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The Winamp Debate: Apparently better than Vinyl...

13

Posts

  • 101101 Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    101 wrote: »
    I quite like this Foobar player, so much so that i've gotten rid of Winamp. The major advantage for me was that it can play from a CD, though it still wont get the album information for me, this could lead to lots of typing D:

    Well, I don't wanna be some kind of Winamp Shill or anything, but Winamp can play from cds probably since 1995 or something. And it does grab the cd info automatically.

    Oh i know, and its been my media player of choice for a while now, the problem with it has only arose with my new laptop, where it would neither play or correctly name songs on a cd. With this foobar thing i'm only trying to fix one problem instead of two

    101 on
  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    101 wrote: »
    I quite like this Foobar player, so much so that i've gotten rid of Winamp. The major advantage for me was that it can play from a CD, though it still wont get the album information for me, this could lead to lots of typing D:
    did you install the freedb tagger? It's usually unchecked by default during the install process.

    Azio on
  • CrashtardCrashtard Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Visti 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.

    Where can I find these easily installed skins? I've had the same experience. Every one I try to install inevitably has that one .dll that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

    Crashtard on
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  • 101101 Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Azio wrote: »
    101 wrote: »
    I quite like this Foobar player, so much so that i've gotten rid of Winamp. The major advantage for me was that it can play from a CD, though it still wont get the album information for me, this could lead to lots of typing D:
    did you install the freedb tagger? It's usually unchecked by default during the install process.

    ah, that may be a problem. How can i get it?

    101 on
  • StorkStork Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    +1 more to the Winamp camp.

    iTunes is probably the worst steaming pile I've ever had the displeasure to use. Now that Apple does that spammyware install-itunes-now-with-your-quicktime-updates I hate it even more.

    It's really tough to talk people into trying Winamp out seriously, but I've got three converts to my name in the last year. The converts went directly from iTunes and all are fairly advanced users.

    The funny thing is when I bring it up to most people they're like "I used that in college, it's still around?".

    Stork on
  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    101 wrote: »
    Azio wrote: »
    101 wrote: »
    I quite like this Foobar player, so much so that i've gotten rid of Winamp. The major advantage for me was that it can play from a CD, though it still wont get the album information for me, this could lead to lots of typing D:
    did you install the freedb tagger? It's usually unchecked by default during the install process.

    ah, that may be a problem. How can i get it?
    just run the install again, making sure freedb tagger is checked under "optional components"

    Once you get back, just right-click a song or a group of songs and go tagging>get tags from freedb

    Azio on
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Stuff


    You seem to be taking this pretty personally.

    I'm not saying Winamp is bad, I still use it occasionally. I just like Foobar more for my "main listening," when I'm not using the Zune software.

    Seeks on
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  • 101101 Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Aha, it was actually there all along, I just didn't know about it. So now I have the album details, thanks

    EDIT: Or not. When i rip the tracks and add them to my playlist, they have a '?' in their artist and album columbs, and when i go to change it i get an error complaining of 'unsupported or corrupted' files. I've tried it multiple times so this is quite odd, especially as when i view the album under the 'Audio CD' label i can see the album name and artist fine.

    101 on
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    That's... weird.

    I remember I had some weird problem with this shit too, so I just reinstalled and made sure that freedb was checked. Although I didn't have the "unsupported" problem that you're getting. The only thing I'd suggest is to make sure you're not trying to change the names of the files that are on the cd.

    Seeks on
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  • 101101 Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Seeks wrote: »
    That's... weird.

    I remember I had some weird problem with this shit too, so I just reinstalled and made sure that freedb was checked. Although I didn't have the "unsupported" problem that you're getting. The only thing I'd suggest is to make sure you're not trying to change the names of the files that are on the cd.

    ....

    when i got the tags, i clicked 'update now' instead of close. I think this might of changed something D:

    101 on
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    In the playlist itself, I meant, not the audio cd dialog. If you're in the audio cd dialog, "update now" should do the trick.

