Winamp 3 ... what do you think about it?

[DJ Bobo]

Well, I just tried out Winamp3, and found that's totally crap: very heavy (needs more resources) and lack of many functions (visualisation speed?!, wma not playing?!, no plugins?!, etc) or am I missing something?!

I'm back to Winamp 2.80 right now...

[TactX]

I won't use 3.x until Milkdrop (http://www.nullsoft.com/free/milkdrop/) works with it.

You should really try it, music has never been so much fun :D

[Ookami]

sloooooooooooooooow...

[theReal]

Last time I tried to use a beta of Winamp 3, nothing worked. Really nothing - I could barely play a single song without it freezing my computer or crashing. It felt more like a pre-alpha software, not public beta...

Milkdrop is great! What was it some reviewer said on the Winamp plugins page? "If god were a visual plugin, he'd be milkdrop!" (something like that :D)

[cofferscuffs]

??

i've nearly used all the builds (well except that plight of 5 or so builds which were fully screw :)) without a hitch... its not slow for me! (are people still using 486's :P) i've never liked the original winamp... so basic! winamp will be like winamp 2 it will just keep being worked on so give it more time...

[kaml20]

I used to use winamp when I was more of a visual audiophile but I got bored after a while (a long while) now im all about mixing my music and I am really getting into it, it really is amazing what you can do with your music and for free. If you find yourself bored out of your minds and just sitting at your computer I suggest you try it (if you have music suitable to mix) ive used pcdj red and so many others now im on music maker 7 from magix (all of these have demos to dl) for music I have so many programs real player, music match, and alot of other ones. well anyways I think that the winamp followers are more into visualization than the way their music is played but anyways I took a look at milkdrop and it looks like I may return to winamp to revisit my visual needs. thanks for that link even though im regressing i think ill like the trip! :D

[twistee]

after reading this i decided to give it a go. its annoying that old plugins dont work. The new skins give it some style...although it kinda loses that classic winamp appeal. I think it needs some time to mature so all features actually work...but until then im sticking to winamp2.

[ookzDVD]

the GUI is too complex for me, I love my old 2.x ;)

[diji1]

hi, i quite like the new winamp but i won't be changing until a few more plugins are out ( ie. MAD ). it did seem a bit resource heavy before i turned off alpha blending, but it seemed sweet after that. i like some of the new features, especially the media library. the AVS doesn't seem quite up to scratch, but i never use the visualisation so it doesn't matter.

[Infophreak]

I'll be staying at 2.80 for a long time, I guess.

1) The public betas sucked. Nothing worked and they crashed all the time. I expect that the bugfix count for 3.01 (or whatever number they give it) will be insanely long, and there'll still be plenty of bugs left to fix.
2) Skin support for old v2.x skins is (AFAIK) broken. It skins the main window, but not the EQ and the Playlist... worthless! I have a couple of nice anime skins that I just won't throw away.
3) I don't want to learn to use a new interface. The 2.x series has served me fine, and is really all I need.
4) WHY OH WHY does it have to also play video now?? Why can't they leave that to a dedicated player such as bsplayer? USELESS! Winamp is for music, nothing more.
5) AOL... need I say more?

I don't have any qualms with the fact that old plugins doesn't work. I never cared for visual plugins or anything else for that matter. For me, Winamp is a little thing that runs in its own window and should just stay there. No need to fill the screen with (arguably) pretty graphics or do some weird effect with the sound. Play my mp3s/oggs, read my custom ogg vorbis tags and display a title based on that, and I'm happy.

[benedict]

Well, thay pretty much answers my question. I haven't D/L'd it yet, and it sure sounds like I shouldn't be in much of a rush.

[Neo Neko]

I like Winamp3. I still keep Winamp2 around though. They had to rush the release of Winamp3. But it is fairly mature just a bit more work to be done. I think all you Winamp3 nay-sayers will be eating your words once Winamp3 and wasabi take off. Needless to say If you have a sub 1Ghz machine you should stay away from the advanced features like desktop alpha etc. All you people complaining about CPU usage ever try to use Winamp 2.0 on a 486 or the original pentium class machines? The CPU usage was worse than Winamp3. Download Winamp3 for fun, but it is not ready to be tha main workhorse just yet. ;)

[Ookami]

> All you people complaining about CPU usage ever try to use Winamp 2.0 on a 486 or the original pentium class machines? The CPU usage was worse than Winamp3. Download Winamp3 for fun, but it is not ready to be tha main workhorse just yet

Of course, but that doesn't mean that Winamp3 has to be proportionaly slow, does it? BTW, on 486 you had to disable stereo and such so it was a pain in the ass anyway... Neo Neko, do you remember if Winamp still used the AMP decoder back then?

