Read our tutorial "Easy Install For Linux"

• VideoLAN (VLC) *****             OS : Win2000/XP/Vista - Linux - Mac OS X 10.5 and later
  

  Our point of view
  The VideoLAN client (VLC) is a media player. It supports a large number of multimedia formats. No 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 comes complete with a playlist editor. Audio quality is excellent. VideoLAN (VLC) is totally free and is under 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 VideoLAN's Documentation on the VideoLAN's Wiki
  Download skins for the VLC media player on the official website
  



• Amarok *****             OS : Linux
  

  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 posted on a forum by a happy user : "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 an audio 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 ! Amarok will soon be available for Windows or Mac OS X. But for now, no stable version has yet been released on those platforms. Though, you can test it...

  Download area
  Download Amarok (Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSuse, Gentoo, Fedora distros are available) on the official website amarok.kde.org
  Read the User Guide of Amarok
  



• Aqualung *****             OS : Linux - Win NT/2000/XP
  

  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 Debian website
  Download source code for Aqualung on the official website
  Download Aqualung for Windows on the official website
  See the Aqualung documentation on the official website
  



• dBpowerAMP Audio Player *****             OS : Win9X/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista
  

  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



• Windows Media Player ****             OS : Win9X/ME/NT/2000/XP - Mac OS X 10.1 and later
  

  Our point of view
  The WMA standard is the counterpart to MP3. With MP3 success growing since 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 for Vista on Microsoft official website
  Download Windows Media for WinXP on Microsoft official website
  Download Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS on Microsoft official website
  



• Winamp ****             OS : Win98/ME/2000/XP/Vista
  

  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



• XMMS ****             OS : Linux
  

  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.

  Download area
  Download XMMS on the official website xmms.org
  



• Zinf ****             OS : Win9X/ME/NT/2000/XP - Linux
  

  Our point of view
  Zinf is an audio player for Linux and Windows. Zinf can play audio CD's, WAV,MP3 and OGG files. A music browser and a download manager are available. Lots of themes to change the skin of the player... Just try it...

  Download area
  Download Zinf on the official website www.zinf.org
  Download skins for Zinf on the official website



• MediaMonkey : not tested             OS : Win98/ME/NT/2000/XP
  

  Our point of view
  MediaMonkey seems to be very good. Three versions are available : MediaMonkey Standard, MediaMonkey Gold and MediaMonkey Lifetime. 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
  



• Quintessential : not tested             OS : Win98/ME/NT/2000/XP
  

  Our point of view
  Quintessential Media Player is a media player for Windows. It supports all popular audio formats including MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and CDs. Quintessential is skinnable and has a robust plug-in architecture.
  

  Download area
  Download Quintessential on the official website
  



• iTunes : not tested             OS : WinXP/Vista - Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later
  

  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
  



• RealPlayer Standard : not tested             OS : Win98/ME/NT/2000/XP/7 - Mac OS X - Linux
  

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

  Download area
  Download RealPlayer Standard for WinXP (SP3), Vista and Win7 on the official website
  Download RealPlayer Standard for Linux on the official website
  Download RealPlayer Standard for Mac OS X on the official website