Tag / Player

by Kush Sharma

Android : The best music player out there

PowerAmp

This music player unlocks a whole new world for mobile audiophiles, including a 10 band equalizer, greatly expanded file support, and a somewhat customizable interface. Ever since Gingerbread days till now, Poweramp continues to be the most powerful music player for Android and has a huge fan following.

What works well on Poweramp

The interface is somewhat similar to the stock music app, but it unlocks several new features for advanced playback that should meet just about any need you might have on your phone or tablet. For example, instead of just using a long, nested set of commands, you can give quick commands like swiping to navigate playlists quickly.

Title Screen

Oh how wonderful the file support is. While listening to FLAC files on your mobile device is a little silly when you think about it (as most phones don’t have a good digital to analog converter chip), being able to equalize your music while listening on the go is fantastic if your music tastes vary. If you have great headphones to match, this is a fantastic way to bring out the best in your music when you’re on the go. As another plus, this app doesn’t seem to chew through as much battery as other music players do.

lockscreen

Lock Screen

Interface and Features

Once installed, you’re presented with a clean and easy to use interface. The UI is extremely novice-friendly giving you oversized media . Your music can be sorted according to the usual artist, album categories or you can choose folder view, which shows you all your music the way you have copied it on your phone. Tapping on this takes you to the playlist from where you can switch folders. The album art area also houses the shuffle and repeat toggle buttons along with a five star rating system.

Library

What makes Poweramp one of the most sought after music player is the long list of audio formats supported. The list includes mp3, mp4/m4a (including alac), ogg, wma, flac, wav, ape, wv, tta, mpc, aiff, which covers pretty much every format you can find audio in these days. The ability to customise the sound is also very extensive. We start off with a 10-band graphic equaliser that can be used to fine tune your music depending on what genre of songs you listen to the most. There are plenty of presets as well and you can also use the sound enhancements (like Dolby or HTC FX) that come with some phones in Poweramp. Besides that, you also have the option to adjust the bass and treble separately along with a volume limiter. You can also add extra effects like Stereo eXpansion, mono mixing and adjust the balance. Every change you make is noticeable provided you have a good pair of headphones. Other features include support for crossfading, gapless playback, queuing system, ability to update missing album art and even download lyrics of the song through the musiXmatch plugin.

Pros & Cons:

Pros

  • One of the best fully featured Android music players
  • Features equalizer for custom or premade presets
  • Super slick user interface with themes

Cons

  • Cannot play Podcasts

Performance

With the right pair of headphones, the audio quality is really good and beats any other player in the market. The equaliser and or audio effects make a huge impact on the audio quality and you can actually make out the difference between mp3 and flac files. One neat feature is the ability to parse .cue and m3u files. If you download radio shows, especially trance music, you’ll often come across one single file that’s an hour long. Cue and m3u files help breakdown this singular file into individual tracks so you can skip to the one you want without having to split the track physically. Gapless playback support is also present for albums that feature it.

EqualizerYou also get plenty of widgets for your homescreen to choose from, including a very nice lockscreen widget. You can customise the amount of information to be displayed on the lockscreen widget too, from album art to equaliser controls. Poweramp also gives you the option to change the theme. You get a bunch of them by default and you can even install third party themes from the Play Store. One feature that we feel should be added is a social component. Apps like MixZing allow you to play your music from your library as well as search for trending tracks around the globe. You can even see what your friends are listening to at the moment and rate songs so your friends can find them.

 

Verdict : Worth the download?

If you want to milk a better audio experience out of your mobile device and don’t want to carry around all sorts of unnecessary clutter like external amps in your pocket, this app is a good way to start consolidating your devices into one unit. Poweramp is available for as little as Rs129 for the full version, which makes it extremely good value. The app is compatible with Android v2.1 and upwards and is constantly being updated with bug fixes and support for the latest version of Android. If you have an Android phone and want to experiment with its audio, Poweramp is the most popular audio app in the Play Store for a reason and we strongly suggest you ditch the stock player for Poweramp.

