Masses of music - free

It all started at http://www.di.fm/ - when after kicking around some 96k MP3 (OK) and 32k WMA (pretty ropey) examples, I decided, without expecting much, to try the 24k AAC+.

Threw them at every program I had, then looked for something else... since I've never liked Winamp, not since the connections with AOL, I went for http://www.foobar2000.org/ .

Nice, "out of the box", it played AAC+, and the 24k AAC+ was certainly comparable to the MP3 - and while I don't NEED to watch my bandwidth to that extent, it goes against the grain to waste it.

So the story so far, I'm now equipped for AAC+, where I wasn't before, so i pump "aacplus stream" into www.google.com and find http://www.tuner2.com/


Interesting, a plugin for WMP, and a fair old list of stations... as I type this, I'm listening to http://www.tuner2.com/tuner/listen.pls?id=303 - http://www.streamingsoundtracks.com/ in 64k AAC+ (also available in 32/64k in MP3plus, OGG vorbis, and WMA-AAC+ formats).

Worth bookmarking, for whenever you need some "muzak" in the background, though it can be a right old mix - started with Star Trek 3, now it's the Smurfs!

Loads of other stuff too, and AAC+ is easy, just add the Foobar2000 player and let it handle "PLS" playlists, or use Winamp.

MP3 is obsolete, like ZIP, the only thing in its favour is ubiquity.
 
MP3 may be obsolete, but not because of AAC+, for sure.
And Foobar is a good as dead, as far as I'm concerned- because its an exhellent player, but its developer(s) never managed to sort out the horrible mess with its extensions, skins, or even standardize its scripting. One does not have to have issued a diatribe on shell scripting to just listen to some music in an acceptable way! :p
 
scarecrow said:
MP3 may be obsolete, but not because of AAC+, for sure.
And Foobar is a good as dead, as far as I'm concerned- because its an exhellent player, but its developer(s) never managed to sort out the horrible mess with its extensions, skins, or even standardize its scripting. One does not have to have issued a diatribe on shell scripting to just listen to some music in an acceptable way! :p
Well,regarding extensions and skins you can always get some good ones at hydrogen audio with allready ready-made examples.
Stiill,whats wrong with default gui-nice,small clean and easy and can do everything what you want and much more:)
 
I slung the foobar install in, wouldn't call it pretty, but it did the job. Some nice plugins for 0.8 that haven't been updated for 0.9 though - maybe if it reaches a 1.0 version, then it might get a stable API that doesn't need plugins recompiled until the next major version.

I know what foobar is meant to be, a pure, quality decoder player (supports 24/32 bit samples) with a somewhat minimalistic UI. TBH, I only chose it as it was the first thing I came across that supported AAC+ that I didn't mistrust.

MP3, though, is beaten to the compression punch by so many things that can achieve a better quality/bitrate tradeoff - though paradoxically, UK DAB digital radio uses the inferior MP2 format at some dismal bitrates, giving quantity rather than quality.
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/
 
Top