Give me MP3!

From playlist editors to fancy mixers, these MP3 players have it all. Choose one that suits your needsAfter weeks of extensive testing and rocking labs with MP3 music, we finally arrived at the rankings. Because each user’s expectations from an MP3 player would be different, we can’t suffice with a single winner. So apart from an overall winner, we have winners in two other categories.

Music freaks would definitely want more out of an MP3 player, than just playing MP3
file3s. That’s why we’ve selected a player with the greatest number of special features. Amateurs would prefer to have a very intuitive interface that requires the minimum time to learn and operate, hence we have a winner here too. And as a special treat, we’ve carried all of them on this month’s CD for you.

And the winner is…

WinAMP

The overall winner of our shootout is none other than the famous
WinAMP. It’s the oldest one in the pack, and the most widely used. What makes WinAMP the most feature-rich player is its open architecture. You can extend the player’s capabilities the way you want, and the possibilities are endless. It can be remote controlled by various devices–ranging from a simple joystick to an Infrared remote control. It can act as a SHOUTcast Internet radio broadcaster, and you can use any amount of DSP plug-ins to add effects to the audio. You can even use it as a DJ mixing software, a CD Ripper or an encoder.

CPU usage: 8 percent

Memory usage: 8,868 kB

Special features: DSP architecture; control architecture; WMA encoder.

Intuitiveness: 21/29

Extras: Tons of plug-ins and skins.

Supported formats: MP3, MIDI, VOC, WAV, CD Audio, MODS, Audio Soft, Mjuice Secure, ASF, and
WMA.

The most
Intuitive Player

Music Match Jukebox



The Music Match Jukebox 4 won everyone’s hearts with its ease of use. A single click can rip a song from an audio CD, convert it to an MP3 file on the fly, and add it to your music library. It also supports skins. But the player isn’t freeware. You’ll have to shell out $ 29.99 to register it.

And a special mention

MJ Studio

This is the most feature-rich player of the lot. It can act as a record turntable used by professional DJs. Not only this, it saves you a lot of hassle by calculating the beats per minute of a dance number you’re playing, and the indicators help you in synchronizing the song and mix it with another, and even scratch like real DJs do. The only limitation here is that it supports only MP3 and WAV formats. It didn’t score too high in other areas either. You need a high-powered machine to run it, as it hogs a lot of your CPU power. It comes as a restricted version –you’ll have to shell out $34.95 to register and get the full version.
 

More mouth-watering players

These MP3 players couldn’t make it to the top, but nevertheless have something special about them. 

AudioActive Player

If you want a simple MP3 player with no extra frills, this is definitely for you. It doesn’t hog CPU power, or memory resources the way some others do. It has an easy-to-use playlist editor. Its specialty lies in its decoder, which specializes in hardware-based MP3 encoding solutions. Its interface is pretty intuitive, but lacks certain basic features like a graphic equalizer and options to repeat and shuffle your MP3 files.

BPM Studio

This player covers up your entire screen with a complicated interface. Due to its complexity, it didn’t score very well on intuitiveness. It has advanced playlist management and mixing capabilities, and supports drag-n-drop playlist editing between various mixer windows and panels. It also lets you mix additional WAV and MP3 effects with your music. But it’s a major resource hog in terms of CPU and memory usage. 

Destiny Media player

The newest one on the block, this features Radio Destiny–an Internet broadcast channel by its makers. It supports a wide variety of playable formats and can even play AVI files. The player looks like a pocket radio and has a large volume control knob. This one needs a powerful machine as it eats up 13 percent of CPU power. 

FreeAMP

This player’s been around for a long time and is also available for Linux. It isn’t very heavy on CPU. It has support for skins, and an additional feature called Download Manager that helps you manage your MP3 downloads. It doesn’t support too many file formats, and scored average in intuitiveness. 

Jet Audio

If you drool over looks, this player will surely make your mouth water. Jet Audio supports most file formats. It acts as a Video CD player and a recorder as well. It has dazzling skins to change its appearance completely. It’s shareware and has a staggering registration price tag of $49.

K-Jofol

This cute-looking player supports both skins and plug-ins, has an extremely low CPU usage, and is completely free. But the player’s still in its pre-beta stage and isn’t very stable as of now. It has a tempo control knob on the interface that lets you do weird changes to songs by slowing them or speeding them up. It received a deserving 23 points for intuitiveness. 

MPEG DJ Player

A small and no-frills MP3-only player, its developers–X-Audio–are pioneers in MPEG Audio and Video decoding. Some of the other players in this shootout, such as MusicMatch Jukebox use audio decoding engines from X-Audio. This player takes up about 6 percent of CPU power. It’s shareware and the complete version is available for $20.

Real JukeBox 

The Jukebox trend was started by MusicMatch and then Real caught up with it. But the latter still remains more intuitive. It supports a lot of audio formats. It’s also priced the same as the MusicMatch Jukebox at $29.99. But compared to
MusicMatch, it takes up more CPU and memory resources. 

Sonique

This is one of the oldest players around and features a completely resizable interface. However, you’ll have to play around with it for a while or read the help files to get the hang of it, as it’s not very intuitive. It only plays MP3, Modules and Audio CDs. It doesn’t burden the CPU too much, and is completely free.

Unreal Player Max

No, this player isn’t based on Unreal (the game)—it’s just named that way. And it’s got some really solid features. It has a Reverb and Echo engine built-in and also supports skins and plug-ins. It’s also capable of playing MPEG Video, Modules, Archived Music and MIDI. It’s pretty much average in other features, and the best part is that it’s free. 

W Player Pro

If you’ve an old, not very powerful machine, then this one won’t overload your weak CPU. It supports both skins and plug-ins, and has an encoder and a CD Ripper built in. Being a simple player, it’s quite intuitive. But don’t expect it to be your default player for everything, as it supports only MP3 and audio CD formats. It isn’t freeware and costs $10 to register.

Y-AMP

“Yet Another Music Player” features a skinned interface that can be molded any way. It’s possible for it to spawn into almost any shape and size—you can turn it into a 3D Cube, or a Rainbow-colored triangle, or a round ball. Despite such fancy frills, it manages to keep memory usage to a minimum. It’s freeware and supports lots of formats.