+ HQPlayer: short answer don't like it, a ripped off compared to other free players, marketing babbling but actually widely available to other players such as KMixer bypass and such. But no media library support and lacks of some other functionality and delivering the same level of sound quality compared to foobar2000 makes it less favorable for me. + uLilith: free, looks like Winamp (might be of use to some), 64bit FP data path, has native VST plugin support, you can stack VST plugin. Simple convolver support (no individual channel set up) is available through 3rd party component. support VST plugin through a wrapper component.

+ Foobar2000: free, the most versatile among the bunch, does everything good IMO, from media library, playlist management to component support. – Foobar2000 and uLilith: WASAPI, DirectSound, ASIO, WaveOut (uLilith only), Kernel Streaming (foobar2000 only). – uLilith: more than sufficient, mp3, aac, ogg vorbis, flac, wavpack, ape, tak, wma, and format supported through your directshow filter. – Foobar2000: virtually everything out there can be supported through official and 3rd party components. To top it off, with its limited ability to handle other file formats and no playlist or media library support, it's simply not for me. On to the sound quality, I bet its the resampler but the sound of HQPlayer seems to be more sharp and congested compared to a more opened soundstage and musical sounding of my foobar2000 setup. Both uLilith and foobar2000 ASIO output works fine with my Xonar DX ASIO driver. The ASIO output of it crashes on starting playback for me.

Windows mixer is set to 24bit, 48KHz and 48KHz is also set in Xonar Control Panelįisrt HQPlayer starts up very slow compared to foobar2000 with my media library of over 4000 songs. I tested this player in its default configuration which is everything resampled to 48KHz with sinc resampler and TPDF dithering and I'm going to compare this with foobar2000 with SoX resampler to 48KHz in VHQ, Passband 95%, Aliasing not allowed and Linear Phase Respond with WASAPI output (to be honest every output of this player sounds the same to me on Windows 7). Well, just tried HQPlayer, it created two shortcuts on my W7 64bit computer one for WASAPI output the other for ASIO output.

Hqplayer desktop