Music Jukebox For Pc - Best?

[Fatgodzilla]

Okay, time to make the big move. I have over 300 music cds but space and playing opportunity makes most of them very unnecessary. So I want to place them all on a hard drive and play through a PC stereo. I have the usual My Music program from Windows XP on the system, but is there a better system. I want to be able to type in a song and play it, or type in an album and play it, or even play random songs from a selection of albums / all albums etc. I've seen a few programs advertised via Google, but guessing someone here has done this before, recommend some programs to me please.

Remember I am old and not exactly a techno expert, so I want a simple system to use that will give me what I want and not much else.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Use CDEX to burn them to your HDD, in MP3 format at a high sample rate to keep the clarity

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Winamp is a good program to play songs

http://www.winamp.com/

 

[Fents]

didnt Bonj make some sort of jukebox for one of the Qld swaps? like a real jukebox with a PC inside it? not helping your threap OP just remincissing.

 

[Fourstar]

Winamp is a good program to play songs

http://www.winamp.com/

Winamp was my first idea, you can setup media libray and playlists. :beerbang:

Low clutter, has internet radio built in (Shoutcast) and low resources required too.

 

[MarkBastard]

If you have Vista or Windows 7 home premium it comes with an application called Media Centre. If you buy a remote it's a good full screen application to play music and video files through. It's designed to work more like a piece of hi-fi gear than a normal computer application. I'd give that a go personally.

If you want to use your keyboard and mouse then there's a million options.

 

[mr_tyreman]

If you have Vista or Windows 7 home premium it comes with an application called Media Centre. If you buy a remote it's a good full screen application to play music and video files through. It's designed to work more like a piece of hi-fi gear than a normal computer application. I'd give that a go personally.

If you want to use your keyboard and mouse then there's a million options.

+1million

This program is great, just type whatever song you want or album and away you go, its very easy to use, simple layout, also handles music videos, TV and all sorts of stuff. Much better than my experiences with winamp, but that was like 10 years ago

cheers

 

[Gulf]

Songbird gets my vote: http://www.getsongbird.com/

Although I don't use it much myself, it's easy to use and has some nice features, like grabbing artist news/bios/pictures/lyrics off the web, alerting you when artists are touring, smart playlists, synch to shitePods etc... (I think it can rip your CDs for you too)

Being a geek though, I'm more of a folders-full-of-files, right-click, play in VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) type of person - actually, these days I just use Totem in Ubuntu, but you should ignore us crazy Linux users...

As mentioned, CDex is excellent for ripping your CDs. Just make sure you've set it up well though before you start with good codec settings (>192kbps) and CDDB so it names tracks/files automatically for you.

 

[Peteoz77]

Why not just use the best possible option?

iTunes is free, and it's AWESOME! Works on PC as well as Mac, allows you to share libraries on the same network, and is WAY simple to use.

Regardless of what anyone says, it is VERY much used in the PC world.. and if you ever get an ipod.. well it's plug and play....

 

[MarkBastard]

iTunes is an abortion you should only use if you're forced to (ie if you own an iPod)

 

[Hatchy]

iTunes is an abortion you should only use if you're forced to (ie if you own an iPod)

Easily the worst piece of software I've used when I wasn't getting paid to use it. It's the only reason I've got a windows partition on my laptop. I'm seriously considering putting Linux on my iphone so I never have to use itunes again.

Music player in Ubuntu for me but I may have to look into Totem.

 

[Fourstar]

Why not just use the best possible option? - Winamp?

iTunes is free, and it's AWESOME! Works on PC as well as Mac, allows you to share libraries on the same network, and is WAY simple to use. - Winamp?

Regardless of what anyone says, it is VERY much used in the PC world.. and if you ever get an ipod.. well it's plug and play.... - So is winamp!

