X Multimedia System (XMMS) is an audio player for Unix-like systems released under a free software license.
Windows Media Player (WMP) is a discontinued media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio,video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system,as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices. Editions of Windows Media Player were also released for classic Mac OS,Mac OS X and Solaris but development of these has since been discontinued. Windows Media Player was eventually replaced in Windows 8 with Groove Music. Groove Music persisted in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10,before being replaced in turn with the Media Player in Windows 11.
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft,which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins,and features music visualization,playlist and a media library,supported by a large online community.
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows,iOS and Android developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design,which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Standard "skin" elements can be individually augmented or replaced with different dials and buttons,as well as visualizers such as waveform,oscilloscope,spectrum,spectrogram (waterfall),peak and smoothed VU meters. foobar2000 offers third-party user interface modifications through a software development kit (SDK).
RealPlayer,formerly RealAudio Player,RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2,is a cross-platform media player app,developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm,including MP3,MP4,QuickTime File Format,Windows Media format,and the proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats. RealPlayer is also available for other operating systems;Linux,Unix,Palm OS,Windows Mobile,and Symbian versions have been released.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software,tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.
The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
ReplayGain is a proposed technical standard published by David Robinson in 2001 to measure and normalize the perceived loudness of audio in computer audio formats such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. It allows media players to normalize loudness for individual tracks or albums. This avoids the common problem of having to manually adjust volume levels between tracks when playing audio files from albums that have been mastered at different loudness levels.
Amarok is a free and open-source music player. It is available for Unix-like,as well as for Windows and macOS systems. Although Amarok is part of the KDE project,it is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle. Amarok is released under the terms of the GPL-2.0-or-later.
JRiver Media Center is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows,macOS,or Linux operating systems.
MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project,often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality,including playing,pausing,and recording live TV;playing DVDs,videos,and music;viewing pictures;and other functions. Plugins allow it to perform additional tasks,such as watching online video,listening to music from online services such as Last.fm,and launching other applications such as games. It interfaces with the hardware commonly found in HTPCs,such as TV tuners,infrared receivers,and LCD displays.
MilkDrop is a hardware-accelerated music visualization plugin for Winamp and Kodi,which was originally developed by Ryan Geiss in 2001. It uses DirectX and intelligent beat detection to render iterated images which blend seamlessly. MilkDrop uses a complex system of interpolation to transition between presets gradually through time,creating a constantly changing visual experience.
Banshee is a cross-platform open-source media player,called Sonance until 2005. Built upon Mono and Gtk#,it used the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding,and decoding various media formats,including Ogg Vorbis,MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many portable media players,including Apple's iPod,Android devices and Creative's ZEN players. Other features include Last.fm integration,album artwork fetching,smart playlists and podcast support. Banshee is released under the terms of the MIT License. Stable versions are available for many Linux distributions,as well as a beta preview for OS X and an alpha preview for Windows.
Songbird is a discontinued music player originally released in early 2006 with the stated mission "to incubate Songbird,the first Web player,to catalyze and champion a diverse,open Media Web".
LRC is a computer file format that synchronizes song lyrics with an audio file,such as MP3,Vorbis or MIDI. When an audio file is played with certain music players on a computer or on modern digital audio players,the song lyrics are displayed. The lyrics file generally has the same name as the audio file,with a different filename extension. For example,song.mp3 and song.lrc. The LRC format is text-based and similar to subtitle files.
K-Multimedia Player is an Adware-supported media player for Windows and iOS that can play most current audio and video formats,including VCD,HDML,DVD,AVI,MKV,Ogg,OGM,3GP,MPEG-1/2/4,AAC,WMA 7,8,WMV,RealMedia,FLV and QuickTime. KMPlayer shows many advertisements,including in the homepage,side panels,options panel,and as pop-up ads.
The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison,"audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files,with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback,which can also play music,are included under comparison of video player software.
JetAudio is a shareware media player application for Microsoft Windows and Android that offers advanced playback options for a wide range of multimedia file formats.
MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows,built using the BASS audio library.
AIMP is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android,originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov.
