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WHICH MP3 PLAYER
When just listening to mp3’s there really isn’t much to choose between the players. Which one’s you use will depend upon your personal
tastes. I, myself have the following set up.
- I use MusicMatch to listen to mp3’s that are on my hard drive because it has the best song management feature. When you add a
song to your library, it will automatically arrange it into the categories, album, artist, genre etc. It has a resizable “media window” to enlarge the artwork - see MusicMatch. It also has a “now playing” window which shows all the info regarding the song including artist name, song title, album title, genre, lyrics and biography. I also use this player to convert my songs to mp3’s as it is fast, and the resulting mp3 sounds a lot better than that created by the other players I have, including the one that is part of my professional recording software!!! Not bad for a freebie.
In the options menu, select settings and make sure that you un-check all the boxes that make MusicMatch the default player.
The reason I do this is because this player is big and takes a long time to load. It also fails to play a streaming file automatically. Doing this also stops the player asking if you want
it to be the default player every time you start it up.
- I use Winamp to listen to mp3’s that are on the Internet i.e. for streaming. This is because it is quite small and is very quick
to start up. By clicking on a link to a streaming file, it opens automatically and begins to play. I will also quite often use this player for listening to mp3’s that are on my hard
drive, in fact I set it as the default player for everything other than CD audio. To explain, if I am in Windows Explorer and double click on an mp3, Winamp opens up. But if I want to
listen to a playlist that I have set up I open up MusicMatch. Winamp has the excellent fairtunes plugin which keeps track of your favourite artists and songs - See above picture. You can
also make a voluntary contribution to your favourite artist from within winamp. Very convenient if you feel that the voluntary contribution concept is something that appeals to you.
In the options menu, select preferences, file types,
push select all then un-select wav, wma & cda. Uncheck “associate with audio cd” box.
- I use “Windows Media Player”
for cd audio, wav & wma as the other two make a “oomph” sound in between tracks. Real Jukebox is also very good for CD audio & wav files.
In the tools menu, select options, then the formats tab and tick everything apart from mp3.
Disclaimer All of the above steps are for versions: MusicMatch (6.00), Winamp (2.73) and Windows Media Player (7.00). They are a guideline for newcomers to the world of internet music. I hope they are helpful and accurate but make no assertions that they are!!!:-)
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