And I just hate the trend that is going around (Windows programmer syndrom?), putting as much features in a program as you can and don't keep the essence of it. What the hell I need a video play function in an audio player? And so on. But I could ramble for hours...

BTW, I'm still waiting for the anti virus program wich can:

- play your video files
- format your hard disk (very important!)
- use different skins
- be used as a instant messenger

IMO, Winamp is the best Windows player, but that doesn't say much about it. Up to the version 2.6x or so, it was one of the most unstable programs I ever used. Now with 2.77 that I use, I doubt I will ever update it again. As for the branch 3.x, I don't think they will ever put something in what will be a good enough reason to switch to it...

Cheers,

Mijo.

EDIT: Just saw this thread on HA: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&threadid=3021

[TactX]

Originally posted by Ookami

BTW, I'm still waiting for the anti virus program wich can:

- play your video files
- format your hard disk (very important!)
- use different skins
- be used as a instant messenger


LOL

:D

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Ookami
> All you people complaining about CPU usage ever try to use Winamp 2.0 on a 486 or the original pentium class machines? The CPU usage was worse than Winamp3. Download Winamp3 for fun, but it is not ready to be tha main workhorse just yet

Of course, but that doesn't mean that Winamp3 has to be proportionaly slow, does it? BTW, on 486 you had to disable stereo and such so it was a pain in the ass anyway... Neo Neko, do you remember if Winamp still used the AMP decoder back then?

Winamp3 is not proportionally slower. Oh and BTW I have warez versions of Winamp1&2 on CD. You used to have to pay for it. :) In fact with desktop alpha and a few other new things disabled it is hardly much slower than Winamp2.

Originally posted by Ookami
And I just hate the trend that is going around (Windows programmer syndrom?), putting as much features in a program as you can and don't keep the essence of it. What the hell I need a video play function in an audio player? And so on. But I could ramble for hours...

The video feature is not that new. It's prominance and placement is. Have you taken a look at what the new wassabi engine underneath has to offer? Nullsoft will make it an audio player and management system. But it looks to be exestensible to the max. If the users so desire they could add functionality to turn it into an automated DVD ripping, encoding, burning solution. Yes it is that exstensible. Not something that could even be dreampt of with the old Winamp versions.

Audio is passe. Anyone can do audio. And BSplayer is not that specialised. It can play MP3, OGG, etc as well. Winamp3 is aiming high. They have officially turned what was once an unofficial Windows multimedia system into a multi-platform multimedia system. That means more than just audio, and everyone is invited. There are bugs to be squashed and code to be tweaked for sure.

Audio is not that alien from video. Not as absurd as a multimedia virus scanner. Not much fun to have video without audio. No?

Originally posted by Ookami
IMO, Winamp is the best Windows player, but that doesn't say much about it. Up to the version 2.6x or so, it was one of the most unstable programs I ever used. Now with 2.77 that I use, I doubt I will ever update it again. As for the branch 3.x, I don't think they will ever put something in what will be a good enough reason to switch to it...

We shal see. We shall see. I shall keep this archived for the day you recant.

[Neo Neko]

I just ran a test. I set out to just play some of my Vorbis no frills such as AVS etc. Here are the results.

Winamp2 - CPU <=1% - RAM-SIZE ~10.94Mb
Winamp3 - CPU <=1% - RAM-SIZE ~14.26Mb

It takes a bit more RAM. Hell now I am 1/3 the way to using all the ram installed on my machine. YAY! Another 4Mb or so is chump change. And it will be slimmed down in future versions. We have to use new plugins, but the new plugins should be much better than the old ones.

My system is a bit of a beast. Anyone with a sub Ghz machine wanna give it a shot. I used the default skin without desktop alpha. Everything else was pretty well stock. All I can say is so much for Winamp3 being a sloth resource hog. Just a few features lacking that will be added at a future date.

Important stats.
____________________________
Anthlon XP 1600+
256Mb DDR PC2100 RAM

[athos]

I dont care too much about the ram usage, but
(1) It takes longer to load. I like to double click an mp3 and have it start instantly
(2) Even the menues are slow

I'm using a P4 1.3ghz with 512mb rdram, i think that ought to be enough to run a simple audio player.

