Am I Chasing a Unicorn?

[Ronman189]

I have a ACER Desktop PC running Windows 11 that I use to play my extensive CD collection. I used to use the WMP, which did an adequate job, but recent changes have made it less desirable for me. So I am looking for a new media player that will (1) Recognize the CD I am playing and display the name of the CD and the names of the songs. If it could display a picture of the CD and list the lyrics, even better. I have tried a few (e.g. Music Bee and MediaMonkey) that looked promising, but never worked out. So I am looking for a Free media player that would meet most of my goals. Any suggestions?

[fink]

VLC media player is often regarded as perhaps the best freebee available. You can view the full playlist with a click and it shows the pic of the song/album when it plays (at least the ones I've tried).

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Midknyte]

Maybe AIMP? I haven't played music off of CDs in years, but it's worth a shot.
https://aimp.ru/
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/aimp.html

There is a plugin for lyrics:
https://www.myaimp.com/aimp-lyrics/

[druggas1954]

I use Winamp.

[Ronman189]

I am very familiar with the VLC player having used it for videos for decades. When I searched for instructions on how to set it up with my goals in mind, I ran into the problem I always have with confusing instructions:



Yes — VLC can show the CD being played, album art, and a list of song names if you configure it to read CD metadata and enable album art display.

1. Displaying CD Track Titles
VLC can retrieve track titles from an Audio CD by connecting to the CDDB service. To enable this:

Go to Tools → Preferences → Input/Codecs → Access Modules → Audio CD.

Set CDDB Server to freedb.videolan.org and Port to 80 openSUSE Forums.

In the Disc tab, check Audio CD and click Open Disc.

Play the disc — VLC will fetch the album name, artist, and track titles from the CDDB database.

If your CD’s metadata isn’t in CDDB, VLC may not display titles, but you can still see the album name and track numbers in the playlist.


After "Input/Codecs" there is no "Access Modules" to be found. Am I missing the obvious?

[jdc2000]

Foobar2000 is another option. I have not tried this one. You could also try Winamp.

[Midknyte]

There are portable versions of AIMP and Foobar2000. if you just want to try them out first.

https://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/aimp-portable
https://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/fb2kportable

[fink]

Re: VLC setup.. see if this is of any help:

https://forums.opensuse.org/t/how-to...titles/87199/2

Otherwise if it starts to become a pain to get working the other players mentioned above are all good. I used to use Winamp when I listened to CD's at work.

[Ronman189]

Hey, thanks for the responses, guys. This is important to me so I will try every option forwarded.