Our point of view
dBpowerAMP (Illustrate) has a complete set of software that makes it a real audio suite. The player reads audio CD, Wave files, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Midi files. Other standards (WMA, Monkeys Audio, Real Audio, ...) are handled if you install the correct plug-ins. Complete with an equalizer, a playlist editor, ... : a real jukebox ! A lot of plug-ins enhance the capabilities of dBpowerAMP Audio Player and skins allow you to customize the player.
To discover !

Download area
Download dBpowerAMP on the official website
Download plug-ins for dBpowerAMP Audio Player on the official website
Download skins for dBpowerAMP Audio Player on the official website

Our point of view
The VideoLAN client (VLC) is a media player. It supports a large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional codecs as it is usually the case with other players. For instance, it plays audio CD, DVD and VCD, Wave files, Mp3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, Flac, AAC, AC3, DivX, AVI, XviD... It has a playlist editor. Audio quality is excellent. VideoLAN (VLC) is totally free and is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Skins are available on videolan.org.

Download area
Download VLC media player for Windows on the official website www.videolan.org
Download VVLC media player for Linux/Debian on the official website
Download VVLC media player for Linux/Ubuntu on the official website
Download VLC media player for Linux/Mandrake on the official website
Download VLC media player for Linux/RedHat on the official website
Download VLC media player for Linux/Suse on the official website
Download VLC media player for Mac OS X on the official website

Download VLC documentation on the official website
Download skins for the VLC media player on the official website

Our point of view
AmaroK is an audio player for Linux. It's one of the best audio players. To tempt you, here's a comment written by a happy user on a forum : "It makes sense to install Linux just for amaroK"! AmaroK can play any audio file (MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, ...), has a playlist editor, handle the IDtags, burn audio CD's (K3B is needed), ... AmaroK is a very powerful tool. Just one point, you need a decode engine such as gstreamer or xine to use amaroK : in a way, amaroK is a GUI frontend. One of our very preferred players : try it !

Téléchargement
Download amaroK for the Debian distro on the official website amarok.kde.org
Download amaroK for the Gentoo distro on www.gentoo.org
Download amaroK for the Mandriva Linux (Mandrake) distro on the official website
Download amaroK for the Redhat/Fedora distro on sourceforge.net
Download amaroK for the Suse distro on the official website

Our point of view
First MP3 player to appear on the Web in 1997 and still very popular. Today, Winamp is a lot more than a simple MP3 player. Audio CD, MP3, WMA and OGG files are played without any plug-in needed. You can also rip the tracks of an audio CD to copy them on your hard drive and then burn them on a CD-R. All that for free ! More features to discover downloading Winamp ...

Download area
Download Winamp on the official website
Download skins for Winamp on the official website
Download Winamp plug-ins on the official website

Our point of view
Aqualung is an audio player for Linux. It supports a large number of multimedia formats such as audio CD, WAVE, AIFF, MP3, OGG, FLAC and Monkeys Audio files. It has a playlist editor, handles the ID3v2 tags and skins are available. The very particularity of this player is that it can decode in real time different formats of files. Packages are available for Debian. For other distros, you have to get the sources and compile them by yourself. Aqualung is totally free and is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Very good stuff !

Download area
Download Aqualung for the Debian distribution on the official website
Download sources of Aqualung on the official website
See the Aqualung documentation on the official website

Our point of view
XMMS is an audio player for Linux. XMMS can play audio CD's, WAVE and MP3 files by default and any audio file (OGG, WMA, FLAC, ...) with the correct plug-ins. You can create playlists which makes XMMS a real Jukebox complete with an equalizer. Lots of skins are available, see for instance xmms.org. Winamp'users won't be lost : the graphical interface is quite similar and the skins developed for Winamp can be used with XMMS. Quite a nice player. Packages are ready for Debian, RedHat and Fedora. For the other distros, you need to compile the sources.

Téléchargement
Download XMMS on the official website xmms.org
Download skins for XMMS on the official website
Download other skins for XMMS on kaisman.free.fr

Our point of view
MusicMatch Jukebox is a great tool. Two versions are available : Jukebox PLUS and Jukebox BASIC. The latter is totally free. MusicMatch Jukebox BASIC reads audio CD, MP3, mp3PRO, WMA and Wave files, rip audio CD in order to copy the tracks on your HDD, encode Wave files to MP3 or mp3PRO formats with an excellent coding quality, burn files on CD-R, ... A lot of skins are available and also plug-ins to transfer music files to your portable player ! Try it !

Download area
Download MusicMatch Jukebox BASIC on the official website

Our point of view
The WMA standard is the counterpart to MP3. With the success of MP3 growing on the Web in 1998, Microsoft decided to respond and, in 1999, the Windows Media Audio codec is ready. WMA was born ! Compression technics are similar to the ones used with MP3. Windows Media Player is available with Windows packages since Win98. Windows Media Player plays audio CD, MP3 and WMA files. Like most of the audio players, Windows Media Player has an equalizer and a playlist editor. You can rip and encode audio tracks from a CD to WMA files. Skins and plug-ins are available.

Download area
Download Windows Media Player 7 for Win95 on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for Win98, 2000, ME on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for WinXP on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player for WinXP on Microsoft official website
Download Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS on Microsoft official website

Our point of view
MediaMonkey seems to be very good. Two versions are available : MediaMonkey Standard and MediaMonkey Gold. The standard version is free. MediaMonkey is more than a simple player. Audio CD, MP3, WMA and OGG files are played without any plug-in needed. You can also rip the tracks of an audio CD to copy them on your hard drive in wave files or directly encode them in MP3 (good quality thanks to Lame), OGG or WMA files. All that for free ! It is possible to add external codecs to encode with other standards (AAC for instance).

Download area
Download MediaMonkey on the official website

Our point of view
The famous Apple software for the iPOD is now available for Windows.

Download area
Download iTunes on the official Apple website

Our point of view
Two versions are available. The standard version is free.

Download area
Download RealPlayer Standard on the official website
Download RealPlayer Standard for Mac OS on the official website
Download RealPlayer for Linux/Unix on the official website