[[Toff]]

Yes, from a programmer point of view, Winamp 3 is very impressive, the Wasabi engine seems so powerfull.
But ATM users just see the new skin engine.
I'm sure that a lot of people will use Winamp 3.0 to have a cooler skin that their friends :cool:

Video playback is broken for me, when I open a DivX 3 file there is no red color. And then if I open another video the problem is kept. I must restart Winamp to play other video with the right colors. (If someone of the Winamp team is looking at this you may call the CoUninitilize() function to be sure that the previous graph has not put the mess in DirectShow)

And winamp 3 is not so slow. It's just long to start. It doesn't use much memory, IMHO it depends of the plugin you use in Winamp 2.


I'm sure that in 2 years Winamp will have is own OS :D

[DJ Bobo]

Sorry, but Winamp3 is damn heavy! it needs much more time to start than Winamp2 (fast start is one of the main arguments for me using winamp) and then after start it is still damn slow, the visualisation works like a turtle and the menus are so slow to show and the playlist is slower than before...

BTW, I have a P3@667MHz with 128MB RAM.

[buba king]

Runs fine on my syz.. get a better comp :P

anywayz.. even tough i seldom listen to music i miss some stuff in wa3...

where did the "j" hotkey go? its really hard to find the 1337 music when you have 3k+ tunes (ph33r m3)

Band analyser fps? where the hell did that go?

old skins.. yeah i miss those kawaii anime skins :(

[buba king]

Originally posted by [Toff]
the Wasabi engine seems so powerfull.
But ATM users just see the new skin engine.

d00m3 engine in winamp 3 anyone? :D

[Neo Neko]

Yeah Winamp3 is slower to load. Heck in the extra 2 seconds it takes I could have stepped out for lunch and back. NOT! Once it is loaded it runs just as fast and with just as much resources on my machine as Winamp2. Just like I said on HA. With Winamp3 and the wassabi engine Nullsoft has given you the power to remake almost the entire program in your image. Your favorite hot key missing? Script it back in. You don't like the way a control or menu behaves change it. Your favorite format not included? Add it.

As PP said it was impossible to add these needed features to Winamp2 without completely rewriting it as Winamp3.

It is a bit bare at the moment. But I expect it to become just as ritch and featurefull as Winamp2 in the near future. More so actually.

[wmansir]

I installed winamp3 and but will soon be moving back to 2.x.

I have several programs that play video, better. I don't need alpha blending. It is much slower at startup. The install gave me an "Try AOL" bookmark, desktop icon, and start menu icon. And it sometimes stops responding to my system for several minutes when I'm running other programs, like burning a CD.

[theReal]

The AOL-"Feature" was already included in the latest Winamp 2.8 - you could uncheck it during installation. However, as long as it doesn't install any spyware, I can live with an AOL icon (because how long does it need to remove it from your desktop?).

I just hope it will work now (the last time I tried a beta it was nearly unusable). I can live with a longer start-up time and more memory usage (as long as it doesn't take more than 256MB it's ok ;))

It doesn't support old skins yet? I guess in a few days there'll be the first converter for old->new skins (I had a converter once that made PowerDVD skins from Winamp skins, something like that must also be possible for Winamp 3)

[Ookami]

Hello Neo Neko and all the others...

Winamp old... Of course I remember the time when Winamp was shareware, it had a nice statistic (I somehow miss that) how much you've played etc. Altough, a few years back I've tested many MP3 players (even on Linux) and come to conclusion that there is no program that does the job right. So I had to choose between a catastrophy (luckily I forgot those programs), average (e.g. YAST) and quite good (Winamp etc.).

Again, what's the use of the wasabi engine?

In an audio player I only care about audio playback quality. Period. I don't need schnick-schnack (could someone translate this to english, please?) that is already done right.

I read the old threads on HA when Winamp 3 was alpha, and it was praised, ok, Sonique was praised too, where is it now?

I wish Winamp 3 all the luck and may it be the Windows ME under the audio players (or not :D )...

What's the use of Winamp 3 if you disable all the new stuff to make it faster?

And that stupid (yes, I have to be blunt) argument to upgrade your hardware to run some software is always somewhere near :rolleyes: .