    I dunno, sounds like something might be wrong with your installation if you can't tag files at all, even after you've ripped them. I wish I could be of more help, but unfortunately the only cd near me isn't in the freedb yet.

    However, I'm not going to lie, I barely use foobar for ripping. I used to use it for flacs a while ago, but Exact Audio Copy (from the other app thread) seems to do the job. If you can put up with 45-minute rip times, anyway. I wouldn't recommend it for mp3s, haha.

    I do use foobar for conversion, though.

    Seeks on
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  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    edited August 2009

    I ran out of explanations for why the hell people insist that Winamp is some terribly slow beast that eats up gigabytes of RAM when it's definitely not.
    It scrolls through more than 8 thousand mp3 file lists as fast as I can move the mouse. It starts playing any song in my library as soon as I double click. it jumps to the letters I type instantly. It eats up less than 100MB RAM, which is nothing at all. A "8mb of ram" player would have absolutely no practical advantage over Winamp at all on my PC. Maybe it runs bad on Pentium III's with 256MB RAM or netbooks. But a modern PC with a modern CPU and a modern amount of RAM running Win7 will have no trouble dealing with Winamp.

    It is far more of the fact that it burnt a lot of it's users when 3.0 (and it's iterations) came out.

    I had been using it back from maybe 1.70 onwards and I loved it back in the mid to late 90's, it was fast, snappy and responsive.

    2.X was exactly the same and it ran like a dream.

    Now I can't remember when 3 came out to be honest, I was either running my old P4 2gHz with 512MB of RAM or my even older chestnut which was a P200MHz with 32 MB of RAM. I can't remember.

    But it ran like absolute arse.

    It was slow and with the RAM usage is was bloated as. Oh and to top it off the search feature (which is probably the reason why every used winamp in the first place) was barely a shell of the previous search engine.

    Frankly it turned me off them.

    Media Player did enough and did it without stopping my machine.

    Blake T on
  • IdolisideIdoliside Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Blaket wrote: »
    Now I just use WMP. It isn't as customisable, but the fact that options to play albums are built into file structures for W7 and the library system works through WMP makes it far easier to just stick with that.

    Winamp integrates with W7 just fine. Any folders filled with music files (i.e., folders Win7 recognize as being music folders) will have a "play all" option that starts Winamp. And you can also add any files to the current queue using right-click menu.

    Enqueuing in the playlist from context menu is another great feature that i use alot too. Especially when someone says "oh heres some music for you" but i'm already listening to something, so i enqueue it, move it up the playlist easy peasy.

    I think Version 3 of winamp put alot of people off, but they really did make five alot better.

    Oh and lets keep the personal attacks out of this thread, we're here for technical debate not "foobar is for linux-fags".

    Idoliside on
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  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I think the plugin named ELplaylist or something similar provides both a nice browser and search as you type for foo. Should be easy to find. It's the most used plugin.

    Visti on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Seeks wrote: »
    Stuff


    You seem to be taking this pretty personally.

    I'm not saying Winamp is bad, I still use it occasionally. I just like Foobar more for my "main listening," when I'm not using the Zune software.

    I actually don't care if people use winamp or foobar, I just get a bit irritated with the way people usually suggest foobar to others like using winamp was cancer or something. It's a kinda apple user-ish attitude that's really annoying. My point is that both winamp and foobar are good players, but foobar is not adequate for many, many people. And it has a good share of problems, like Winamp. Both are heads and shoulders above WMP and iTunes, though (iTunes is probably the best music player on Macs, but the PC version is shit). I'm just trying to get foobar dudes to accept that Winamp is good too. Maybe i'm doing it wrong, sorry.
    Blaket wrote: »

    I ran out of explanations for why the hell people insist that Winamp is some terribly slow beast that eats up gigabytes of RAM when it's definitely not.
    It scrolls through more than 8 thousand mp3 file lists as fast as I can move the mouse. It starts playing any song in my library as soon as I double click. it jumps to the letters I type instantly. It eats up less than 100MB RAM, which is nothing at all. A "8mb of ram" player would have absolutely no practical advantage over Winamp at all on my PC. Maybe it runs bad on Pentium III's with 256MB RAM or netbooks. But a modern PC with a modern CPU and a modern amount of RAM running Win7 will have no trouble dealing with Winamp.

