http://irclogger.com/.mplayer/2011-05-19#1305794110
If the mpg123 development headers aren't installed, the default MP3 decoder of MPlayer is now ffmp3float. In addition, due to a bug in MPlayer, using ffmp3float with MPlayer results is clipping audio.
Let me repeat: with the default settings, MPlayer has clipping issues with MP3 audio.
I noticed the bug yesterday after recompiling MPlayer under GNU/Linux in order to get CD Audio support. While troubleshooting the problem, I found the IRC log above.
That message made me interested. At first, I thought mplayer2 is an official MPlayer 2.0 development branch or something like that. Later I googled mplayer2 and found...03:08 <uau> axaith: hmm yes the mp3lib decoder was marked as buggy there, which means it's no longer the default; but unlike mplayer2 the clipping issue with ffmp3float hasn't been fixed
http://www.mplayer2.org/
Mplayer2 is actually a fork of MPlayer. IMO, MPlayer is almost unrivaled media player, but after reading the official comparison page I decided to switch to mplayer2 myself.
Now, the disadvantages...
- I have no idea if the Windows build is portable.
- Like MPlayer, mplayer2 is a command-line program.