IMO, I'm for optimized and functional software. I'm not one of those "CLI is the best" freaks, but I certainly don't want bloated software. After all, even if Winamp 3 would be badder in every account than 2.x, people would still install it because of the new version number.

BSPlayer can play MP3 etc. Power DVD also, but the question is who will use such software for that?

Who will use Winamp for video playback? Why would he use that? For developing good software you need time, look how much they needed to make a stable audio player! Others failed to do even that!

I use Winamp + the ReplayGain plugin and that's all that I need. Sometimes I turn on some graphic plugin (Geiss etc.) to impress someone :D , but that's it.

Originally posted by Neo Neko

Audio is not that alien from video. Not as absurd as a multimedia virus scanner. Not much fun to have video without audio. No?


Sure. But I have yet to see a video player that doesn't support the audio stream playback :) . And my anti virus scanner "example" was sarcastic, but it is so that every program "need" skins and does things that it doesn't need to do (Anyone saw the new bitrate calc. that does sound normalization?)... Wasn't Winamp the program wich started the skin hype?

Originally posted by Neo Neko

Audio is passe. Anyone can do audio.

I higly disagree. Not anyone can do audio. Not anyone can program in a good way. Not anyone can do a good UI. Not anyone can do video. And so on.

The programs out there are the proof! How many excellent DAE programs you have out there (EAC, Feurio and maybe CDex...)? How many excellent DVD decrypters you have (DVD decrypter and Smartripper)?

And so on. You had to wait until 2001 to get a good and stable audio player! That is how many years? If anyone can do audio then why aren't there more good and excellent players out there?

Why has the MP3 decoder test (old but still valid!) ended so:

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~djmrob/mp3decoders/intro.html

If it's so easy?!

Originally posted by Neo Neko

We shal see. We shall see. I shall keep this archived for the day you recant.

Sure. As I said in my original posting "I doubt I will update from 2.77", there is always the possibility :) . Maybe tommorow, I'll start to use the Radlight player and Outlook express (oh, wait I am using Outlook express :o ) :-) .

This posting is getting more and more chaotic and unreadable, so I'll stop now.

Thank you all for your comments and take care...

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Infophreak]

Well, I finally got around to trying it. After 15 minutes of use, here are my conclusions:

1) Legacy support my a**! Old 2.x skins don't skin the playlist, and Winamp3 zealously draws an EQ graph over the pretty picture that extends over the main window and the EQ :(

2) (the big one) Ogg Vorbis support is NUKED! The old Winamp 2.80 let me edit all Ogg Vorbis tags, supported Vorbisgain tags and let you specify a custom title display. NONE of that is in Winamp3 :(

3) Well... it's just... slow. And takes forever to start.

4) Video playback... bah! The latest Zoomplayer (2.80 beta 1) is nice :)

From a developers point of view, this may be a good thing, but for a normal user, it just sucks compared to Winamp 2.80 and any dedicated video player except WMP 7.1 or later (higher configurability, support for more file formats and general resource usage)

PS: My customized Ogg Vorbis title display format:
===================================================
$if(%anime%,%anime% - %album% - Track %tracknumber%: [%artist% - ]%title%,[%artist% - ][%album% - ][Track %tracknumber%: ]$if(%title%,%title%,%filename%))
===================================================
In every anime Ogg Vorbis file I have a tag called "anime" with the name of the series that the music is from. Works like a dream for my (mostly anime sound track) playlist.

[[Toff]]

If you want ligth player you always have some choice :
http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch
http://www.netean.com/stp

A bit more heavy :
http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net

[theReal]

I have to say I find the final version is not bad. It really needs half a second more to start, but that's about all.

What I don't understand is, why was it necessary to remove the keyboard shortcuts for forward and back on the numpad (4 and 6)?
Now I have to hit B and V which is rather unintuitive.

Also, why can't the media info open on double-clicking the filename in the player? I guess you're supposed to have all the windows opened all the time - but I don't want to fill my desktop with Winamp, I just want the necessary stuff and open the media info quickly (now it's a pain to open it).

A third thing I don't get is why the default action for m3u playlists is now "install" (and btw. both "install" and "open" do quite crazy things: either it opens Winamp without the playlist, or it loads the playlist but doesn't play - not what I expect when I double click the playlist...).

Well, at least it's working and I guess soon I'll like some of the new functions (at least I hope so...)

