which music programme for a new lappy?

[bluebrazil]

i have just bought a new laptop and my plan is to put my favourite cd's on to it in a good high bitrate or lossless format, then put them onto an android phone. i have noticed this aint the old days anymore and windows media player is not there.

can somebody please recommend me an easy to use programme that i can get all the art and stuff with? i would like the art to be transferred to phone if at all possible.

i would also like to use the new laptop occasionally to play through usb to my chordette gem. the holy grail here would to be able to do this remotely either via same said phone (bonkers i know) or by using a windows tablet. I dont know whats possible these days so any input/suggestions are very welcome.

 

[Petherick]

WMP is still there in Windows 8.1, it's just not obvious. But then what would you expect??
I suggest dBpoweramp which can be used to rip and convert. There's a trial version available

 

[Anderson]

iTunes GOOD player and looks good

WMP GOOD player should play nicely with Android

Clemintine GOOD player and open source

 

[daveh75]

iTunes GOOD player and looks good

For a PC user with an Android device. What are you on?

 

[fr0g]

I second dbPoweramp. It's powerful, quick and lite. Worth getting the paid version.

If you want free, then EAC is good, but slower.

Both of these are guaranteed bit-perfect rips.

The same cannot be said for the worst recommendation of the day, iTunes.

iTunes is a shop. Not a music program. It's bloatware, pesterware and it is not guaranteed bit-perfect if that is what you're after.

If you can avoid it, I recommend not putting any Apple software on a PC. I would say the same for Java but that's harder to ignore.

 

[Anderson]

I don't get all the iTunes hate, it slick and works??

 

[SteveR750]

iTunes is bit perfect on a mac, as far as I know. It's definitley not on a PC. I use J River nedia centre to rip CDs onto my laptop, create playlists and dump them onto my android phone in their native resolution (inc hi res). I've got the paid for power amp app on my phone to replay them, including the hi res tracks. All of the files are in FLAC format.

 

[bluebrazil]

thanks for the suggestions, i will look further into all the recommendations

 

[bluebrazil]

so i went with wmp for now just to experiment with. one cd ripped in wav and transferred to the phone.

gracenote on the phone found the artwork etc so easy as pie to use, the whole cd came in at around 400mb, worth it i think for the extra sound quality. only drawback is that i bought a 32gb card so looking at only getting approx 80cds synced. but i cant really think of 80 favourite albums at the moment so no worries for now.

it even sounds superb over bluetooth to the gem, best i have ever heard it sound.

thing is tho i guess bluetooth audio has its limits and does anybody know if i am exceeding them. not an issue really as most listening will be done by headphones.

all in all i am happy with the improvements in sq.

 

[pauln]

so i went with wmp for now just to experiment with. one cd ripped in wav and transferred to the phone.

gracenote on the phone found the artwork etc so easy as pie to use, the whole cd came in at around 400mb, worth it i think for the extra sound quality. only drawback is that i bought a 32gb card so looking at only getting approx 80cds synced. but i cant really think of 80 favourite albums at the moment so no worries for now.

it even sounds superb over bluetooth to the gem, best i have ever heard it sound.

thing is tho i guess bluetooth audio has its limits and does anybody know if i am exceeding them. not an issue really as most listening will be done by headphones.

all in all i am happy with the improvements in sq.

Flac files (if your phone will play them) would be around half the size of wavs and you won't hear any difference; actually if you can hear the difference between a wav and a 320kbit/s mp3, on a phone, you have exceptional ears. What headphones are you using?

 

[bluebrazil]

i am using sennheiser 300's i think.

you could be right about the differences being hard to hear as now i am starting to think that some of it is the walkman player on the sony phone. i had a samsung before, (my first after 3 other sonys), and i thought the music player was awful.

its all fine for now though and by the time i get round to ripping 80cd's you can bet a 64gb card will have dropped in price. theres always a spare device for cards round here so i am not going to worry.