The Winamp Debate: Apparently better than Vinyl...

Idoliside

Okay so the useful apps thread got a bit derailed with a Winamp debate. So i thought i'd put this thread up to get all the winamp "good or not" discussion here.

Personally i like winamp, it can be shaped into any form you want, doesn't take up much ram (92mg, with 6gb memory that's nothing) and has some very useful features (media library, mass tagging, auto tagging, album art, video, smart lists, cd tagging, ripping, plugins, skins, global hotkeys). So you can make winamp as big or as streamlined as possible.

It's had a bad past i'll admit. Version 2 was its best version until 5 came out. 3 was horrible and suffered alot of problems that put alot of people off winamp for a while (me included). But version 5 is now brilliant.

But who here doesn't like winamp? What are your reasons?

Seeks

I'm pretty neutral toward it. I hardly ever use it in Windows since I have a Zune Pass, but I use the linux clone of it often enough.

Daedalus

I used it back in the day, like everyone else. 2 was good. 3 was terrible; 5 was marginally better but still a step down from 2, and it was around then that I moved on to other programs.

edit: Honestly, it was a surprise to me that they were still making the thing now in 2009; I'd thought they'd given up years ago.

Visti

Like almost everyone I know, I used Winamp 2 for the longest time. I appreciated the simplicity and the fact that everyone and their mother could work it in a social situation.

Then they started bundling crap with, redesigning the interface and adding bloat. It might be better now, but I lost faith in them and discovered other apps that do I want much more efficiently.

Also, Winamp became the man.

Aldo

I used Winamp for a long time, but with every update more features were implemented I did not want to use. I just like to listen to music, tag it properly for last.fm and I'm done. Everything else is just annoying. They should make a completely stripped down version imo.

so now i use foobar and it's pretty great. It doesn't look pretty and it didn't have built-in last.fm support, but with a little add-on even that is working like a charm.

Mithrandir86

I still use it. It has a much lower memory footprint than iTunes, and the plugins for iPod management make it the best app for manipulating the data on most models.

I've tried using foobar, but honestly found that it wasn't quite as good for iPod management. I refuse to use 2 different apps for playing music.

iTunes (for Windows, I'll assume it's better for the Mac), is a terrible app in every sense.

Idoliside

Sure it has extra bits on it now, but you don't have to use them. On installation if you choose classic skin and use it the same way you used version 2, it's still the same winamp. You don't have to use/install the extra features if you don't want them.
Theres options to uninstall the media library and other support if you wish.

Visti

Aldo wrote: »

I used Winamp for a long time, but with every update more features were implemented I did not want to use. I just like to listen to music, tag it properly for last.fm and I'm done. Everything else is just annoying. They should make a completely stripped down version imo.

so now i use foobar and it's pretty great. It doesn't look pretty and it didn't have built-in last.fm support, but with a little add-on even that is working like a charm.

Look into some foo themes. It can seriously be one of the best looking players around. You can make it look like anything.

Aldo

Idoliside wrote: »

Sure it has extra bits on it now, but you don't have to use them. On installation if you choose classic skin and use it the same way you used version 2, it's still the same winamp. You don't have to use/install the extra features if you don't want them.
Theres options to uninstall the media library and other support if you wish.

Oh yea, I always went for the most basic installation, but it still felt like I was downloading a lot of shit i didn't need. I did not know about a way to uninstall Media Library. How can that even work with new patches, though?

t Visti: will do

Idoliside

Aldo wrote: »

Idoliside wrote: »

Sure it has extra bits on it now, but you don't have to use them. On installation if you choose classic skin and use it the same way you used version 2, it's still the same winamp. You don't have to use/install the extra features if you don't want them.
Theres options to uninstall the media library and other support if you wish.

Oh yea, I always went for the most basic installation, but it still felt like I was downloading a lot of shit i didn't need. I did not know about a way to uninstall Media Library. How can that even work with new patches, though?

t Visti: will do

If you go into Preferences-Plugins-General you can uninstall there. I used to keep if off when installing winamp fresh but tried it recently and found it good for organising my music without playing around with the file structure.
Not sure about patches or plugins, i don't really use any that mess about with media library.

Synthesis

A lot of us don't have 6 GB of memory.

In which case, 92 MB can be a lot? Honestly, back when I used WinAmp, it wasn't nearly so memory intensive. But it has been a while...I basically stopped using it the second time an update 'broke' it so to speak.

Nowadays, I use the Zune software which is quite memory intensive (though 61 MB is still less than 92 MB), but lets me keep track of people on XBL and a few other things.

wunderbar

hell, I'm using iTunes right now to listen to music, and it's using only about 70MB(it can vary, I've seen iTunes go up to 150MB when doing about 9 things with it at once).