[Neo Neko]

Well for those of you who care and are not using the "it's not winamp2 so it sucks!" argument. Here is a link listing things you can do to get Winamp3 to start as fast as Winamp2 and use less ram than Winamp2! http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=98094

All this Winamp bashing is way to premature. We have yet to see what Winamp3 is really capable of.

[theReal]

--> WA3 is just like a new version of Windows: you need to learn how to disable all the annoying stuff and how to configure the necessary things, then it's really good :)

In the meantime I found a good skin (Xax... whatever) and I already love the Explorer-Plugin for the playlist.

It's using 38MB RAM right now, but I really don't care (I never fill my 512MB anyways).

[diji1]

Neo Neko : All this Winamp bashing is way to premature. We have yet to see what Winamp3 is really capable of.

exactly. i'm already finding the media "library" function quite useful - it provides fairly useful ways of organising your libraries just as an example. quality third party plugins are on the way. im surprised quite frankly at some of the justifications here for labels like "crap" ( and worse .. ) etc about wa3. 1-2 seconds extra loading time and 2.x skins non-compatibility - er, give us some real reasons to start bashing the program pls.

[DJ Bobo]

I think it's crap, because it's slow: start is slow (I'm really not into picking out the not needed files), analyser is slow and not configurable, playlist generating is slower than before, menus are slow (even without any blend option or what so ever it was).
Other things would be: wma not playing?! where should I configure input or output plugins?!
But the main reason is SLOOOW! the main reason for me to use winamp is that it was almost the fastest application in whole windows! with winamp3 all is damn heavy, that doesn't make fun.

[ProfDrMorph]

WinAmp3 looks promising but at the moment I won't upgrade to it ( I've got it installed but all audio files are associated to WinAmp2 ). The number of formats WA3 supports out of the box is fine for me but I had problems with "ID3 Tags" in Vorbis files. WA3 couldn't read some characters which aren't used in English but e.g. in German. And when I tried to rewrite the ID3 Tag WA3 just deleted the whole tag. As soon as WA3 is "bug-free" ( in terms of no stupid bugs like that tagging stuff ) and someone released a plug-in which allows me to use my mIRC MP3 Script by using mIRC's DDE Server I'll switch to WA3.

[theReal]

From what I read on the WA3 Forums, it seems the developers were pressured by AOL to make the first release. Many functions that are still/again lacking will come with the next releases. 99% of what I can complain about is obviously known to the developers and will be changed/fixed.

[killingspree]

winamp 3.0 works fine for me... doesn't use too much resources or so... but it is just missing some small convenient feats! like the jump to file (j) hotkey.
another problem is of course the problem with old winamp 2.x add ons... and i've had a real problem importing my old skins...
so in the end i found myself using winamp 2.80 agian half an hour later.:p

[Neo Neko]

I have both 2.80 and 3.0 on my sys. And files are still linked to 2.80. Like I said Winamp3 is not fully ready to be my workhorse. But it soon will be. On my system it just loads a bit slower than 2.x. But once loaded it runs good.

[grug2k]

Pros:

* Can play videos
* Looks Pretty

Cons

* Slow
* Unstable
* Bloated
* Jump to is missing.
* No Winamp 2.x plugin support, mainly:
* No Albumlist (http://come.to/albumlist)support (3.x media library can't compare.)
* Crap CD audio plugin (CDReader for 2.x is good.)
* Can't use the infinitely superior MAD MP3 decoder (http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/)...

Am I the only one who doesn't care how Winamp looks? I just minimise Winamp and keep it out of the way, and hit the "next track" button on my keyboard if I have to?

This is just more typical AOL crap. Buy a decent program (ICQ 98, Winamp), and then make it triple in size and offer no advantages other than bloated useless functions that no one cares about.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by grug2k
Cons

* Slow

Only to load. Once loaded it is just as fast as Winamp2.


Originally posted by grug2k
* Unstable

Hasn't crashed on me yet. But I am sure you remember just how stable Winamp2 was when it first came out. It seemed like it could crash on que. So far Winamp3 is dooing much better.

Originally posted by grug2k
* Bloated

It is no more bloated than Winamp2. If you are comparing Winamp3 full to Winamp2 lite and arriving at the conclusion that it is bloated. Well that would be foolish. Winamp3 full is about the same size as Winamp2 full. So I have a hard time seeing where it could be bloated.

Originally posted by grug2k
* Jump to is missing.

Never used it much myself. But if you and everyone else misses it so bad then someone will put it back in.

