Groove vs. VLC for Audio: WINNER - Groove Music (surprisingly)

[PGHammer]

When the core of Windows 10 Insider builds moved from Threshold to Redstone, I actually dared to consider moving my default audio player from longtime-default VLC to Groove Music (primarily due to better playlist management possibilities in Groove compared to VLC).  My biggest question was exactly how well DOES Groove function as a straight audio player?  (Playlist management can be undone by poor functionality as a straight audio player - Zune anyone?)

 

Here's the surprise - Groove Music functions quite well as a straight audio player; the ONLY quibble is that it doesn't play while minimized.  (It CAN play in the background, however - it just can't play in the background while minimized.)  Another reason that I like Groove (as a background audio player) is that it can swallow any audio format that its competition can - including FLAC.  The final reason that Groove is now my default is that it uses fewer resources than any other audio player as a background task - and that includes VLC.  That last was a shocker, but that is quite easily checkable via Task Manager.  VLC is better at video (which Groove Music can play in most formats) - which is also why VLC and Groove currently co-exist.  (And they co-exist just fine.  I have had them both running at once - Groove playing audio while VLC plays video; neither dropped a note.)

[binaryzero]

Foobar2000 > VLC ,  MPC-HC > VLC 

 

VLC sucks for audio.

 

LOL you look at system resources for a media player? Wow.

[tsupersonic]

What do you mean it can't play music while minimized? I have Groove Music minimized and it plays just fine in the background. My only quibble with Groove Music is it doesn't support my multimedia keyboard functions (play/pause, previous/next tracks). It's also really basic, and lacks so many features of an audio player. One step forward, 10 backwards :\

 

Edit: Check out Dopamine, it's made by Raphael from the forums.

[trag3dy]

Aimp 4 > everything else. Especially if you're worried about resource usage.

 

With a 6000 song playlist while playing a song it uses roughly 50mb of ram and has some of the best audio quality out there for an audio player.

 

Groove on the other hand, same playlist, same song, took up around 200mb of ram. 

 

Foobar is the only other alternative here but I don't think it can match the resource usage of Aimp even on the default skin but I do admit it's been several years since I used it so maybe it's gotten lighter.

 

And when it really comes down to it, audio quality is only going to be as good as the source. If you're using a low quality source then of course the quality is not going to be good. Your chosen player should have little impact on that.

 

Last but not least I'm not sure why resource usage is import these days? Unused ram is wasted ram. Not to say that we should want sloppily coded programs, but unless you're using a machine with very little ram it's never going to be an issue.

Edited January 31, 2016 by trag3dy

[Doli]

12 minutes ago, tsupersonic said:

What do you mean it can't play music while minimized? I have Groove Music minimized and it plays just fine in the background. My only quibble with Groove Music is it doesn't support my multimedia keyboard functions (play/pause, previous/next tracks). It's also really basic, and lacks so many features of an audio player. One step forward, 10 backwards :\

 

Edit: Check out Dopamine, it's made by Raphael from the forums.

Strange my multimedia keyboard functions work.

[PGHammer]

20 minutes ago, Jared- said:

Foobar2000 > VLC ,  MPC-HC > VLC 

 

VLC sucks for audio.

 

LOL you look at system resources for a media player? Wow.

I look at resources used for *everything*, and especially anything I run in the background - the biggest problem with Windows as a whole (and this has been true with every version of Windows) is resource piggishness; resource piggishness for applications that I run in the background is, in fact, unconscionable, and can, and often does, result in an application getting ejected from my computer altogether.  I don't run *video* applications in the background (watching video defeats the purpose of that); however, audio players SHOULD be able to be run in the background (same applies to browsers, text and document editors (from Notepad and alternatives to Word/alternatives to Word). etc.).  It doesn't just apply to Windows, either - I'm just as harsh with non-Windows OSes (from Linux distributions to Solaris to BSDs and OS X) - if an application is supposed to be able to run as a background task (any application in those categories I named certainly should - regardless of OS), inability to do so gets it voted off the island.

[trag3dy]

12 minutes ago, Doli said:

Strange my multimedia keyboard functions work.