Winamp had it's day, now it's day is over. It ended around the time AOL bought it.

Basticle

I use foobar2000 (actually its a really old version from like 2005ish) and it uses 1.7MB ...so yeah 92 is a fucking lot.

Visti

Aldo wrote: »

Visti: will do

Take a look here, for starters. They're not the best, but they'll give you an idea of what can be done. Foo is really the chameleon of media players, because of it's modular approach.

edit: those seem outdated - take a look at the foobar2000 forum instead! I'm pretty sure this is the one I'm using now - I'm not at my windows machine. It has a kickass minimal screen as well.

Synthesis

Looking at the necessary apps thread, it's amazing that people can get so riled up about free media players of all things,

maximumzero

Pre-iTunes, Winamp was the best thing around.

Post-iTunes, well, no thanks.

archonwarp

I recently switched from iTunes to Winamp because the latter let's me choose which soundcard I want to use, which is very helpful for playing music on my stereo and game or Ventrilo sounds on my headset.

Synthesis

My experience with iTunes is similar to that of WinAMP, sans all the good moments.

Then again, I've been using Windows OS continuously since I started listening to music (and before that too). I don't listen to music at my workstations in class, where Mac OS X is installed. So iTunes is going to suck to varying degrees.

iTunes, to its credit, didn't crash immediately on start-up. It just had a lot of other unpleasant things to deal with on Windows. Not owning an iPod also un-sweetened the deal a bit. I suppose if I had used it longer, it might have started crashing on start-up.

Visti

I really like the look of iTunes and a bunch of my friends use it, so I really wanted to like it, but it's just so bloated and in some points really counterintuitive. And it likes running a lot of seperate processes even when not running, which I'm not a fan of.

wunderbar

the problem with most media players is that their biggest successes often become their biggest weaknesses. iTunes is big and bloated now because it's evolved from a music player to software that includes a store, handles videos, syncs iPods and phones, streams media to other devices, and I'm pretty sure could make my lunch if I asked.

Winamp suffers from a similar, but not identical situation. Winamp got so popular that it was purchased by a big company. While that was the best thing possible for the guys that made it, it killed the platform because AOL tried to do the same thing with it. They wanted to make it bigger, better, with more features, when all most of the people wanted was just a good music player.

Idoliside

wunderbar wrote: »

the problem with most media players is that their biggest successes often become their biggest weaknesses. iTunes is big and bloated now because it's evolved from a music player to software that includes a store, handles videos, syncs iPods and phones, streams media to other devices, and I'm pretty sure could make my lunch if I asked.

Winamp suffers from a similar, but not identical situation. Winamp got so popular that it was purchased by a big company. While that was the best thing possible for the guys that made it, it killed the platform because AOL tried to do the same thing with it. They wanted to make it bigger, better, with more features, when all most of the people wanted was just a good music player.

But again, you don't have to use those features if you don't want to. Its all configurable to be just a small minimised music player. Most of the time its sitting in a small corner of my desktop entertaining me.

And 92mg isn't that much...unless your running with less than 2gb of ram.

Okay, i'm coming off as a huge winamp advocate, which i'll admit i am. I just don't want people to take it personally.

Synthesis

wunderbar wrote: »

the problem with most media players is that their biggest successes often become their biggest weaknesses. iTunes is big and bloated now because it's evolved from a music player to software that includes a store, handles videos, syncs iPods and phones, streams media to other devices, and I'm pretty sure could make my lunch if I asked.

Yes, but the lunch would suck. We're talking shit-and-tuna sandwich here.

That being said, I'm really surprised that WinAMP's memory usage has skyrocketed past things like iTunes. Apparently, 'WinAMP Light' (what I used to use), just meant fewer functions, not actually less memory use.

Visti

Idoliside wrote: »

wunderbar wrote: »

the problem with most media players is that their biggest successes often become their biggest weaknesses. iTunes is big and bloated now because it's evolved from a music player to software that includes a store, handles videos, syncs iPods and phones, streams media to other devices, and I'm pretty sure could make my lunch if I asked.

Winamp suffers from a similar, but not identical situation. Winamp got so popular that it was purchased by a big company. While that was the best thing possible for the guys that made it, it killed the platform because AOL tried to do the same thing with it. They wanted to make it bigger, better, with more features, when all most of the people wanted was just a good music player.

But again, you don't have to use those features if you don't want to. Its all configurable to be just a small minimised music player. Most of the time its sitting in a small corner of my desktop entertaining me.

