Windows Media Player

It's a friggin processor hog when running along-side other programs. It causes the fan to go into hyper overdrive. It's just Windows Media Player for crying out loud. What is this "I demand 10 to 15% of all available processor availability"? I'm talking 'music' here, not video. Also, the bass is pretty much mute. Treble and mid-range are at minimums. I'm not using the video enhancements or the WOW feature. Basically just the bare minimums. I've tried Media Player Classic which is excellent in processor speeds. But there's no way to put my hefty "play all' or "shuffle" commands in it. Windows 10 doesn't recognize Windows Media Player Classic as an app, or even a real app. (Yeah, I know. f***ing brilliant, right?) Any suggestions out there?

suggestions on your WMP issue or on alternative music players?

as to alternatives, iTunes or VLC serve all my listening/streaming needs.

It's a friggin processor hog when running along-side other programs. It causes the fan to go into hyper overdrive. It's just Windows Media Player for crying out loud. What is this "I demand 10 to 15% of all available processor availability"? I'm talking 'music' here, not video. Also, the bass is pretty much mute. Treble and mid-range are at minimums. I'm not using the video enhancements or the WOW feature. Basically just the bare minimums. I've tried Media Player Classic which is excellent in processor speeds. But there's no way to put my hefty "play all' or "shuffle" commands in it. Windows 10 doesn't recognize Windows Media Player Classic as an app, or even a real app. (Yeah, I know. f***ing brilliant, right?) Any suggestions out there?

Interesting issue Corona you describe. I normally use VLC for both MP3 music and MP4 Music Video's and I'm not sure what CPU% is used however I just ran Windows Media player (32 bit) which I found on my 64 bit Win 10 and these are the results:

MP3 music - Jessie Colter "I'm not Lisa" - 1.3% to 2.3% 4,298 KB

MP4 music Video - Andrea Bocelli "Love in Portifino" live recording 2013 - 2.2% to 5.3% 74,583 KB

When I upgraded my Win 8.8.1 to Win 10 it appears that the 32 bit WMP went with all the other 32 bit apps???

Lately due to the discovery of Kodi on my MXIII I have installed and been using Kodi for Windows on my Win 10 box as a Media player...........mainly because of the add-ons. Using how to use/configure Kodi on the PC is easier than learning on my MXIII & TV siting in my lounge chair. lol

WMP has all those codecs in the background, so I wonder if it's perhaps loading a bunch of them.

For music try Foobar2000.

I remember hearing about VLC and Foobar by you guys on this forum before. I'll try both of those and see how it goes.

Off topic: for those of you with Windows 10 (like me) have you noticed a switch from being called File Explorer (that yellow folder that has Music, Documents, Videos, Pictures in it) is now being referred to as Quick Access, and that you can put anything in their using the Pin to Quick Access contextual menu? Lately I've found folders in there disappearing. Had to manually put them back in.

VLC is good for lots of things.

(Corona you don't have to use quick view, you can still do things the old way and use 'this pc')

http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/quick-access-windows-10/

Thanks for that link, Hazelnut!

VLC has all those audio+video codecs too, it will be interesting if it's light on memory.

I remember hearing about VLC and Foobar by you guys on this forum before. I'll try both of those and see how it goes.

Off topic: for those of you with Windows 10 (like me) have you noticed a switch from being called File Explorer (that yellow folder that has Music, Documents, Videos, Pictures in it) is now being referred to as Quick Access, and that you can put anything in their using the Pin to Quick Access contextual menu? Lately I've found folders in there disappearing. Had to manually put them back in.

Corona here is another link to the use of "This PC" instead of Quick access; http://www.howtogeek.com/219936/how-to-disable-quick-access-in-file-explorer-on-windows-10/

VLC has all those audio+video codecs too, it will be interesting if it's light on memory.

Corona, fwiw, I use VLC, only the portable, always the latest version.

Win xp, fairly fast processor, 3.3 gb usable RAM.

The way my system is set up, all of the VLC settings disappear after a restart.

I have noticed that there is always a considerable delay the first time it starts, but not thereafter.

Resource usage seems to vary by what type of file it plays. Not sure why, may be related to which codec it uses??

Here the usage varies from

9 or 10 percent CPU usage, 40 mb RAM
13 or 14 percent CPU usage, 53 mb RAM
46 or 47 percent CPU usage, 128 mb RAM

It runs great here, and seems to play anything you throw at it.

Resource usage seems to vary by what type of file it plays. Not sure why, may be related to which codec it uses??

From my experience with audio it can depend upon what format something was encoded into, and what compression level/quality was used. Video is a whole other beast.

Those numbers apply to video. All are conversions I made from .mp4 video. Using a free program called Freemake, I think.

9 or 10 percent ... was a smaller file in h264 + mp3 format,

13 or 14 percent ... was about same size in theora.ogg format,

46 or 47 percent was ... a larger file, saved in the highest available quality, don't remember details.

Edit: 46 or 47 percent seems like a lot, but it doesn't slow things down much here, probably less on Corona's newer system.

I basically run WAV or MP3 music files in WMP. Foobar uses drastically lower processor energy which is a big welcome change. I like Foobar but have to get used to adding my immense music collection into it. Kinda tricky when it asks for Files, Albums, or Folders. And I'm not sure I'm sending them in the right direction. And I don't know how to add already made playlists into one larger playlist within Foobar.

(I set my Foobar to a Teal setting. Do I get extra credit nerd for that? :D )