Recommended game music player

[E-Day]

Going through some of my music files tonight, I came across some video game music that is not in the sual mp3 or FLAC format. They are the original file formats from the ROMS, such as SPC (Super NES), VGZ (Sega Genesis/SMS/GG), miniusf(N64), mini2sf (GBA/DS), psf (PSone), and so on.

I used to play all of these and then some with Winamp and the Chipamp plugin bundle. But after 20 years of using Winamp exclusively for listening to my music on the computer, I want to use something else. But I am having trouble finding a new play to play these files.

Does anyone on here have a program that they use for these formats that they like?

[Ferneu]

Heh,

 

after 20 years using WinAmp 2.95 to listen music on my computer, I still want to use only WinAmp 2.95 to listen music on my computer.

 

Small, consumes something about 0MB of RAM, native, does pretty much everything I want to, has plugins for FLAC and for game ROMs music.

 

Another great point about WinAmp 2.95 is that it is probably the only software ever created that does not use the "standard" Windows dialog "skin" and do not suck.

 

 

Have I mentioned how awesome I think WinAmp 2.95 is?
 

[E-Day]

I was hoping to nice to something sleeker and more modern, but it seems unlikely that I'll find one program for my needs.

[perfinpuz]

Here is a page to check out, if you have not already been there.    http://www.emu-france.com/emulateurs/311-musiques-et-sons/234-musiques-et-sons-section-consoles/     

Translate to your desired language.  The main page is also one of the best sites to keep up with emulators.

[E-Day]

I remember trying Aimp. Might have to try it again...

[te72]

I use WMP for .mp3 files, but everything else gets put through VLC. Loooooove me some .flac files. Never really noticed a difference on my old surround sound setup, but when that was upgraded to Klipsch... whoo boy. Reminds me of how records used to sound!

[kitsunebi]

7 hours ago, te72 said:

I use WMP for .mp3 files, but everything else gets put through VLC. Loooooove me some .flac files. Never really noticed a difference on my old surround sound setup, but when that was upgraded to Klipsch... whoo boy. Reminds me of how records used to sound!

Or, you know...CDs.    Since a .flac file is almost definitely ripped from a CD master.  Exactly the same quality, only smaller.

 

[te72]

On 1/9/2018 at 2:37 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

Or, you know...CDs.    Since a .flac file is almost definitely ripped from a CD master.  Exactly the same quality, only smaller.

 

You know, I'm not sure. File size, flac files seem to average about 4x the size of a high bitrate mp3, but the sound is worth it, considering the price of storage these days. CD's still sound great, and I still listen to them on a regular basis (two of the cars don't have auxiliary inputs yet), but quite a bit of my collection is digital. Most of the discs are from the days before I had a computer.

 

Frankly, records still sound the best to my ears, but I grew up with them. Portable... no. Great sound and ambiance, yes. Video game soundtrack related? Err... not so much.

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, te72 said:

You know, I'm not sure. File size, flac files seem to average about 4x the size of a high bitrate mp3, but the sound is worth it, considering the price of storage these days. CD's still sound great, and I still listen to them on a regular basis (two of the cars don't have auxiliary inputs yet), but quite a bit of my collection is digital. Most of the discs are from the days before I had a computer

Exactly. FLAC is a lossless compression format.  So it will give you quality identical to a CD at a fraction of the size.  MP3 is lossy compression, so no matter how high the bitrate is, the quality is compromised (though a high bitrate MP3 is usually impossible to tell apart from uncompressed CD audio for most people)

[te72]

I never really understood the technical theory behind audio compression. I understand the benefits of smaller file sizes, but how do you compress audio and not lose quality at the same time? Perhaps this is a topic for another discussion, but it interests me all the same. I guess ideal file choice would also depend on the playback equipment too. I've noticed that songs I know very well sound different, and I pick up on different tones and characteristics of the song, depending on what I'm listening to. Cheap car speakers, expensive car speakers, default i-device headphones, quality over the ear headphones, portable audio systems, the cheap theater system in the garage, the Klipsch stuff in the living room... you get the point.

 

So many ways to hear a song, it's so much fun discovering new things about old songs that you've been hearing for years.