Same here. Just tested it out to be sure.

[PGHammer]

26 minutes ago, tsupersonic said:

What do you mean it can't play music while minimized? I have Groove Music minimized and it plays just fine in the background. My only quibble with Groove Music is it doesn't support my multimedia keyboard functions (play/pause, previous/next tracks). It's also really basic, and lacks so many features of an audio player. One step forward, 10 backwards :\

 

Edit: Check out Dopamine, it's made by Raphael from the forums.

I use Groove AS a basic audio player (same thing I had used VLC for) - if you need add-ins or plug-ins, then that (at least in my opinion) makes it a non-basic audio player.  (That is, in fact, what got Windows Media Player in trouble - at least with me.)  Which keyboard do you use?  If you require specific software to use the multifunctionality of your keyboard, it is pretty certain that Groove won't leverage it (because it's too new) - Groove isn't leveraged by the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center, either (so you aren't alone) - however, I didn't expect it to be at this point.

[tsupersonic]

1 minute ago, PGHammer said:

I use Groove AS a basic audio player (same thing I had used VLC for) - if you need add-ins or plug-ins, then that (at least in my opinion) makes it a non-basic audio player.  (That is, in fact, what got Windows Media Player in trouble - at least with me.)  Which keyboard do you use?  If you require specific software to use the multifunctionality of your keyboard, it is pretty certain that Groove won't leverage it (because it's too new) - Groove isn't leveraged by the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center, either (so you aren't alone) - however, I didn't expect it to be at this point.

Logitech G710+

[PGHammer]

5 minutes ago, tsupersonic said:

Logitech G710+

Then that is why you are likely in the same position I'm in (or anyone that replies on any add-in to support full functionality of their keyboards).  Groove (in that sense) is not a successor to a previous product - including Zune - hence, expecting it to work OOTB with third-party pre-existing software (from Microsoft, Logitech, Razer, or anyone else) is REALLY barking up the wrong tree.  To be honest, I'm surprised that the Mouse and Keyboard Center actually supports my decade-old keyboard (and with full functionality) AND supports what is technically the "wrong" pointing device (Logitech V220 Cordless).

[Active.]

 

3 hours ago, PGHammer said:

 Here's the surprise - Groove Music functions quite well as a straight audio player; 

Why are you surprised by that though? I'm sure it works fine as a straight audio player for users with little need for library, playlist and play queue management / metadata editing functionality.

 

The fact that Groove plays FLAC (as well as ALAC!) out of the box is pretty awesome indeed.

[trag3dy]

What's not awesome about groove is that I open it up and I'm served some lovely ads.

 

No matter how good it can be potentially that ruins the program entirely. Reminds of the days when Opera used to have ads built into it. 

 

I thought we were long past that kind of thing.

[pixelpixel]

I still use Winamp for music. Go me

[PGHammer]

47 minutes ago, tsupersonic said:

What do you mean it can't play music while minimized? I have Groove Music minimized and it plays just fine in the background. My only quibble with Groove Music is it doesn't support my multimedia keyboard functions (play/pause, previous/next tracks). It's also really basic, and lacks so many features of an audio player. One step forward, 10 backwards :\

 

Edit: Check out Dopamine, it's made by Raphael from the forums.

I'm installing Visual Studio Community right now, but will install Dopamine afterward - from the screenshots, it reminds me rather pleasantly of MetroTwit and MetroIRC (two other Neowinian-sourced projects).

 

The surprise was the FLAC/ALAC support out of the box - and especially since it is something that WMP was notorious for lacking.

 

I'm finding more music that I like in FLAC format (as opposed to MPx), thanks largely to NoCopyrightSounds (a group of indie artists that I tripped over in the past three months) that distributes monthly "albums" entirely in FLAC format.  Most of my *existing* playlist is in MP3 - however, thanks to NCS, I need FLAC support as well.