Originally posted by grug2k
* No Winamp 2.x plugin support, mainly:

There is Winamp2 plugin support. It is still experimental ATM. But it does work. But why would you want to use the Winamp2 plugins. The Winamp3 ones once they come out will be worlds better.

Originally posted by grug2k
* No Albumlist (http://come.to/albumlist)support (3.x media library can't compare.)

You mean they are not going to write a Winamp3 version. Shame on them. Or are you nitpicking.

Originally posted by grug2k
* Crap CD audio plugin (CDReader for 2.x is good.)

Yeah you can't beat reading digital media in an analogue fassion ala Winamp2. What were they thinking introducing digital reading of digital media in Winamp3? Perhaps they were thinking it made sense and was long over due.


Originally posted by grug2k
* Can't use the infinitely superior MAD MP3 decoder (http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/)...

MAD? You must be mad! :D Again is it Nullsofts fault that these guys are not through with a Winamp3 version? MAD is not all that great, after all it is only MP3.

Originally posted by grug2k
Am I the only one who doesn't care how Winamp looks? I just minimise Winamp and keep it out of the way, and hit the "next track" button on my keyboard if I have to?

Am I the only one who knows you can do that with Winamp3 as well?

[grug2k]

Congratulations on missing the point! The point is, right now, at this point in time, Winamp 3.x is not mature enough to be really usable.

Winamp3 is slower, more unstable, and bloated than 2.x. Fact. It uses more CPU, hogs more RAM, and crashes more often. 2.x, on the other hand, is now some 3 years old.

Also, I was referring to the plugin called "CDReader", not the standard CD audio plugin. The Nullsoft one is analog and forces CDDBv2 upon us. The CDReader one is digital (but better than the 3.x one) and has freedb support.

In a few months, there probably will be all sorts of plugins and 3.x ports of 2.x plugins. But at the moment, theres no reason to upgrade.

Both play mp3s. But 2.x is faster, and at the moment, supports more formats, sounds better (MAD decoder), and has the power for easier management (Albumlist).

And if you minimise 3.x and don't look at it while you're using it...why did you upgrade? :P

To each his own.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by grug2k
Congratulations on missing the point! The point is, right now, at this point in time, Winamp 3.x is not mature enough to be really usable.

Calm down friend. I got your point. But did you get mine? I think we all agree that it is less mature. What I don't like is that people say it is crap because of this lack of maturity. We don't give up trying to rasie children at birth because they lack maturity do we? ;)

Originally posted by grug2k
Winamp3 is slower, more unstable, and bloated than 2.x. Fact. It uses more CPU, hogs more RAM, and crashes more often. 2.x, on the other hand, is now some 3 years old.

Here's the funny thing though. On my system it uses the same CPU and the same or less RAM as Winamp2 does! And it has not crashed once on me. Have you reported your configuration to Nullsoft so they might see what they need to fix or work around on your system to make the software better?

Originally posted by grug2k
Also, I was referring to the plugin called "CDReader", not the standard CD audio plugin. The Nullsoft one is analog and forces CDDBv2 upon us. The CDReader one is digital (but better than the 3.x one) and has freedb support.

Oops. My bad. I thought you were reffering to the stock Winamp2 one. To be quite honest I had not heard of this CDReader plugin before. As I am sure many have not. So Winamp3 will be an improvement for alot of people in that respect. And when it comes to audio CD I almost never play them on my PC. I convert them to Vorbis and play through several albums at a time. The media library works quite nice for this.

Originally posted by grug2k
In a few months, there probably will be all sorts of plugins and 3.x ports of 2.x plugins. But at the moment, theres no reason to upgrade.

Well I agree with you. But I prefer to say there is no reason to completely switch at the moment. As I said they are both on my system ATM. I jump between the two.

Originally posted by grug2k
Both play mp3s. But 2.x is faster, and at the moment, supports more formats, sounds better (MAD decoder), and has the power for easier management (Albumlist).

It is only slower on startup. And I got MAD working under Winamp3 just a bit ago. Along with the Winamp2 Monkey's Audio decoder. :) But what you point out there are not the fault of Winamp3. It is part of it's immaturity to be sure. But all that will be covered soon.