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, te72 said:

I never really understood the technical theory behind audio compression. I understand the benefits of smaller file sizes, but how do you compress audio and not lose quality at the same time? Perhaps this is a topic for another discussion, but it interests me all the same. I guess ideal file choice would also depend on the playback equipment too. I've noticed that songs I know very well sound different, and I pick up on different tones and characteristics of the song, depending on what I'm listening to. Cheap car speakers, expensive car speakers, default i-device headphones, quality over the ear headphones, portable audio systems, the cheap theater system in the garage, the Klipsch stuff in the living room... you get the point.

Ideal file type is always going to be lossless, no matter what it's played on, but you're right that there will be a much more noticeable difference in sound quality when playing music on top-end equipment vs low-end equipment than there would be for example playing a lossless CD/FLAC vs a 320kbps MP3 using the same equipment for both.

[te72]

I didn't used to really appreciate flac files over the mp3, but with the speakers I have in the living room, I can hear the difference. Mp3 just sounds kinda... flat... compared to the flac of the same song.

[kitsunebi]

45 minutes ago, te72 said:

I didn't used to really appreciate flac files over the mp3, but with the speakers I have in the living room, I can hear the difference. Mp3 just sounds kinda... flat... compared to the flac of the same song.

The only reason I was teasing in my original comment is that using the same audio player and the same speakers, the sound quality of a FLAC file and that of a CD are 100% identical (that's not an opinion - the waveform is identical).  It struck me as funny that someone at a site dedicated to old magazines would be talking about FLAC like it was a revelatory discovery for your ears, since the only people I could see being pleasantly surprised at the improved fidelity of FLAC over MP3s would be someone quite young who has grown up only ever listening to MP3s (i.e., not the average user of this site.)  Anyone old enough to use this site surely has listened to plenty of CDs in their lifetime (and most likely cassettes and records before that), and as I said, CD audio and FLAC audio are identical, so it struck me as odd that such a person would think of FLAC as anything extraordinary.

Now that I have to type it all out and try to explain, I guess it was a pretty silly thing to find amusing.

[te72]

No worries at all bud, I can see the potential for humor. It's like kids these days discovering "new" bands that we've been listening to for years.

 

I'm of the cassette generation, records were still available, but dying off in favor of portability. I have only had the Klipsh setup for a few years now, so with the equipment I had before, I was never really able to appreciate quality sounding files. Spent the better part of 2006 onward listening to a vast mp3 collection, and the only car I had with a nice sound system fell in the mp3 era for me. So, for me personally at least, it was more about the discovery of music on a greater magnitude, than it was about the quality of the sound.

 

Now that I've heard good sounding music again, with the richness of fidelity... I'm hooked. I'd have a set of Klipshorns for the basement, and a dedicated listening room, if I had unlimited access to master recordings.

 

All this talk of format fidelity raises a question though... is there anything that sounds better than a cd, apart from a record? That may be personal preference, the analog vs digital debate, but are cd's still king of sound quality?

[kitsunebi]

I've never actually listened to an HDCD or SACD, but presumably with high end equipment, a difference in quality would be discernible.

https://www.lifewire.com/all-about-the-cd-hdcd-and-sacd-audio-disc-formats-1846866

There's also DVD audio.  I remember buying Snow Patrol's Final Straw album years and years ago on what was called "dual disc."  It was a single disc which was a CD on one side and a DVD on the other.  The CD was the regular album, while the DVD side had the album in "Advanced Resolution Surround Sound and Stereo"as well as "Dolby Digital Surround Sound and Stereo."

[te72]

Thanks for that link, I read another article on that site worth a read if anyone is interested in this sort of thing:

 

https://www.lifewire.com/hi-res-audio-4134630

 

I think what made me aware of it the most was music during the end credits of movies on blu-ray discs. It just sounds so much more full than any CD I've heard. Makes some sense though, if I recall, blu-ray is 48 or 96-bit, versus CD at 16-bit. I may have numbers incorrect, but I know the audio portion of a blu-ray is quite sizable.

[DPsx7]

I've been using the same version of Winamp since the day I originally DL'ed it. The info box says 2.5, Aug 1999. Lol. Never needed to try anything else. And yeah I use a few plugins to play files ripped from NES games too.

[te72]

7 hours ago, DPsx7 said:

I've been using the same version of Winamp since the day I originally DL'ed it. The info box says 2.5, Aug 1999. Lol. Never needed to try anything else. And yeah I use a few plugins to play files ripped from NES games too.

Please tell me you have that backed up on a floppy? Either that or you have one abnormally long lived hard disk... Either way, kudos!