I have a couple of rather noob questions, so please bear with me... 1. Why do people look elsewhere than WMP for playing, converting and ripping music? 2. Which (non-techie) software would be preferable to WMP for a modest music collection (need not be free)? Thanks in advance, Cruise PS.. If it matters, I'm running Win7 x64
Hello Cruise, I can't speak for others but the reason I don't use WMP for playing or ripping is that I found it made too many mistakes both with my existing collection of ripped albums and with new rips that I tried. It also messed up some of my existing rips, putting tracks from one album in with tracks from another. The obvious alternative is iTunes but although it's rips are reasonably reliable I've always had problems with getting it to reliably embed the album artwork which as far as I'm aware it won't even try to do unless you are signed into the Apple Store through your installed copy of iTunes (you must therefore have an Apple account). I personally use more than one program for these jobs (EZCD Audio Converter for ripping/burning and MusicBee for playing) but I've been doing this stuff for quite some time so have plenty of experience and a reasonable understanding of what all the ripping settings mean and their effect on the resulting quality of the rip. My suggestion for you to try would be Nero Media Home. The free version includes CD ripping and playback plus subsequent playback of your ripped album collection. When I was using it I found it ripped and fetched both the album artwork and track details reliably. It also includes photo management capabilities which you may not want, in which case you can simply ignore that part. There are also some other modules which you can add to Media Home that are not free eg for DVD and Blu-Ray playback etc but again you can ignore these extras. I moved on from Nero when I decided I needed more advanced facilities but it would make a good place to start in my opinion and should work fine on W7/64. Regards, JB
I agree with JB's reasons for not using WMP, plus I've run into missing audio codecs (in WMP) which I've needed at times. I prefer an all-in-one audio software product called MediaMonkey (the 'swiss army knife' of audio software). MediaMonkey is available in both free and paid (Gold) versions. I have the latter, but the free version is quite capable so I would suggest that you first try that out to see how well MM can do the job for you.
I can't speak for others, so I really can't answer this question for them. For me, I go with the alternative, for extra features, customization and most important, the layout of the overall player. I like using MediaMonkey and I also highly recommend it. - They offer a free and a paid version
For playing, it is quite simple, WMP does not have a lot of codecs built in and I do not like installing codec packs on my PC, so WMP is not my go to player. For converting and ripping, I do not use WMP because it only offers WMA or MP3 ripping/converting. And in MP3, only CBR mode is allowed. I like to rip my MP3's in VBR as it gives better overall quality. This of course is for the WMP that is included in Windows 7. I do not know if they made improvements to the one included in Windows 8, 8.1 or 10.
For ripping CDs, I've always used Exact Audio Copy to ensure a quality rip. I've never liked WMP as an audio player, and prefer something with a much smaller window.
Thanks to all for the interesting feedback. I have d/l MediaMonkey and will give it a go. It's too bad that bloated WMP can't be removed.
Been using EZ CD Audio Converter for years. Not free, but comprehensive & very feature laden. http://www.poikosoft.com/audio-converter