Originally posted by grug2k
And if you minimise 3.x and don't look at it while you're using it...why did you upgrade? :P

I got one acronym for ya. hehe. "MAKI". I am playing around with the new scripting ability of WA3 and it looks to be good! I can script it to wake me up in the morning. I can script it to start about the time I come home from work/classes. All I do is walk in and the music is ready. But MAKI is capable of much much more. In fact using MAKI you should be able to reimpliment the "jump to" feature. ;) Check deskmod. The new stuff tends to hit there first still.

[Ookami]

Er, altough I didn't wanted to post in this thread, a constant repeating of the same logic flaw has forced me to do so :D .

-Winamp 3 and the tale of "it will be better"

Cannot understand this logic. So last year all Windows 2000 users had to remove Windows 2000, and install Windows XP beta because the bugs and flaws will be fixed? Because Windows XP will have things that Windows 2000 is not capable of?

BTW, I, yesterday, started using Windows XP :D .

Winamp 3 is not good, the fact that the bugs and flaws will be fixed (when, no one says, when you look how long Winamp 2.x took to be a good and stable player says more than anyone could), doesn't change anything on the quality of Winamp 3 today.

It reminds me of the logic of the people that hyped AvP2, altough the demo was not good (at least that), with the line "the game will be great, therefore the demo today is great too!". Huh?!

Winamp3 is inferior to Winamp 2.x, right now. That is simply a fact. I could write all the reasons, but why bother, no one would reply to them anyway (see my last posting here) and we would hear all the old things again...

And, Neo Neko, I find it very funny that you "defend" Winamp 3, but still use Winamp 2.x, mostly?! So? Oh, yeah... You are getting yourself ready when Winamp 3 is fully ready ;-) . BTW, are you writing scripts to start your automatized processes, too? :D

Winamp 3, altough not called so, is still beta.

Simply put, there are (and will be) always people that don't need featureitis, but needs a few selected and optimized (tuned) features.

Now what features are needed and what not, is almost a philosophical question.

So, unless someone will cross the line of the forum rules I will not respond in this thread anymore.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[athos]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
It is only slower on startup.

The menues are slower on my system too. I think its annoying. Also the fast start is a mayor drawback to me, because I like to double click an mp3 file and have it start instantly. I guess waiting another second wont kill me, but the new skinning and scripting possibilities are not enough to cover for this, in my opinion.

Still I agree that we will probably see a lot of bufixes and, hopefully, optimizations soon.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Ookami
Er, altough I didn't wanted to post in this thread, a constant repeating of the same logic flaw has forced me to do so :D .

-Winamp 3 and the tale of "it will be better"

Cannot understand this logic. So last year all Windows 2000 users had to remove Windows 2000, and install Windows XP beta because the bugs and flaws will be fixed? Because Windows XP will have things that Windows 2000 is not capable of?

Windows XP is at best a nearly bit identical version to Windows 2000 plus the face lift. Winamp3 got a face lift and much much more. Nearly everything in Winamp3 was changed to make it better and more expandable. It's not much to look at now. And I feal alot of people are getting hung up on this fact and ignoring the underlying potential.

Originally posted by Ookami
Winamp 3 is not good, the fact that the bugs and flaws will be fixed (when, no one says, when you look how long Winamp 2.x took to be a good and stable player says more than anyone could), doesn't change anything on the quality of Winamp 3 today.

I have not had the problems with Winamp3 you have. But it does not matter who is developing said software. Bugs are squished on the developers schedual and no one elses. Why should we stigmatize Winamp3 because of that.

Originally posted by Ookami
It reminds me of the logic of the people that hyped AvP2, altough the demo was not good (at least that), with the line "the game will be great, therefore the demo today is great too!". Huh?!

You can't realy compare Winamp to something like that. When a game is done it is done. Sure there are patches and updates to fix bugs. But added features after the release date are rare. The past has shown Winamp to be a produt that continues to evolve over it's lifetime. Not only are bugs squashed on a regular basis. But new features are added and refined constantly. Winamp3 is immature. But that is not a reason to dismiss it or deny it's underlying possibilites.

Originally posted by Ookami
Winamp3 is inferior to Winamp 2.x, right now. That is simply a fact. I could write all the reasons, but why bother, no one would reply to them anyway (see my last posting here) and we would hear all the old things again...

No one would reply to it because it is not in dispute. No one is saying that Winamp3 is better than Winamp2 at this moment. It will be better in the future. "Will you switch to Winamp3" is to generic a question. I know for a fact that 95%+ of the Winamp2 users whill switch to Winamp3. It is all a matter of how long or when. Even though I still use Winamp2 more I know I will switch to Winamp3 in the near future completely.