And 92mg isn't that much...unless your running with less than 2gb of ram.

Okay, i'm coming off as a huge winamp advocate, which i'll admit i am. I just don't want people to take it personally.

It is actually the exact same amount of RAM no matter how much you have available. As in much, much more than perfectly adequate competitors.

It's totally beside the point, but I actually have quite a few machines under 2 gb RAM. Some under 1 gb as well.

LoneIgadzra

I've always found the winamp UI hilariously bad no matter what skin I pick, but I used it for the longest time due to small memory footprint, smart playlists similar to iTunes, and global hotkeys. Now I use foobar as it has everything except the smart playlists (I think) and a more straightforward UI.

I do keep iTunes installed for the music sharing, but if someone knows a cross-platform way to do that easily, I'm listening.

Lord Jezo

I use Winamp for single MP3 file playing, like double clicking on a random file to listen to, and also for Shoutcast radio. Gotta love the Digitally Imported trance stations.

With it's built in Windowshade mode that's super easy to use and it's classic skin mode (Modern is way to big and bulky) it just sits at the top of my screen docked on the top edge and I never even notice it.

For Podcast subscriptions and big huge management of all my files I use MediaMonkey and that one docks in the task bar in it's micro mode that is very small and out of the way.

I have a personal bias against using iTunes.

I have tried Foobar but I feel like I am too old and lazy to spend time customizing it to do what I want it to do. I'll leave that one for the kids.

BlackDove

aIMP was here, Winamp blows.

projectmayhem

Like most, I stop using winamp when version 3 came out. Been using iTunes ever since.

I just stopped by the winamp website to see what I've been missing and it looks like shit.

Real men use Billy for their mp3 needs http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy

Darmak

I only ever stopped using Winamp because I bought a Zune and have a Zune Pass (which is the greatest goddamn thing ever). I still prefer Winamp to the Zune player because it has a much, MUCH smaller memory footprint (the Zune player is uing 150MB of RAM as I type this and it's not even playing anything) and I love just being able to open a folder and play all the music in it, instead of looking through a ton of files with no tags (I am too lazy to tag the shit I rip onto my computer) or like a billion different tags, such as all the music from OCRemix which is in one folder but since it's all tagged with a million different artists it's a huge pain in the ass to listen to with the Zune software. Oh well, the Zune pass is still worth it.

Fats

Idoliside wrote: »

And 92mg isn't that much...unless your running with less than 2gb of ram.

I'm trying to figure out how you got winamp to use 92MB of ram, mine is using 20 currently.

I wanted to use foobar, but I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the all the useless windows. All I want is a box with a play/pause button, the title of the song playing, and maybe a progress slider.

UncleSporky

Can iTunes or any other media player play nsf, gsf, 2sf, or the myriad of other video game format music?

I still use Winamp all the time because I can listen to NES chiptunes or DS soundtracks. Their plugin system is easy, their interface is easy, small footprint, I have no idea what anyone means by bloat. It's tiny. I won't call it perfect but it sure suits my needs.

Visti

UncleSporky wrote: »

Can iTunes or any other media player play nsf, gsf, 2sf, or the myriad of other video game format music?

I still use Winamp all the time because I can listen to NES chiptunes or DS soundtracks. Their plugin system is easy, their interface is easy, small footprint, I have no idea what anyone means by bloat. It's tiny. I won't call it perfect but it sure suits my needs.

Foobar2000 can play, at least, nsf, gym and spc that I've tried. I'd be very surprised if it didn't eat the others too. Or at least would with a plugin. The cool thing about foobar2000 is that everything is basically a plugin. It's very much the unix philosophy. The playlist, EQ and such can be replaced because even the standard ones are just preinstalled plugins.

Edit: motion to perhaps just make this a general music player discussion thread? We're heading there already with everybody just suggesting what they use.

Stormwatcher

winamp is awesome and whoever disagrees has poo for brains.

urahonky

Winamp works with my keyboard and Foobar or whatever doesn't. Plus I think that Winamp LOOKS better than Foobar, even under the default settings.

UncleSporky

Visti wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Can iTunes or any other media player play nsf, gsf, 2sf, or the myriad of other video game format music?

I still use Winamp all the time because I can listen to NES chiptunes or DS soundtracks. Their plugin system is easy, their interface is easy, small footprint, I have no idea what anyone means by bloat. It's tiny. I won't call it perfect but it sure suits my needs.

Foobar2000 can play, at least, nsf, gym and spc that I've tried. I'd be very surprised if it didn't eat the others too. Or at least would with a plugin. The cool thing about foobar2000 is that everything is basically a plugin. It's very much the unix philosophy. The playlist, EQ and such can be replaced because even the standard ones are just preinstalled plugins.

