sound quality of GSplayer vs windows media player

[Kowalski]

i ve been searching an alternative to built in windows media player for mp3 and i found that gsplayer is the best around in functionality.
but when it comes to sound quality none of the players we better than wmp.
there are lots of controls for echo,3D sound etc. but none of these controls made good sound output, and when i turn on the equalizer, the sound quality gets worse.
does anybody have opinion about the situation? any suggestions?

[ctmagnus]

What kind of headphones (style/brand/model/price range) do you use?

[Kowalski]

i use phillips sbc-hs430 which has excellent sound quality. which is not too expensive, in the middle price range

[IceCaveman]

I agree, I have tryed every single music player I've heard of and non of them comes close to WMP9 when it comes to audio quality, like the others just don't know fully how to get the soundcards working, almost as crappy as some soundcards are with linux on PC.

[jeffmd]

I searched google and found not one review on the philips sbc-hs430, and the price was pretty cheap, so I question it's quality compared to midrange seinhouser(sp) or grado 60/80's

Wmp9 is the worst player in the world for pc. get Winamp and tack on the MAD decoder plugin for the best decoder available, If you have ANY sound problems after this, blame your headphones, or your sound card.

On pocketpc, well you got many options. GSplayer and pocketMVP/betaplayer use the MAD decoderl, though GSplayer definetly lacks in the GUI department. Personaly I use pocket player. I'm not sure if it finally upgraded to the mad decoder or not, but quality is great reguardless (my dell ppc dosnt have a steller sound chip anyways.. high hiss factor compared to others, on the other hand the volume is so high on its lowest setting, I have to turn on the eq so I can force the pre amp LOWER) it has good playlist options, crossfading, and best of all, you can slap a sweet looking winamp skin onto it.

[ctmagnus]

on the other hand the volume is so high on its lowest setting, I have to turn on the eq so I can force the pre amp LOWER)

I got around this on my iPaq using a little extension with a volume control that I got at Radioshack for around $7CAD.

[Kowalski]

and the price was pretty cheap, so I question it's quality compared to midrange seinhouser(sp) or grado 60/80's
the price doesnt always reflect the quality of the product. since there is a newer model in the market the one i use has a low price but i am very happy with my headphones.
i dont agree that wmp9 is the worse mp3 player around. it could have a better UI but sound quality is more important issue here

[Janak Parekh]

i dont agree that wmp9 is the worse mp3 player around. it could have a better UI but sound quality is more important issue here
My experiences differ from yours. I've used several MP3 players on the Pocket PC and all of them have the exactly same quality as WMP (if you keep the features off) and potentially better quality with tweaking (although one has to be very careful to avoid distortion, especially when playing with equalizers). Coupled with mediocre playlist management, heavy CPU overhead/memory overhead and the lack of Ogg support, it's gotten to the point where I don't even consider WMP for music playing.

--janak

[jeffmd]

hmm they called ppc2003 wmp version 9 dont they. leave it to ms to screw it up. Does pocket wmp9 even play wmp9 encoded movies? i heard it didn't. I also heard it dosn't properly or fully decode wmv and wma9 streams. and its not even close to a version 9 of pocket wmp.

well I dont have ppc2003, so I havnt used pocket wmp9, not that it LOOKS any different then the last one. ^^

[IceCaveman]

I play a WMA file on WMP9 with my sennheiser headphones and it sounds about right, try it in any of the other players that have grapical equlizer and it sounds flat in all of them no matter if I fiddle with the equlizer.

I also like with WMP9 I plug a memory card into it with my music and I don't have to make a playlist, just play from the card, good for me as I have memory cards I swap and it easier to sync my WM9 Lossless files with my PDA, it automatically converts it to prefered size and transfers to my device.

[Janak Parekh]

I play a WMA file on WMP9 with my sennheiser headphones and it sounds about right, try it in any of the other players that have grapical equlizer and it sounds flat in all of them no matter if I fiddle with the equlizer.
Hmmmm. That might be because of the way other players handle WMA - they have to go through a Microsoft plugin, which is limited.

If you try MP3 with another player, it should be the same, and Ogg should sound great. I've used Ogg for all my Pocket PC listening. WMP9 may indeed be the best program for WMA - for now.

--janak

[ale2999]

yea I use wmp in my ipaq with wma's it works great especially transferring the audio fromt media player pc to media player ppc (although sometimes for some reason it wount do it..)

[jeffmd]

pocker player also will autoplay list every mp3/ogg on your ppc in realtime.

btw I now seem to recall wma forces preamp on your audio, thats prolly why it sounds better to you, it has some eq settings applied to it by force while the others you have to manually set them up.

[felixdd]

WMP9 may indeed be the best program for WMA - for now.

It's probably the only one ever. MS is sorta stingy about releasing its WMA decoder to others. They made Winamp remove the WMA decoder from all their player releases.

[Janak Parekh]

It's probably the only one ever. MS is sorta stingy about releasing its WMA decoder to others. They made Winamp remove the WMA decoder from all their player releases.
Interesting. I think Winamp comes with the Windows Media redistributable, so that it can play WMAs. But yes, this is part of the reason I use Oggs more -- you get fantastic encoding quality and compatibility across nearly Pocket PC player. ;)

--janak