[SleepyP]

I have been working on re-doing my music library, and now that I have a fair bit finished I have begun wanting to actually LISTEN to the music. However, I've found that not a lot of players seem to "like" dealing with such a large library. I'm on Windows. My main player of choice is Songbird, but it runs a bit slow when starting up and when adding to the library. I have like 500 artists, 32,800 tracks.

Are there any good music player/managers (besides XBMC) that handle large libraries well? I haven't touched WinAmp in a long time, and haven't really investigated this much yet. I figured that people hanging out on this board are probably at least a little bit more media and software savvy than the average joe, and probably a few of you have the same problem (giant music library).
Your thoughts?

[AddictedToMetal]

Foobar2000 and Winamp IMO are the kings.

If you wanna dabble in linux, the I personally endorse Music Player Daemon and listen to the stream with just about any music app (XBMC included) on your choice.

[noumenon]

I use iTunes. sometimes takes a while to load (~25,000 tracks), and editing id3 tags can be cumbersome sometimes -- but this may be due to the fact that my itunes folder is on another computer. Sounds like it might have similar problems as soundbird, may be worth checking out though.

Another would be FLAC. I have a fair bit of my stuff in ALAC that I've had to convert from FLAC as iTunes won't play it... easily.

My only real gripe is that I can't easily assign multiple genres to a single track.

[SleepyP]

If I remember right Foobar requires some configuration and work to get it looking really nice. I played around with it a couple years ago.
Which one of these do you use and why? (if you don't mind my asking)

Songbird is about 20x better than iTunes (IMO), it just doesn't work with iPods.
Some reasons I like SB:
-Via extensions you can effortlessly retrieve and display lots of useful info about your media, like lyrics, new releases, reviews, biographies, concerts & tour info, etc
-Via extensions you can choose from a variety of different browsing methods, as well as choosing what info is displayed and how to display it
-is open source and cross platform (considered a feature or point in its favor if you care about such things)
-Tight & effortless integration with Last.fm
-nice & easy browsing of online streaming stations in directories like Shoutcast
-Tons of extensions allow you to install new functionality into it, like the ability to minimize to the system tray and get a pop-up notification when song changes happen

Things iTunes does that Songbird doesn't do:
-Better handling of podcasts (unless something has changed on this front, I could be wrong)
-Works with the newer iPods, iPod Touch, and the iPhone (SB only works with the old iPods)
-Access the iTunes store with the application
-Easy integration into Windows shell so that I can double-click a song and have it play in Songbird.

[SleepyP]

Also, MPD looks pretty sweet.

[AddictedToMetal]

Also, MPD looks pretty sweet.

Just understand (I didn't at 1st) that it's kinda like a server that serves up your music. I use it with it's built-in streaming. I can pretty much listen to my music from anywhere in the world. I use gMPC to connect to it and control it.

Though, with my 700+ albums, everythings just cued up and set to random.

[ashlar]

SqueezeBox Server is capable of handling huge music collections and it's free. You can play from the server with a software player (SqueezePlay, but there are other alternatives). It also supports an incredibly good app on iPhone/iPod Touch (called iPeng), which allows you to control every facet of it.

[flipped cracker]

i used Music Brainz to get all my tags in order and then use itunes to manage it after that (mostly because i have multiple ipods).

[webmosher]

If on Windows, try MediaMonkey. It is more oriented toward music management, but the player is halfway decent. My collection is at least as large as yours, and I have very few problems. The free version has all the core functionality most people need (tagging, auto-tagging, cover art download, excellent management facilities, etc) paid version adds a few nice features (collection automation, faster CD burn, better ripping options, etc), but they are generally not show stoppers. For around $20, its one of the best investments I have made in a software product.

Cheers

[natethomas]

I'm gonna send this to off-topic, but depending on how much we trend back towards XBMC related issues, I could definitely see returning it to general discussion.

[Stieffers]

I agree with webmosher 100%. I've been using MediaMonkey for the past year and haven't had any issues. My library is only about 30GB, so not quite as large as yours. However, I've heard nothing but positive feedback about MM's ability to manage large libraries.

[SleepyP]

I tagged it [Off Topic] so it would get moved to the off topic forum anyways

I have been fiddling with Foobar, and there are things about it I really like. Its extremely flexible and has a ton of plugins to make it very capable. However, I find the UI to be really kind of annoying, and half the documentation in their wiki won't load for me.

I can't figure out how to make it handle my "Various Artists" compilations, even though every other player I have used is OK with them as is. Any hints on how you set your Foobar up?

[krypt2nite]

I can't figure out how to make it handle my "Various Artists" compilations, even though every other player I have used is OK with them as is. Any hints on how you set your Foobar up?

Do your various artists CDs have the 'Album Artist' tagged as Various?




I've been a loyal Winamp user for 10 years. I find the Media Library to be pretty powerful

Winamp 5 does most all the stuff described in this thread and more. As you can see I have tons of custom filters setup to handle my massive library perfectly. You can also install Winamp ORB which allows you to stream movies/music to any device with internet. Everything integrates normally and naturally. I'm in the 30k+ club also and even with my extensive filtering everything loads pretty snappy.

230GB of music





Edit:
Oh yeah forgot to mention Winamp works perfect with any MP3 player when it comes to managing what songs are on it.

[SleepyP]

yeah, I haven't fiddled with WinAmp in like 3 years, it looks pretty nice.

And yes of course I have all my stuff tagged "properly", meaning compilations have the compilation flag set and Album Artist set to "Various Artists". Since when was the standard just the word "Various" ?