    It is far more of the fact that it burnt a lot of it's users when 3.0 (and it's iterations) came out.

    I had been using it back from maybe 1.70 onwards and I loved it back in the mid to late 90's, it was fast, snappy and responsive.

    2.X was exactly the same and it ran like a dream.

    Now I can't remember when 3 came out to be honest, I was either running my old P4 2gHz with 512MB of RAM or my even older chestnut which was a P200MHz with 32 MB of RAM. I can't remember.

    But it ran like absolute arse.

    It was slow and with the RAM usage is was bloated as. Oh and to top it off the search feature (which is probably the reason why every used winamp in the first place) was barely a shell of the previous search engine.

    Frankly it turned me off them.

    Media Player did enough and did it without stopping my machine.

    Yeah, winamp 3 was so damn awful that they skipped directly to 5, a bit like Netscape jump from 4 to 6 (only Netscape 6 was shit too). But Winamp 5 is like Winamp 2 with some modern enhancements. It's really good.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    went back to winamp because winamp looks prettier and doesn't take a lot of google-fu to make it work the way i like it to. I mean, Foobar is ok too, just not really grown-up enough to work for the impatient.

    Aldo on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Aldo wrote: »
    went back to winamp because winamp looks prettier and doesn't take a lot of google-fu to make it work the way i like it to. I mean, Foobar is ok too, just not really grown-up enough to work for the impatient.

    I can help with a few cool tips if you want.
    not that there are many that i know of.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Aldo wrote: »
    went back to winamp because winamp looks prettier and doesn't take a lot of google-fu to make it work the way i like it to. I mean, Foobar is ok too, just not really grown-up enough to work for the impatient.

    I can help with a few cool tips if you want.
    not that there are many that i know of.

    Make me a .zip file that contains exactly all the files I need to put in my foobar folder to make it look like either this or this. :)

    I mean, I tried, but I couldn't find half the plug ins required. :(

    Aldo on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Ah, no, I was talking about Winamp.
    Another forumer sent me a zip with the stuff for Foobar and it still didn't work.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • Racist JokeRacist Joke Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Is there a way for Winamp to autotag my mp3's, like say, grabbing the info from a database? I have a fair number of mp3's that don't have all the info, like artists, album etc. I like to have my files have all the info for my Ipod.

    Racist Joke on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Is there a way for Winamp to autotag my mp3's, like say, grabbing the info from a database? I have a fair number of mp3's that don't have all the info, like artists, album etc. I like to have my files have all the info for my Ipod.

    right click -> send to -> Auto-Tag.
    Works on multiple selected files too.

    I know the implementation is not very intuitive, but once you know it's there, works just fine.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • IdolisideIdoliside Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Is there a way for Winamp to autotag my mp3's, like say, grabbing the info from a database? I have a fair number of mp3's that don't have all the info, like artists, album etc. I like to have my files have all the info for my Ipod.

    right click -> send to -> Auto-Tag.
    Works on multiple selected files too.

    I know the implementation is not very intuitive, but once you know it's there, works just fine.

    Its not the best auto-tagger tbh, it has got some of my names wrong but 90% of the time it's right.

    Idoliside on
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  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Ah, no, I was talking about Winamp.
    Another forumer sent me a zip with the stuff for Foobar and it still didn't work.
    it should have, assuming you followed the instructions. /shrug

    Azio on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Aldo wrote: »
    Aldo wrote: »
    went back to winamp because winamp looks prettier and doesn't take a lot of google-fu to make it work the way i like it to. I mean, Foobar is ok too, just not really grown-up enough to work for the impatient.

