The Best Audio Players For All Platforms

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)

11 thoughts on “The Best Audio Players For All Platforms”

  1. 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.

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