Can You Recommend an Efficient Windows Based Music Player?

Ogg Vorbis is a file format (like e.g. MP3), not a media player.

IIRC, FooBar2000 was very popular on Windows. AmaroK is also a much-praised media player that is set to release a Windows version anytime soon, so you could also await that.

I would recommend WinAmp since its pretty light-weight. Back when my laptop had 256mb of RAM, WinAmp would run seamlessly. Plus WinAmp has gotten a lot powerful over the years. Apparently they even have a plug in to support your iPod. Also if you want something just for playing music, I would recommend switching to an older version of WinAmp which even more lightweight.

I second the WinAmp recommendation. WinAmp3 is incredibly light, has a huge list of features and when the right skin is found, can be pretty too.

@ Vincentt: You’re right! Ogg is a file format. I just couldn’t remember the player I used for it. It was open source. Thanks for the correction Vincentt. I didn’t know Amarok was available for Windows. Someone showed it to me on an Ubuntu machine and I just assumed it was a Unix-only player. I’ll check into it.

@Mirza: I found older versions of Winamp at: http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp

Now, I just need to figure out which version was the best one :-)

I think when I was using it during its 2.x versions. I think I recall not liking 3.0 because it added a lot of stuff which (at the time) seemed extraneous. I also see that they have versions 5.x “Lite” which could be ideal.

Which version would you recommend?

Well, I believe it doesn’t run on Windows right now (though it has ran), but it’s supposed to be coming soon ;-)
I suppose VLC will play Ogg, and there’ll probably be many more. VLC is not that useful for large collections though.

Just an update: I installed Version 5 Lite and its amazing. It uses about 1.7 to 1.8 MB of RAM when minimized and about 2.7MB of RAM when it is maximized and in the forefront.

I think I am sticking with Winamp Lite on Windows.

Thanks to everyone for their answers!

winamp is great… 100’s of custom skins to choose from… Plus I believe you have the opportunity to stream over a network with the help of ORB

Check out Aimp2 http://www.aimp.ru/
Supports all formats including OGG
Great sound…
Nice skins too…

iTunes is free and it lets you burn cd for free without having to pay for an upgraded or more professional feature rich version. If you don’t have an iPod and are going to use another MP3 Player, you may not be able to use iTunes as I think it only syncs with iPods. There might be some folks out there that have gotten other players to connect to the iTunes software, look around. Cheers. (If you are pro PC and hate anything Mac, I apologize in advance.)

I like both the Mac and the PC and run both. iTunes is great on the Mac but it seems to slow the PC down. It takes a lot of resources when it runs too. I installed Winamp Lite and it is working great.

I must recommend MediaMonkey! I have tried most players out there and finally ran into this one. I still use either MediaPlayer Classic or VLC Media Player for the normal ‘double-clicking’ for file/song previews, but MediaMonkey is an amazing media player that has great support for tagging and visualization. It plays all formats easily and has a myriad of options for the power user.

Here’s a link to available media players through WikipediA. I hope it’s alright to post a link like this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_media_players#Audio_players

It gives a comparison of many media players and what OS’s they work on.

I second MediaMonkey. I was a Foobar2000 user for long time until I found MM. It’s great, lots of features and very customizable.
Auto Playlists are the best thing I’ve seen in any player (and these are native, no plugins required to create autoplaylists). AP are great, for example I have an AP for only items added to the library in the past 5 days.
MediaMonkey

It’s free and there’s also a cheap Gold version.

+1 for mediamonkey….i spent daaays looking for an alternative for it when i switched to my mac, and am sorry to say, could fine none. The only ones that came remotely close were Amarok for mac, and songbird, both of which were tooo buggy for me to possibly use.

That’s when I realised just how awesome and wholesome and complete mediamonkey was and how completely useless my music collection felt without it…you must try it out! I have the gold version, dunno how many of the features have been cut out in the free one though…but i’m sure it’ll still beat the other contenders by miles…

To be honest, I have actually switched to using songbird instead. Great player, not as many options as mediamonkey but has addon capabilities.

@HeNkiSdaBro , how buggy is it? I tried it on my Mac, and it was terribly buggy, so had to stop using it…maybe the windows version is more stable?

The windows version is now totally stable in my opinion. I use it daily.