Originally posted by Ookami
And, Neo Neko, I find it very funny that you "defend" Winamp 3, but still use Winamp 2.x, mostly?! So? Oh, yeah... You are getting yourself ready when Winamp 3 is fully ready ;-) . BTW, are you writing scripts to start your automatized processes, too? :D

No one is saying that Winamp3 is better than Winamp2 at this moment. It will be better in the future. "Will you switch to Winamp3" is to generic a question. I know for a fact that 95%+ of the Winamp2 users whill switch to Winamp3. It is all a matter of how long or when. Even though I still use Winamp2 more I know I will switch to Winamp3 in the near future completely.(Yes I know it was cut and paste. But it fits here as well.) In all honesty Winamp3 is nealy ready for me. It is just missing native plugins for some of the file formats I use. And yes I am trying my hand at scripting in my spare time.

Originally posted by Ookami
Winamp 3, altough not called so, is still beta.

Winamp2 was not final till Winamp3 was officially released. :) The same will be said of Winamp3 on the release of Winamp4.

Originally posted by Ookami
Simply put, there are (and will be) always people that don't need featureitis, but needs a few selected and optimized (tuned) features.

Simply put if that is what you want then Winamp2 is way to bloated even. hehe

Originally posted by Ookami
Now what features are needed and what not, is almost a philosophical question.

Whatever your philisiphy is, Winmap3 will bend more easily to it than Winamp2. ;)

Sure you can delete Winamp2 plugins. But when it comes to the core files it is more "though shalt not touch!". With Winamp3 there are a few core files like that. But there are core files which can be removed safely to reduce the functionality to your needs. Lets put it this way. With Winamp3 there is less core and more plugin.

With Winamp it has always been more about the community of users. Nullsoft has simply provided a container or framework for their users to expand upon. With Winamp3 this container just got a major upgrade.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by athos


The menues are slower on my system too. I think its annoying. Also the fast start is a mayor drawback to me, because I like to double click an mp3 file and have it start instantly. I guess waiting another second wont kill me, but the new skinning and scripting possibilities are not enough to cover for this, in my opinion.

Still I agree that we will probably see a lot of bufixes and, hopefully, optimizations soon.

When I have desktop alpha and a skin that uses it active the menus get slugish. But without that it flies. What settings are you using?

[grug2k]

Congratulations Ookami on a great post. :)

And Neo, I just don't believe you when you say "On my system it uses the same CPU and the same or less RAM as Winamp2 does!".

[athos]

Originally posted by Neo Neko


When I have desktop alpha and a skin that uses it active the menus get slugish. But without that it flies. What settings are you using?
Default settings, no alpha. I tried with and without alpha, both were slow. I have P4 1.3Ghz, 512mb RDRAM, Geforce3, Windows XP.

[\AX]

Well ive used beta 3/final for about 3 months now and no problems.

but it's not the main player.

for almost 2 years i have used 2.x for the main audio player in my system and have not installed it since the first time.

most people just drag and drop it over to there program files dir...it's what i do.

for me there is no reason to upgrade to it for my main player. it offers nothing "great" over 2.0 and i will probably even wait until the 4.0 version is released.

if it's not broke don't fix it.

[Neo Neko]

Grug sorry but I beg to differ. You are not comparing Winamp2 full to Winamp3 full are you? You must be running Winamp2 normal or lite. Install Winamp2 full and the score is evened. Check this attachment. Then check the lower half where it shows Winamp3 after moddifications! Less than the 2Mb your Winamp2 was using while playing my Vorbis at the same time. :D Yeah. Winamp2 is a resource hog I know. ;)

The pic can also be found at http://interface.darktech.org/files/taskmon.png

Hold on to your jaws boys. We don't want you to get injured. ;)

[diji1]

This is just more typical AOL crap. Buy a decent program (ICQ 98, Winamp), and then make it triple in size and offer no advantages other than bloated useless functions that no one cares about.

actually, i believe nullsoft still produces the proggie. there's a difference.

[DickSpeed]

I use Sonique 1.95 for the good audio quality and I love the visuals. I tried winamp years ago, but sonique, powerDVD, and wmp have served my needs for the last couple years. Each excels at certain things. I just wish I could figure out how to save the visuals to DVD for when I DJ.