38 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
38 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
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title = 'The Quest: Introduction'
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date = 2011-12-28T04:56:00Z
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For as long as I can remember, I have been on a quest to find the perfect media
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player for the PC. Obviously, the perfect player for a real audio system is a
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well constructed turntable (like the one I just bought: [Audio-Technica
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LP-120-USB](http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/turntables/583f30b3a8662772/index.html),
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or the classic [Technics
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SL-1200MK2](http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/technics_dj/prod_specs_sl1200mk2.asp)).
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Since I spend most of my time at a computer, and I'm not always in the mood to
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flip records, a good digital media player is something I really need.
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Several years ago, the options for media players were pretty slim. The first
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"media player" I remember using was the _Play_ button on the
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[Caddy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caddy_%28hardware%29)-based CD-ROM drive
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on one of my family's first MS-DOS PCs. Old disc drives had a four-conductor
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cable that would run from the drive directly to the sound card for analog audio
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playback without software. As software became more sophisticated, applications
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were able to control CD playback. The first application I remember using came
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with the sound card and was supposed to resemble a stereo system (it had three
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"components", a pre-amp, that controlled the volume, a player that controlled
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tracks, and a pointless "amplifier" window that did nothing). I also remember
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using Windows Media Player (probably v6.x) and Winamp (v1.x and 2.x).
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I never owned a Windows XP computer (thankfully), but went from Windows 98 to
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Linux. In my early Linux days, I used a few players, including XMMS, before
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settling on Amarok, which I used until only a couple of years ago. Amarok was
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eventually rewritten into a totally different application using version 4 of
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the KDE libraries. Once the KDE 3 libraries were removed from Gentoo Linux, I
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was forced to begin my full-time search for the perfect media player. To this
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day, I consider Amarok 1.4 to be the best media player around.
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My standards are pretty high nowadays, and I have a pretty stringent set of
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requirements. I've made a little contest out of my search, scoring various
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players in several categories. I'll post the full list of requirements in a few
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days, and I'll start posting reviews of the players I test as time goes on. |