 

[binaryzero]

31 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

I look at resources used for *everything*, and especially anything I run in the background - the biggest problem with Windows as a whole (and this has been true with every version of Windows) is resource piggishness; resource piggishness for applications that I run in the background is, in fact, unconscionable, and can, and often does, result in an application getting ejected from my computer altogether.  I don't run *video* applications in the background (watching video defeats the purpose of that); however, audio players SHOULD be able to be run in the background (same applies to browsers, text and document editors (from Notepad and alternatives to Word/alternatives to Word). etc.).  It doesn't just apply to Windows, either - I'm just as harsh with non-Windows OSes (from Linux distributions to Solaris to BSDs and OS X) - if an application is supposed to be able to run as a background task (any application in those categories I named certainly should - regardless of OS), inability to do so gets it voted off the island.

Anal much? The last thing I need to know is how much memory my mp3 player is taking, I have plenty of memory to be used. And I really doubt any modern day CPU would struggle to play the files. 

 

[Torolol]

I use WinAmp & foobar2K myself simply because i usually listen to non-standard music format such as Nintendo's console music (NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, NDS) and Sega Genesis Music.

Only them (winamp & foobar) have acceptable plugins that would support such music format.

 

[binaryzero]

That's because Foobar is the ######## boss! It's the best Jerry, the best!! 

 

-V0 or FLAC, else go home.

[PGHammer]

5 minutes ago, pixelpixel said:

I still use Winamp for music. Go me

WinAMP got into hot water when it followed WMP into adding too many plug-ins (the Linux-distribution version commits the same *sin*, so it's NOT unique to WinAMP, or even Nullsoft) - in fact, it's a problem with too many media players in general.  Ads are why I prefer audio players that can at least play in the background - even if they can't play minimized in the background - it's why I want to review Dopamine (it is likely to be ad-free).

 

Why I liked MetroTwit and MetroIRC - a cleaner pair of MUI-style applications could not be found - Groove DOES come close, though.

[binaryzero]

 

It's a Parkway drive kind of morning...

[PGHammer]

7 minutes ago, Jared- said:

Anal much? The last thing I need to know is how much memory my mp3 player is taking, I have plenty of memory to be used. And I really doubt any modern day CPU would struggle to play the files. 

 

Memory is NOT the biggest issue when it comes to background processes - if anything, the memory issue has gotten smaller and smaller as system memory loadouts have gotten larger.  While RAM loadout resource heaps have grown, all too often (for backward-compatibility reasons) other resource heaps have not; that is why resource piggishness is still a problem.

[binaryzero]

Hehhhhh lolll. 

[pixelpixel]

2 hours ago, PGHammer said:

WinAMP got into hot water when it followed WMP into adding too many plug-ins (the Linux-distribution version commits the same *sin*, so it's NOT unique to WinAMP, or even Nullsoft) - in fact, it's a problem with too many media players in general.  Ads are why I prefer audio players that can at least play in the background - even if they can't play minimized in the background - it's why I want to review Dopamine (it is likely to be ad-free).

 

Why I liked MetroTwit and MetroIRC - a cleaner pair of MUI-style applications could not be found - Groove DOES come close, though.

But you can strip must of those away from within Winamp. It is not hard to remove a plugin.

Winamp has a send to device feature which will allow you to send music to older apple devices without the need to open itunes.

[binaryzero]

 

Mmmmm not really worried.

[Active.]

Anyone else incredibly, irrationally annoyed by MS's continued usage of the floppy disk icon in the 'Modern' environment ?! Just seems so lazy. There's got to be a better, more current alternative for representing the action of creating a new playlist from the Now Playing queue.

 

 

 

[zhangm Supervisor]

29 minutes ago, Active. said:

Anyone else incredibly, irrationally annoyed by MS's continued usage of the floppy disk icon in the 'Modern' environment ?! Just seems so lazy. There's got to be a better, more current alternative for representing the action of creating a new playlist from the Now Playing queue.

I think it is a bit a confusing that they put the icon in the heading, where the current song is being indicated. It makes me wonder whether that would save the song being played, which doesn't always make sense.

 

Overall, I think as far as the symbol goes, that is the generally accepted representation of "save". I doubt that any new icon that they come up with would be clearer.