I havn't used iTunes since i got my ipod (back in 2005) and it killed my directory formatting. Got to love all your metadata getting stripped form your songs and replaced with 01,02,03 <_<

 

[bum]

iTunes is pretty rad on Mac put is pretty awful on PC. Locks up on my lappy every time.

 

[MarkBastard]

It just installs all sorts of useless Apple bloatware I don't want on my computer and forces you to have this crap running whenever you want to sync your iPod. Really shits me off. Plus the interface is balls.

 

[Fatgodzilla]

It just installs all sorts of useless Apple bloatware I don't want on my computer and forces you to have this crap running whenever you want to sync your iPod. Really shits me off. Plus the interface is balls.

Tried DS's first suggestion, plus Wimamp and am comparing now to Windows XP version of Music Player. Haven't yet worked out they really meet my needs of easy playlisting, but its fun to play withanyway. Thanks all for the great advice.

 

[Peteoz77]

Why not just use the best possible option? - Winamp?

iTunes is free, and it's AWESOME! Works on PC as well as Mac, allows you to share libraries on the same network, and is WAY simple to use. - Winamp?

Regardless of what anyone says, it is VERY much used in the PC world.. and if you ever get an ipod.. well it's plug and play.... - So is winamp!

I havn't used iTunes since i got my ipod (back in 2005) and it killed my directory formatting. Got to love all your metadata getting stripped form your songs and replaced with 01,02,03

Wow, that's almost like a personal attack!

If I cared.. I would reply to your Winamp posts... but I don't

Over 200 MILLION Ipods have been sold, and they ALL use Itunes.. so yeah, it must really be crap program... I have been using it since 2001 and I love it... that's over 9 years and NO problems.

But of course, use what you like!

 

[leiothrix]

10,000,000,000,000 flies eat shit - they can't be wrong!!!!

iTunes is shit. I don't know why apple can't just let you put your files straight on to the device like everyone else does.

Winamp is a pretty good program. It's not the best if you're wanting a home theatre pc type setup. Using something like WinLIRC you can control it with a remote (well, play, pause, volume, etc functions anyway), as long as you've queued your files up beforehand.

There are plenty of programs available for home theatre type setups though - Comparison of PVR software packages (wikipedia)

Rob.

 

[Peteoz77]

Wow leiothrix.. thanks for the upbeat input!

guess I'll keep my helpful hints to myself....

 

[jonocarroll]

I know this is somewhat OT, but it's a nice place to put it.

iTunes is free [...]

Regardless of what anyone says, it is VERY much used in the PC world.. and if you ever get an ipod.. well it's plug and play....

See below.

iTunes is an abortion you should only use if you're forced to (ie if you own an iPod)

See below.

Over 200 MILLION Ipods have been sold, and they ALL use Itunes.. so yeah, it must really be crap program...

You're suggesting that because people use what they believe to be the single available option, it must be good? By that definition, Windows was and always has been great!

iTunes is shit. I don't know why apple can't just let you put your files straight on to the device like everyone else does.

See below.


The below bit:

1. Install Ubuntu 10.04 (cost $0.00)
2. Plug in iPod/iPhone/iWhatever
3. Open Rhythmbox (Ubuntu Music Player)
4. Drag-and-Drop music files between computer and iDevice.
5. ???
6. Profit.
7. Game, Set, Match: Linux.

This does not require jailbreaking, hacking, installing anything special, or violating crApple's TOS. I am using an out-of-the-box Ubuntu installation and an unmodified iPhone 3GS. Music and pictures can be moved between devices easily. My understanding is that it works so well out of the box, that Apple are trying to figure out how and why.



Rhythmbox will store a music library very nicely, allow you to sort by artist, album, etc; connect to a DAAP (iTunes) server, internet radio, create playlists, etc...

 

[MarkBastard]

Only problem with that is using Linux puts you on the slow and inevitable road to being a no good pinko!

 

[mxd]

I use Uncle T's

here's same vids of mine

Just the PC (POS PC) (Point of Sale, but also a Piece of Shit)