Music player for Wndows in 2022

Anyone got any bright ideas?

Needs :-

- gapless playback. Gaps where they shouldn't be drive me nuts
- only local/LAN files needed, not online streaming services.
- good interface. Something Plex-like (i.e. cover art, artist details, etc), preferably
- good support for metadata. I can do this (adding, editing) with other tools if need be
- gapless playback.
- good database scraping for above metadata, preferably
- free is nice (but no ad's). Paid-for (one-off, not subscription) ok, and not a deal-breaker, if reasonable.
- not snooping on me.
- did I mention gapless?

My current thought? Foobar looks ok.

Snooping will be tricky - many claim they need to send some data back to generate playlist suggestions etc.

Otherwise iTunes for windows works great and they've got the best gapless in the business. Potentially you'd be able to block the server send back via firewall rules.

Can't remember if you need a (free) account though.

Not sure if it helps you but I use Media Monkey

Media Monkey is worth a look.

As for iTunes, I'll check but given Apple's general approach to business, I'd be surprised if you don't need an account and that, free or not, is an issue for me. Not necessarily a deal-breaker but I'd need to be very sure it was sufficiently better than the next best option to go for it 'cos, well, I can only think of one reason for them to require that.

I'm still using Winamp, lol. Haven't managed to get away from it. Tried to move over to Foobar but when i tried it when using a playlist on shuffle you cant go back a track (which you can on winamp) and that annoyed me too much for some reason so went back.

WinAmp. That's a blast from the past. For years, that was my default choice but I moved away, and can't even remember why, now. Will take a look.

Hmmm. From memory,it used to be a pretty small,neat interface, which was great when that was what was after. Now, I'm morelooking for a good player combined with a Plex-type interface, with cover art, categories etc. Nothing too complicated but that is good for browsing my collection, rooting and rummaging about in it for something that takes my fancy.

I can vouch for Foobar 2000. I’ve been using it since the mid 2000s for many reasons, one being that it consistently plays files over the network gaplessly well. In fact, I’m writing this while listening to music played on Foobar in the office, where the files are being accessed via a SMB share over VPN from my home server.

It takes a while to customise the interface and plugins if needed, but the brilliant thing is you can simply copy and paste the interface layout file and the plugins from an old installation to a new one, so you'll only have to do the customisation work once.

i've used winamp as main windows media player since the 90s or whenever. i use foobar occasionally, but mainly to convert 24bit files that traders little helper doesn't like. media monkey and mp3tag are the two i use to fix metadata and sort files. there's all sorts of plugins you can get with winamp that may do the things media monkey etc can do. it's the small neat interface i like, it doesn't fill the whole screen. i use a program called monkey mote which is an iphone/android app that works with a winamp plugin so you can use your phone/tablet to control winamp on the pc. so turn off the monitor and lie on the sofa and use the app to jump tracks etc

I use Foobar2000 as well.