Edit: motion to perhaps just make this a general music player discussion thread? We're heading there already with everybody just suggesting what they use.

That's pretty cool. I'm not going to switch, but that's pretty cool.

Mostly I'm not switching because what I have now works great, and because foobar is notoriously difficult to learn.

Stormwatcher

I was checking one of the skins for Foobar someone posted here, it asked for about 10 different plugins to be installed.

Yeah, fuck that.

Mithrandir86

Unless iTunes has drastically cut down its memory usage, it's far (far, far, far) and away the most bloated media software available for the PC. The new low numbers are most likely the result of split processes. Don't forget iTunesHelper, iPodHelper, etc. Those things are not easily disabled.

With larger libraries (I have >16000 songs) the thing will just cough and die. Unless I'm mistaken (and please correct me if I am), it also doesn't support FLAC or Ogg. As well, it puts in duplicate entries of songs, and changes the metadata when you open anything. It does have CoverFlow, which is pretty. And the store, if you're into that sort of stuff.

Also, oddly enough, the functionality of the iPod is underutilized in iTunes. Using the Winamp ipod plugin you can: copy stuff off your iPod, search for missing songs (if your database gets corrupted you don't have to reformat), and remove orphaned songs. It also transfers noticeably faster (about 2 hours for 80gb, compared to my friends who have better computers and leave it on over night).

Aldo

urahonky wrote: »

Winamp works with my keyboard and Foobar or whatever doesn't. Plus I think that Winamp LOOKS better than Foobar, even under the default settings.

you can set hotkeys, actually.

I tried to get a skin installed as well, but damn almost all those plugins are gone or unfindable

Visti

Stormwatcher wrote: »

I was checking one of the skins for Foobar someone posted here, it asked for about 10 different plugins to be installed.

Yeah, fuck that.

All the ones I've tried have packaged everything you need in a .rar to easy unpacking into a directory. Then it works. And looks good.

I mean, sure, you like Winamp. And I do too - at it's core, at least. It just seems like you're very hostile towards something you haven't researched that thoroughly.

Aldo

Visti wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

I was checking one of the skins for Foobar someone posted here, it asked for about 10 different plugins to be installed.

Yeah, fuck that.

All the ones I've tried have packaged everything you need in a .rar to easy unpacking into a directory. Then it works. And looks good.

I mean, sure, you like Winamp. And I do too - at it's core, at least. It just seems like you're very hostile towards something you haven't researched that thoroughly.

Every last one of em requires me to download more stuff from long decayed websites.

DiannaoChong

Aldo wrote: »

Visti wrote: »

Stormwatcher wrote: »

I was checking one of the skins for Foobar someone posted here, it asked for about 10 different plugins to be installed.

Yeah, fuck that.

All the ones I've tried have packaged everything you need in a .rar to easy unpacking into a directory. Then it works. And looks good.

I mean, sure, you like Winamp. And I do too - at it's core, at least. It just seems like you're very hostile towards something you haven't researched that thoroughly.

Every last one of em requires me to download more stuff from long decayed websites.

This has been my exact same experience on 3 seperate and long distance tries (as in I tried to give it another shot 6 months down the line). its good as a basic player, and i dont mind it, but when someone shows off some super custom thing that looks awesome, I just ignore it as a fluke or anomaly.


Im in the camp of winamp was good, got bad, was good because it went back to basics, but then it got bloated again.

I started using media player classic for music, it has playlist support, so why use something in addition? I do have a zune now, but i rarely listen to music on my pc so i dont really use anything anymore.

Impersonator

Visti wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

Can iTunes or any other media player play nsf, gsf, 2sf, or the myriad of other video game format music?

I still use Winamp all the time because I can listen to NES chiptunes or DS soundtracks. Their plugin system is easy, their interface is easy, small footprint, I have no idea what anyone means by bloat. It's tiny. I won't call it perfect but it sure suits my needs.

Foobar2000 can play, at least, nsf, gym and spc that I've tried. I'd be very surprised if it didn't eat the others too. Or at least would with a plugin. The cool thing about foobar2000 is that everything is basically a plugin. It's very much the unix philosophy. The playlist, EQ and such can be replaced because even the standard ones are just preinstalled plugins.

Edit: motion to perhaps just make this a general music player discussion thread? We're heading there already with everybody just suggesting what they use.

Wait, .nsf? It doesn't need any plugins for .nsf playback? Because I used to play .nsf files with Winamp but I remember that I had to install a plugin to enable that feature,