What's the most user-friendly media player software? (must play FL Options

[krabapple]

Here's the sitch. I myself use foobar2K and my friends are all impressed by me using a laptop as a media server.
So now I need to set one up for one of my friends. However, I think f2K is too tweako for him by several orders of magnitude.
He's not a computer oriented guy, his main exposure is using a desktop for email, word processing and such.

He DOES know how to rip his CDs and encode them to properly tagged FLAC files (I configured EAC for him, thougjh I may
switch him to dbPoweramp).

Is there a really easy-to-use alternative to F2k? Like an iTunes that plays flacs? Because I don't want to
have to do constant IT support for his music server after it's set up. Ideally it should

-- play FLAC files
-- be able to scan a drive/folder and update the music library automatically
-- display album art (finding and downloading automatically would be nice too), and basic track information (title, album, artist, date, tracknumber)
-- allow EASY creation of playlists
-- allow tag/filename editing (this is secondary to the other functions)

[RonaldDumsfeld]

foobar2000 is very simple, and takes incredibly little time to produce incredibly efficient and easy results.

Illogical playlist creation and the very incredible ease and simplicity with which they can be deleted may not suit the user in question.

VLC is a possible candidate.

Free, unrivalled cross format support (check it out, it's the best), support for APE, ID3 and Vorbis tags, it plays video as well so album art etc is no problem, small desktop footprint and clear simple, scalable UI. Check it out. Looks ideal.

This post has been edited by RonaldDumsfeld: Dec 7 2009, 21:50

[Canar]

Illogical playlist creation and the very incredible ease and simplicity with which they can be deleted may not suit the user in question.

I don't get this complaint at all. I hardly see what's unintuitive about its playlist creation. Furthermore, if they're that critical, you can trivially make backups.

Once it's set up, there's nothing hard about foobar2000 at all. The only hard parts are in the configuration, and even that's only as hard as it has to be.

I do not get at all where foobar2000 is not "user-friendly". I've installed it on so many people's computers it's not even funny, and none of them have ever griped once about it being difficult. Sometimes they don't know how to to X so I set it up or show them, and the problem's solved. Often they remark: "Wow, that's easy!"

This post has been edited by Canar: Dec 7 2009, 22:43

[krabapple]

Illogical playlist creation and the very incredible ease and simplicity with which they can be deleted may not suit the user in question.

I don't get this complaint at all. I hardly see what's unintuitive about its playlist creation. Furthermore, if they're that critical, you can trivially make backups.

Once it's set up, there's nothing hard about foobar2000 at all. The only hard parts are in the configuration, and even that's only as hard as it has to be.

I do not get at all where foobar2000 is not "user-friendly". I've installed it on so many people's computers it's not even funny, and none of them have ever griped once about it being difficult. Sometimes they don't know how to to X so I set it up or show them, and the problem's solved. Often they remark: "Wow, that's easy!"

But generally it's easier -- or at least more intuitive or 'discoverable' for a newbie -- on iTunes.

In fact I've installed f2k one one friend's computer, which is why I'm looking for another player for my next one. Showing them how to do X is not as attractive to me as using software that is designed to let newbies figure out how to do X themselves (with a useful help function).

At risk of embarrassing myself, I've been using f2k for several years on a couple of computers, played with code in it , installed components , transcoded stuff, masstagged, etc. But typicaly I listen to music with my whole album list loaded into the playlist, with Shuffle tracks enabled, so I'm not often making playlists. When I do, I'm often confounded. Frankly I've never even heard of 'facets', never used autoplaylist intentionally, don't know what Ctrl-N does (I assume it creates a new playlist?), haven't used 'explorer' I don't think, and have generally found making playlists from album list to be tedious as best and maddening at worst. I especially hate f2k's tendency to want to replace a current displayed playlist with whatever I click (I don't used tabbed playlists). Conversely I've spent 15-30 minutes compiling a playlist in f2k using album list or 'add to playlist' only to have it wiped out by an errant click. I've also been tripped up by not SAVING the playlist sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, I *love* foobar 2000. I know how good it is. I realize my problems with it include my own ignorance and lazy practice and a case of read the frickin' manual (though, oops there isn't one, or at least, not a complete one, and not one with consistently clear instructions) and of course not all of these roadblocks are peculiar to f2k. But compared to my friend I'm a computer guru and a f2k 'power user' and I'm still perplexed regularly. User-friendly, f2k ain't, though to its credit it never claims to be.

This post has been edited by krabapple: Dec 8 2009, 01:45