XYplorer Beta Club

For me:
1-PotPlayer
2-Media Player Classic
3-MPUI-hcb https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpui-hcb/

Music -- foobar2000
Video -- No favorites really, using MPC now

Winamp for music.
VLC Player for anything else.
Winning pair for many years now.

*I tried a very, very good player in the past, revolutionary to say the least, but can't recall its name as of now. Will post here if/when the ring bells.

for my music collection: MusicBee
Video: Media player classic
musical transcription: Amazing Slow Downer

Calude

.

For audio files on a PC I rely on "1by1 Player" (freeware):

http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html

It plays all common music formats and works in an "explorer-like" folder tree setting. This is great for navigating around big collections. It has an Automatic Volume Control option so you can have music remain at a relatively constant loudness eg for background listening.

An excellent program by Martin Pesch. You want this available even if you normally use something else.

foobar2000 for music.
MPC-HD (Media Player Classic) for videos.
VLC for everything else.
GOM Player as backup player.

I used to love WinAmp but eventually, I love the simplicity of foobar2000. However, I still love WinAmp enough to backup and keep installation files for it. AIMP is not so bad either...

NeuView Media Player, that's the one I mentioned.

MPC-BE for video, AIMP (sorry, Winamp, but you crashed last time I checked) for audio.

My main requirement: browsing directories without playlists and intricate setups.
My fav player http://resonic.at/
Because of the waveform display that makes it easy to spot positions within a file.
Portable, of course, nothing else qualifies in my world.

I've dropped Foobar in favor of AIMP lately. I like the "Infinite" skin, for what it's worth. I find it very simple and straight-forward to use. It has a very good remote in the Google store for Android users. It's very good with playlists. It has a good Audio Converter that can convert pretty much anything it can play, including some rather difficult ones.

I also use Neutron from the Windows Store, as that's what I use on my Android phone. It has an excellent compressor with an intuitive graphic, as well as a very good parametric equalizer. It is, however, a Windows Store app with all the lovely things that come from that - but it is usable from a touch screen, so there's that if it makes you happy.

Were you aware that VLC also has a built-in compressor?

A compressor is useful for listening late at night or when there are things like a fan running in the background. On a portable device - it's available for iOS too - a compressor is a part of my daily listening. It makes it so you don't have to keep your hand on the volume knob to happily listen to, for instance, classical music with a very wide dynamic range in the car.

Updated 6/11/19

Winamp and VLC for movies

J River Media Center. It has the most flexible media library I have ever found. It's not free, but if you want things cataloged and sorted your way. This outshines every program I ever tried.

It has Audio, Video, TV, and Documents support. I have about 40 different views setup that categorizes and sort files the way I want them along with Smart playlists that update dynamically as you get new files.

Sounds like a commercial for them, but i's not. IMHO, it's hands down the best program for handling media I have ever seen.

For audio, I find myself using "1by1" a directory folder player a lot.
Reason being that it does not create a playlist nor add it to any library or history -- it just plays all the music in a particular folder.
That way I can listen to some of my less often listened music without altering my iTunes library, which I am pretty selective about what goes in there.
It's especially useful as I am trying to work my way through encoding a lot of old CDs and cassette tapes (though I think I need a better system for cassette tape converting...)
If I decide the music is likely something I wish to listen to more often, then I will add it to iTunes.
(Which I use mostly because of the required pairing with the iPhone.)

For video VLC is my most used.
I've tried some other video players (Zoom, PotPlayer, etc.) but mostly I use VLC.
(I could never get Media Player Classic to work well, for video, probably just something I did wrong... I gave up on that a while back.)

Isn't it weird that VLC player has been dominating the video part of the market for so long and it's still free, simple and convenient? More power to those devs!