So the other day i went over to a buddies place to help him set up his projector and while there we started to discuss digital music playback via a PC. Since he was still using VLC i actually downloaded Musicbee for him and i suggested Musicbee instead of Foobar because Foobar still requires lots of fiddling and faffing around whereas with Musicbee you just install Musicbee and Asio-4-all ver 2.0 and you are good to go and its pretty easy
So i managed to notice that theres a newer version ie one that does a lot more for library and coverart functionality than any other free music playback software that i have come across (obviously Roon does more but you dont have to pay for this one and the only monetary cost involved is the internet time for scraping pictures and lyrics)
as soon as you open it it looks different from the older version ie it now has tabs on the top and to open an album you can open a new tab
it then embeds the art on the right hand column and downloads more thumbnails on the left hand side corresponding to the artist that has performed a particular track ie the example above is of a compilation style album with the actual album cover on the right and the various artists on the left
down below is an example of a single artist type of album
when you have a track playing you then click on the now playing tab on the top and it brings up different pictures of the album artist on a rotation basis ie it changes every couple of minutes as the track plays
it also seems to store all this new downloaded information in a central database because when you close and reopen this particular album as a new tab it retains whatever information it had already downloaded :thumbs:
all of this makes the program super interesting and great to look at on your screen so if you have your PC audio playback linked to a screen it looks damn fantastic and modern IMHO
the only issues here are that Musicbee still cannot play DSD in native format but if you dont have a lot of DSD then you shouldnt mind DOP [DSD over PCM](or you can use Foobar still for playing those files in the native format)
the best thing about Musicbee is that its very simple to use and extremely user friendly so even computer newbies will be able to use it within a couple of minutes of downloading it ie its very intuitive for novice users and you dont need a lot of computer knowledge or skill to use it
i still havent played around a lot with this version but i will keep adding tips on its usage as i continue and i will appreciate it if others can add tips as they discover new features :thumbs:
i still have to scan in my complete library which was done in the old version (it took ages so im procrastinating) but i will eventually get down to it and i will also check if it adds any new functionality and will report back on this but for now its made Musicbee into my favourite music playback app and if they add native DSD playback and also if the android remote gets half as good as the one for Foobar then i will stop using anything else but for now im swopping between using this and Foobar (this mainly for showing off the library functionality and Foobar for the serious listening because of that remote control app that Foobar has
:EGrin: )
So i managed to notice that theres a newer version ie one that does a lot more for library and coverart functionality than any other free music playback software that i have come across (obviously Roon does more but you dont have to pay for this one and the only monetary cost involved is the internet time for scraping pictures and lyrics)
as soon as you open it it looks different from the older version ie it now has tabs on the top and to open an album you can open a new tab
it then embeds the art on the right hand column and downloads more thumbnails on the left hand side corresponding to the artist that has performed a particular track ie the example above is of a compilation style album with the actual album cover on the right and the various artists on the left
down below is an example of a single artist type of album
when you have a track playing you then click on the now playing tab on the top and it brings up different pictures of the album artist on a rotation basis ie it changes every couple of minutes as the track plays
it also seems to store all this new downloaded information in a central database because when you close and reopen this particular album as a new tab it retains whatever information it had already downloaded :thumbs:
all of this makes the program super interesting and great to look at on your screen so if you have your PC audio playback linked to a screen it looks damn fantastic and modern IMHO
the only issues here are that Musicbee still cannot play DSD in native format but if you dont have a lot of DSD then you shouldnt mind DOP [DSD over PCM](or you can use Foobar still for playing those files in the native format)
the best thing about Musicbee is that its very simple to use and extremely user friendly so even computer newbies will be able to use it within a couple of minutes of downloading it ie its very intuitive for novice users and you dont need a lot of computer knowledge or skill to use it
i still havent played around a lot with this version but i will keep adding tips on its usage as i continue and i will appreciate it if others can add tips as they discover new features :thumbs:
i still have to scan in my complete library which was done in the old version (it took ages so im procrastinating) but i will eventually get down to it and i will also check if it adds any new functionality and will report back on this but for now its made Musicbee into my favourite music playback app and if they add native DSD playback and also if the android remote gets half as good as the one for Foobar then i will stop using anything else but for now im swopping between using this and Foobar (this mainly for showing off the library functionality and Foobar for the serious listening because of that remote control app that Foobar has
:EGrin: )
