[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] ASCIIker:
i've gone through quite a few audio players. yesterday, i revisted the latest version of pocket player and i was BLOWN AWAY!

so i remembered reading this thread...dug it up...and decided to

1. give my props to pocket player (i am considering purchasing it!!!)

2. provide brief reviews of pocket player as well as other audio players i've tinkered with over the last 2 years.

HTC Audio Manager (most recent versions are similar with minor differences)

1. FREE!

2. has shipped with nearly all HTC official ROMs...integrates nicely with HTC Home and Manila2d/3d.

3. good audio quality but no built in equalizer. if headphones are plugged in, you can get equalizer functionality with the HTC audio booster.

4. now playing view is quick and to-the-point.

5. library is easy to use and straight forward.

6. auto detects music files across the entire device (i consider this to be a bit more "poky" than necessary).

7. bit sensitive to bad/corrupt mp3 files. often crashes even if a single mp3 file is indexed into your library.

8. finger scrolling is NOT kinetic and relies COMPLETELY on touchflo scrolling. this means that if you are like me (i.e. you use WM6.5 and you have completely disabled touchflo scrolling to allow WM6.5 native thumb scrolling to work properly), you will have to use the d-pad or scroll wheel or the scroll bar on the side to navigate the album

9. some versions on some ROMs are unable to play music through the loud speaker if the device is put to standby (playback through head set ALWAYS works with nearly every player in this list when device is on standby)

10. seems to support playlists but thats it! i don't think you can "manage" playlists more than just picking an existing one to play.

S2P (0.73beta)

1. FREE!

2. good alternative if you want something that looks a bit like the ipod/iphone music player. similarities are mostly cosmetic though.

3. library view is good! uses its own native kinetic thumb scrolling.

4. i think it supports playlists but i didn't see good support for building a playlist.

5. library navigation with the d-pad felt a bit unintuitive.

6. proper access to the library requires ordering your files in a certain heirarchy of folders.

7. good but not as clean to use (e.g. in the car) as nitrogen and not nearly as good as pocket player

Nitrogen

1. FREE!

2. skinnable. however, i found that most skins are made EITHER for portrait OR landscape but NOT both. that means rotating your screen and bringing up nitrogen meant manually switching to a landscape theme before you could see the rest of nitrogen's GUI.

3. tries to provide its own kinetic thumb scrolling but falls flat on its feet on my kaiser with WM6.5. i just couldn't make the scrolling usable enough to be able to navigate my music folders with ease.

4. the now playing view is easy and straight forward to use and most of the skins make the now playing view almost FUN to use.

5. like S2P, nitrogen requires the library to be arranged in proper files and folders for your own good. this is because nitrogen's library is really not a library! its just a glorified file/folder browser. however, nitrogen supported some nice features such as enqueue, enqueue and play, etc, suggesting that its internal playback is indeed building up some sort of a playlist that can be managed/saved.

6. does NOT continue to play through the loudspeaker if you put your device to standby (works fine through headset when put on standby). stutters on WM6.5 if the WM6.5 lockscreen comes up.

7. equalizer felt good but i didn't test scientifically.

Pocket Player v4.1

1. NOT FREE! (BUT WORTH IT, READ ON!)

preamble: on the desktop, i swear by WinAmp. once properly configured, WinAmp is the best experience for music playback on the desktop IMHO so i always sought something similar on the mobile (similar in functionality and power, not necessarily in looks). pocket player turned out to be shoe-in!

2. extremely customizable, lots and lots of options

3. only player in this list of AUDIO players that provides VISUALIZATIONS

4. only player in this list of AUDIO players that can play VIDEOS too

5. skinnable (supports native skins, winamp skins, and also auto detects available windows media player skins)

6. now playing view revolves around an explicit editable/managable/savable playlist. what this means is that in other players, the playlist is implicit. when you choose to playback an album, the tracks in the album are the ONLY tracks maintained in this implicit/hidden playlist. when you choose another album, the old playlist is cleared and the new album listing is loaded as the new playlist. this works but it is limited. with pocket player, you can dynamically BUILD a playlist. its a powerful concept that brings a level of experience similar to winamp on the desktop.

7. EXCELLENT library view. behaves like htc audio manager (because it does not require a special reorganization of your files and folders). looks for files to add to the library only in folders explicitly chosen by the user (like S2P and nitrogen).

8. playlist in now playing view is fully thumb friendly with kinetic scrolling (smoothest i've experienced on the kaiser).

9. library is fully thumb friendly with kinetic scrolling and with alphabetic indexing strip on the right (smoothest i've experienced on the kaiser).

10. large menus (regardless if you have WM6.1 or WM6.5).

11. POWERFUL options in the popup menus of items in the library. what behavior or what menu pops up is controlled through simple gestures. the mappings are all up to you!

12. keeps playing with the device in standby, through loudspeaker as well as through headset. no stuttering experienced so far.

13. supports crossfading.

14. equalizer felt good (i was using the "fast" equalizer, perhaps the other equalizers can give even better quality).

15. i can't stress this enough...the library view is a DREAM!

Pocket Player...HIGHLY recommended!

cheers!