    I can help with a few cool tips if you want.
    not that there are many that i know of.

    Make me a .zip file that contains exactly all the files I need to put in my foobar folder to make it look like either this or this. :)

    I mean, I tried, but I couldn't find half the plug ins required. :(

    Uuh. That second one is nice. I'm going to look into that.

    I just installed Winamp on my XP machine. You're all right, the new version is pretty sweet. They still cram in more than I need, though, but I'll keep it for a while.

    Visti on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Visti wrote: »
    Aldo wrote: »
    Aldo wrote: »
    went back to winamp because winamp looks prettier and doesn't take a lot of google-fu to make it work the way i like it to. I mean, Foobar is ok too, just not really grown-up enough to work for the impatient.

    I can help with a few cool tips if you want.
    not that there are many that i know of.

    Make me a .zip file that contains exactly all the files I need to put in my foobar folder to make it look like either this or this. :)

    I mean, I tried, but I couldn't find half the plug ins required. :(

    Uuh. That second one is nice. I'm going to look into that.

    I just installed Winamp on my XP machine. You're all right, the new version is pretty sweet. They still cram in more than I need, though, but I'll keep it for a while.

    At least it's easy to ignore the "extra" stuff. I never even see the browser, the visualizations and all the store things. Just the music library and playlist.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Visti wrote: »
    Uuh. That second one is nice. I'm going to look into that.

    I just installed Winamp on my XP machine. You're all right, the new version is pretty sweet. They still cram in more than I need, though, but I'll keep it for a while.
    Yeah I think I like that one best. Lemme know if you can get it to work please. :)

    Aldo on
  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2009
    I still use it. Yeah, 3 was a travesty, but they redeemed themselves with 5. I also still use the classic skin.

    It's just way too useful. As mentioned before, it can play many videogame formats pretty easily, and it's base sound plugin for input and output is great, nice for streaming and such.

    There is no reason to use 2.x anymore though. 5.x is 2.x with 3.x's features but without 3.x's crap.

    FyreWulff on
  • IdolisideIdoliside Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    I still use it. Yeah, 3 was a travesty, but they redeemed themselves with 5. I also still use the classic skin.

    It's just way too useful. As mentioned before, it can play many videogame formats pretty easily, and it's base sound plugin for input and output is great, nice for streaming and such.

    There is no reason to use 2.x anymore though. 5.x is 2.x with 3.x's features but without 3.x's crap.

    This is what I thought when i first re-installed version 5. It loaded up with 2.x's classic skins, didn't crash and played lovely and I thought "thank god!"

    Idoliside on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    I still use it. Yeah, 3 was a travesty, but they redeemed themselves with 5. I also still use the classic skin.

    It's just way too useful. As mentioned before, it can play many videogame formats pretty easily, and it's base sound plugin for input and output is great, nice for streaming and such.

    There is no reason to use 2.x anymore though. 5.x is 2.x with 3.x's features but without 3.x's crap.

    Wow, I don't think you're so crazy anymore.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • SayokoSayoko Registered User new member
    edited August 2009
    I loved winamp for the skin customization but then I gradually grew out of it (so did the sites I followed that made them) soon after the Modern/Classic differentiation was introduced. There was never a version that was satisfying (there'd always be some sort of annoyance e.g. bug, crashes, lag reading certain filetypes).

    So I gave up and moved to foobar - it's nice and simple. There I discovered the awesomeness of multiple opened playlists. They also seem to manage other filetypes a lot better imo (e.g. TAK, FLAC, TTA, APE).

    I'm sorry winamp, I tried. Really.

    Sayoko on
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  • DracilDracil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I'm surprised people still use Winamp. Haven't used it in years, and only as an alarm clock.

    Foobar all the way for me. Low CPU and mem usage is win for me. Also, being able to play all those lossless codecs is whee.

    I remember having a lot of issues with Winamp with Japanese names.

