4) and IBM AIX (version 0.9.5), and FreeBSD, Solaris(x86), SunOS 4.x (version 0.9.6).
XMMS (formerly X11Amp) is a great Linux mp3 player. Features include Visualization, O'Scope and spectrum analyzer and streaming file support. It includes skin support (WinAMP compatible) and can dock in Gnome, afterstep and windowmaker. It also supports plugins for expansion of capabilities. Check it out at X Multimedia.
mpega This programs library is the basis for most of the Amiga mp3 players. Version3.4 Can play mp3 files in realtime on an '060 CPU, 68020 minimum. It uses a commandline interface, but frontends are available. The readme has some more details.
AmigaAMP This is the PowerPC compatible version of mpegahi, by the same programmer. This version can read and edit ID3 tags and be operated from the commandline. You'll need some libraries to get it to work, so check the readme
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