Get it on Play Store

by Kush Sharma

MX Player

mx-player

One of the great things about Android, is that it has a flexibility – especially with regard to the file system – that you don’t get on iOS. It is, for example, perfectly possible to drag and drop video and music files over USB on to the SD card or internal storage of your phone. The problem comes when playing those files back. For music, the Android player is fine; for video you might want something more.

The video player that comes built in with your Google Android device is pretty limited to say the least. If you want to get the most out of your Android device then we strongly recommend downloading a new video player. With the MX Video Player you can unlock a whole host of new codecs/video files for your Android and it won’t cost you a penny.

Before we get any further, you should know that nothing in life is truly free and, alas, the MX Video Player is no different, it comes with banner adverts. They won’t interfere with your video playback, but whenever you’re lining up a video or fiddling with the volume or zoom, then you will see the little banner ads. But it’s a ‘free’ and much better video player at the end of the day, so it’s a pretty fair compromise.

Possibly the best thing about the MX Video Player is that if app doesn’t recognise the the codec of the video you are trying to play, it will give you a link directly to where you can download the correct codec. For there it’s a painfully simple two clicks and MX Video Player has downloaded and saved a new codec for you Android device. Whenever we flummoxed it with a codec that wasn’t installed, we were able to download and instal the new codecs via the app in roughly 30-seconds. A very impressive feature!

Bottom Line

It seems the whole idea behind the MX Video Player is that it puts you in control. Presets become a thing of the past, and if you ask me, that’s a good thing. That you could throw almost any video file at it without having to bother with codecs and trans-coding on the PC, is the clincher.

by Kush

VLC Media Player

VLC

What’s the top media player? Opinions differ, but if you mean one that’s open-source freeware, plays more files than the others, can be totally customized and configured to suit, and is not only updated frequently but also regularly offers new features and options created by a huge community of programmers and users, the answer is VLC Media Player.
If you have trouble playing a media file such as a video or tune you’ve downloaded from the Internet, and you can’t play it in your standard media player, chances are that VLC media player (free, direct) will play it. It’ll often succeed where Windows Media Player and WinAmp fail. VLC media player is available for Windows, Macintosh, and many Linux flavors.

VLC media player not only plays video, but also audio files—including internet radio and podcasts, which a discovery option lets you find and subscribe to. What’s more, it can actually (and simply) record from both audio and video sources to media files stored on your local PC.

About the only thing I miss in VLC is some sort of psychoacoustic bass enhancement à la Windows Media Player’s SRS TruBass or iTunes’ Sound Enhancer. For that reason (and the lack of cataloging features) I use those to play audio files. You should visit the site just to scan the list of supported files types, though–it’s truly amazing. VLC supports virtually every audio file type, including the less common APE, Flac, Ogg, etc. natively. And, if you hadn’t guessed by the name, you can also play streamed video or music across networks, including the Internet.

If I have any complaint at all about VLC, it’s that it will occasionally hang up when playing back a corrupt or incomplete file, forcing the use of task manager to end its process. Other players do more checking up front. However, the fact that VLC will play many incomplete files allows you to preview stuff you’re downloading. This is dependent upon file type, but to me it’s worth the occasional hang. The hangs have never taken down the system, so it’s just an occasional inconvenience.

  • PROS:Plays just about any media file format you throw at it. Encodes outbound streams. Plays Internet radio and TV.
  • CONS:No Blu-ray playback.
  • BOTTOM LINE:A versatile, free media player that supports more video file formats than you can shake a stick at, can record and stream audio and video.

VLC media player also lets you create bookmarks and save a playlist file, which stores your Internet radio stations, podcast subscriptions, and local media files. This is one feature, however, where VLC falls short of the excellent organizational capabilities of big-time players like iTunes and Windows Media Player. Those will find all media on your machine—and even on other network users’ machines—and present the collection in far more elegant and organized way, letting you view by album, performer, media type, and so on.

After over a decade as an underground favorite that can play just about any media type you throw at it, VLC was finally taken out of beta in 2009. What’s finally been released after years of techie love is a marvel of compatibility and capabilities. It’s a great piece of software if you need something that just works, or if you want a seriously wonktastic media player that lets you do all kinds of arcane things. It may trail WMP and WinAmp in polish and organization, but if those won’t play the file you’ve got and this will, who cares?