I'm feeling like making a bit of publicity for foobar2000, the most capable audio player there is. The only drawback: Foobar is somewhat daunting to set up. Configuration possibilities are endless. Which is the reason for this post.
I have configured a portable instance in the same way my own (Windows) installation functions and looks like. This will give you an out-of-the-box experience that is otherwise unavailable.
If you want to try out Foobar portable on Windows OS, download it
here.
(1) Unpack the program folder anywhere and start foobar2000.exe.
(2) Go to Library/Configure from the menu, and then, under "Music folders", add a folder containing a few albums.
Your files should be tagged at least with artist name, album name and track name. Foobar, in my configuration, groups albums by artist, album and year. If you have versions of the same album, they hence need to differ in at least one of artist, album or year to get an own group, so choose a slightly different album name, "xxx (SACD)" or "xxx (remastered)", for example.
On the other hand it means that in this configuration you need to have the same artist name, year and album name for files to be grouped. For compilations I give "Various Artists" as artist name and put the track artist into the title: "Various Artists [1985] Mexiko-Hitparade [02] [Rex Dildo] Acapulco Olé" (pattern: artist [year/date] album [track] title), for example. "[Rex Dildo] Acapulco Olé" would be the title of this track. You can change the tagging pattern and grouping schema as you wish. This is just the way I do it.
Each group gets highlighted with the picture named "folder"(.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif etc) or with the picture that is embedded in the files. If you use a different name for the main picture, you can make that setting in the prefs page under the Preferences/Display node.
Choose the output device under Preferences/Playback/Output.
That's it.
Should you install foobar2000 so that you can associate file types with it, simply copy the contents of the "profile" folder of the portable instance to "%appdata%\foobar2000\" (after installation) and overwrite everything in that folder with the contents of the "profile" folder.
This is foobar2000, version 1.6.16. Recently a major overhaul has appeared, called version 2.x.x. I suggest that you should wait at least until next year before upgrading, which is what I will do.
The installation file of version 1.6.16 can be found
here.
Additional usage info:
-- Play selected track with enter,
-- play/pause with space bar,
-- skip forward/backward 5 sec with cursor right/left,
-- stop after current with Ctrl+space bar,
-- rate selected file(s) with Alt+1 ... Alt+5
-- rate "meh" with Alt+0,
-- remove rating with Alt+R,
-- special ratings are Alt+X (I use this for tracks I hate) and Alt+B (displays "BAD", which is for files with bad sound quality).
Ratings are written into file tags, so that they are preserved across installations.
All of these commands and the symbols used are configurable, like everything else. Shortcuts under Preferences/Keyboard shortcuts, rating levels under Preferences/Tools/Tagging/Quick tagger, symbols under Preferences/Display/Columns UI/Playlist view/Columns/Rating/Display script.
What else? Change layout and add or remove panels under Preferences/Display/Columns UI/Layout. Convert from any to any format (with transcoding warnings), split albums according to a cue file, play internet streams and DSD files, measure dynamic ranges, remote control player with phone via WLAN (requires additional components), and so on. Step through Preferences to get an impression what is available. Right-click on panels and selections to see options.
