Three audio players as Winamp alternative

Aren’t you bored of Winamp? Don’t you want something new on your PC, a player that brings something new, that looks different? You should know there are some alternatives. Winamp is not the only audio player on Earth. If you’re tired of the Winamp dictatorship, let’s see together what are the options.

AIMP

It’s the first suggestion I can remember. AIMP got to 2.51 version and has been created by a Russian guy, Artem Izmaylov. I want to say that AIMP is a thousand times faster and has much more functions than Winamp. It’s a strictly audio player. It doesn’t recognize video files like the newer versions of Winamp, but handles excellent the audio files.

Aimp - this is how the player looks like. Equalized - top right, DSP manager - down

It even has a coverter from/to MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG and others. I was astonished when I saw that AIMP even has a volume normalizer that functions perfectly to balance volumes of all songs. In other words, AIMP brings all songs to a certain volume level. You won’t hear a song played low and after that, a song that breaks your windows.

AIMP’s Audio library looks just like the one of Winamp, but I find the alignment on genres, artists and songs system, much more well-made. The sound also seemed somehow better, but it might be the enthusiasm in finding an audio player that excels Winamp.

This is the Audio Library in AIMP

It also has an extremely interesting feature that I haven’t seen on any other player: a DSP menu. You can find it on the bottom of the equalizer case and it makes some pretty extraordinary things. For example, it can increase or decrease the song’s tempo, it can increase or decrease tonality and can accelerate the song without modifying the tonality. Also, you can apply audio effects to a song. Reverberation, chorus, echo and flanger (a specific distort effect for electric guitars).

For a simple thing such as searching a song, you don’t have to press God knows what key combination. On the bottom of the window, you can find a quick search that solves your problem. You can create as many playlists as you like, that will be shown above the playlist and can be accessed by simply clicking on them. You can download AIMP over here. It’s free, of course. I myself won’t be uninstalling it sometime soon.

Foobar2000

Foobar2000 doesn’t astonish by design, but I haven’t seen a player that can support as much audio file types as Foobar2000 does. On installation, you are being asked about how you want the player to be divided, and to look. This is why I can’t say pretty much about tools disposition. Same as AIMP, Foobar2000 also has an extremely good song selector, by artist and album, but regarding the genres, I must say it has kind of screwed it up. It placed Angela Similea “Frumoasele mele lalele” to alternative. What’s curios is that it also placed it to tango. Not to mention that most of the Depeche Mode songs are placed to rock genre.

Foobar2000 - simple, clear, for everybody

Altogether, Foobar2000 is an extremely simple and easy to use player. It’s also very good at audio equalization. With no less than 18 bands of equalization between 55 Hz and 20 kHz frequencies that work pretty well. It has made a good impression and I like it way better than the complicated and ineffectual Winamp. You can download it for free over here.

Jajuk

Jajuk is an extremely complex and honest player, which I sometimes think resembles rather Windows Explorer than an audio player. Unfortunately, Jajuk can’t classify songs pretty well, most of them being unknown. Jajuk opens in a window that can be maximized to fit the whole screen. On your left, there’s a menu that contains varied types of visualization according to the organizing grade. For example, the first one, Files, gives you a list of all files and directors you’ve included in your audio library. If you click on Tracks you can find songs ordered by genre, then by artist and finally by song. The Albums menu, obviously shows the included albums. What I liked about Jajuk was that he could find covers for most of the albums. It connects to last.fm and automatically downloads them.

Jajuk looks more like Windows Explorer

It’s pretty clear what Playlist does, but it’s a pretty difficult process. You have to apply some filters to find the songs you’re searching for, and then you can add them to your playlist. With Jajuk you can even listen to radio, for example. On the left bottom side, you’ll see an icon of a red radio with an antenna. You have a list full of online radios or traditional ones, that are online on air. Of course, you can configurate the list. Altogether, I liked Jajuk and I think it deserves a chance. You can download it for free over here. You also have the option to try it online, in Flash version.