    Dracil on
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  • MagitekMagitek Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Winamp 5.x for me here. I tried foobar out for a bit but I found it .. too counter-intuitive to setup in an attractive fashion. I recall downloading an insanely nice looking skin, then seeing the required plug-in list and it annihilating my enthusiasm for foobar right there. It's certainly a solid program but I don't have the willpower to set it up properly.

    For the moment I've got winamp setup on win7 with MAD (resamples < 320kbps mp3s - http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/) and a scripted party shuffle.
    For skins I'm using a slightly hacked up version of this, attached to the startbar vertically. http://www.winamp.com/skins/details/162527
    Uses 15mb and 0% cpu.

    Most of my friends just use windows mediaplayer, which isn't much good for shuffling, you can setup basic parameters but I couldn't get it to choose songs based on rating. I don't see any problem if you like to listen to whole albums individually or pure random though. WMP I use for videos though, it's nice to have them separated.
    I'd really like to use XMBC on pc to play video and audio but the quality is so uneven.. it's so far from the xbox version which I still use daily.

    Magitek on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Part of the issue with Foobar2000 is that most of the nice skins also use nice plugins to get their functionality, but plugin compatibility randomly breaks as new versions of Foobar comes out. So each skin is pretty much only compatible with a certain version (or range of versions) of Foobar. Because of this, it would be extremely handy to be able to pass around specifically customised distributions of Foobar, which the license doesn't permit. I find it amazing that there's such a large community around it despite the learning curve and continual plugin breakage.

    Frem on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Frem wrote: »
    Part of the issue with Foobar2000 is that most of the nice skins also use nice plugins to get their functionality, but plugin compatibility randomly breaks as new versions of Foobar comes out. So each skin is pretty much only compatible with a certain version (or range of versions) of Foobar. Because of this, it would be extremely handy to be able to pass around specifically customised distributions of Foobar, which the license doesn't permit. I find it amazing that there's such a large community around it despite the learning curve and continual plugin breakage.
    I haven't noticed much from that community on my travels through the intertrons. It seems a lot of plug-in makers have given up on it (one site even gave a message stating they refuse to deal with the silly copyrights on foobar and pulled everything they had offline).

    Aldo on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Dracil wrote: »
    I'm surprised people still use Winamp. Haven't used it in years, and only as an alarm clock.

    Foobar all the way for me. Low CPU and mem usage is win for me. Also, being able to play all those lossless codecs is whee.

    I remember having a lot of issues with Winamp with Japanese names.

    See, that's what I'm talking about. Winamp is low CPU and Mem. And it plays lossless codecs. It's like saying I like toyota cars because honda cars have no wheels and no engine.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • DracilDracil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Ok, just did a quick test.

    Winamp 2.95 - CPU 0-2, Mem 26MB Idle, doesn't support Japanese
    Winamp 5.56 - CPU 0-3, sometimes 8, Mem 16MB Idle
    Foobar 0.9.4.4 - CPU 0-2, Mem 6MB Idle

    Thus I dispute the low Mem claim, and CPU, while low, is still higher on the latest version.

    Does winamp support CUE sheets by default for playing lossless since this is how most people seem to do it?

    Dracil on
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  • CrashtardCrashtard Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Dracil wrote: »
    Does winamp support CUE sheets by default for playing lossless since this is how most people seem to do it?

    Oddly enough it doesn't seem to. Apparently it DOES play FLAC files though. Winamp is a strange place.

    Crashtard on
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  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Dunno about cue, but most definitely supports FLAC. And many strangely obscure codecs like nintendo 64 music.
    and the numbers you got put all programs at low mem and low CPU. 8% is nothing.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2009
    Also I think Winamp claims the buffer RAM for playing sound when it starts up, while other programs don't claim it until they start playing. Either way you're gonna be using RAM while a music player is open

    FyreWulff on
  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I just looked up the Zune process while I was playing music. 1-4% CPU and 135MB of RAM. :D

    ArcSyn on
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