Here are some reliable audio players — I’ve given priority to those that support high-fidelity playback:
Best Media Players For Linux
- Audacious — a free and open source player focused on audio quality and supporting a wide range of audio codecs — includes an equalizer
- Clementine — a free and open source player that includes a library organizer (similar to iTunes)
- Amarok — a free player with good web service integration
- Noise — a free player optimized for Elementary OS
Best Media Players For MacOS
- Foobar2000 — a basic freeware audio player, support for many audio formats, supports gapless playback
- Colibri — a freeware player that uses very little CPU power
- MPV — a free video player that will play audio files
- VLC — primarily a video player but can be used as an audio player — free
- Vox — probably the best freemium player for Mac — a good high-fidelity player for lossless formats — free or $5/month
- Swinsan — A well-designed audio player — supports many formats, folder watching, advanced tag editing — designed to be responsive even with the largest libraries — $20
- Audinirvana — an audiophile player that is optimized for high-resolution playback — $74
- Amarra — another audiophile player for Mac — $50
Unreliable on Mac
The free Clementine player was unreliable on the MacOS in my tests.
Best Media Players For iOS
- CloudBeats — a freemium player that streams your music from a varitey of cloud providers, you can take your media offline with pro version for $5
- Vox — freemium player iOS — a good high-fidelity player that supports lossless formats like FLAC — price is free or $5/month
- VLC — primarily a video player but can be used as an audio player — unfortunately keeps a list of previously played media that cannot be turned off — free
Best Media Players For Windows
- Foobar2000 — a robust freeware audio player — very customizable — supports gapless playback
- Audacious — a free and open source player — similar to Winamp and perhaps better — focused on audio quality and supporting a wide range of audio codecs — includes an equalizer
- Winamp — a freemium player — unfortunately Winamp tries to install toolbars and other software during install (these options can be deselected)
pine player is also very good, am considering moving from vox to it. 100% free, eq & gapless n all
What about AIMP ?
Several day ago I found new QXPlayer. Good sound. folder based as old school player. Good price. And programmer promised a lot of things in the future.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dsplayer/id1481703720?ls=1&mt=12
Colibri is a super simple player for Mac playing almost all existing formats, DSD inclusive, available in Apple app store.
No relation to seller, just user recommendation.
Looks good, but Colibri has been discounted apparently.
Colibri most recent update is two month old…
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colibri/id1178295426
Yes that does look to be true — I seem to have been looking at the wrong app.
I added Colibri to the article, thanks.
Foobar2000? https://www.foobar2000.org/
I added it to the list of audio players for Windows.
It is available for Mac now. It was the only software I missed when I switched to Mac.