What's Winamp?

I think it is some sort of defragger, or it was that linux filebrowser?

MTRH, i think you're right... it's some defragger.

Rule 1: FB2K Moderators must deny knowledge of the existence of a superior being.

Rule 2: Training in the skill of hijacking Winamp threads & brainwashing is a must for FB2K users & is crucial for ANY gain in FB2K user base.

Rule 3: One must have succesfully belittled at least 100 users before being considered for FB2K moderator.

Heheh, thanks for moving this Jan, now I can feel guilt-free when ripping into that sack of spam

Cool thread.

Application used to hog memory and crash explorer if IIRC. That was back in the days of floppy drives.


Edit: before anyone get's all worked up, it's a joke

Hmm, I think it's this progie that balooned into bloatosphere with v3. It's also owned by AOL. AOL p0wnez your soules.

Isn't that the amount of current a Microsoft OS uses from its power supply?

Dex

I know this is a joke thread about Winamp, but let's get serious... :B

Winamp is an audio player that used to be very good, mostly due to its cool, functional and semi-customizable interface and plugin architecture. It rapidly became the standard audio player for most of mp3 enthusiasts. Since Nullsoft was bought by AOL its development almost froze and started to become bloated in its 3rd version reincarnation. Justin Frankel, the author of Winamp, is now a very very rich (70 million $?) young man who has some difficulties in trying to improve Winamp also because of AOL's corporate reasoning.

foobar2000 is now a very good alternative to Winamp for a big part of the more informed PC audio listeners. It incorporates some quasi-essential technologies in its core, that lack in Winamp's standard distributions. Its author is Peter Pawlowski, a polish young man who used to work in some of the essential plugins of Winamp. foobar2000's first impression is its low resources need and basic (some call it "notepad-ish"), but very customizable and functional, interface. foobar2000 is now gaining wide acceptance.

I still use Winamp 'cause it's the only player that supports some strange file formats through third party input plugins (mainly games stuff)...

Do you think these descriptions are unfair to Winamp?

Ok, if we're going to get serious, I like the fundamental concept of FooBar. I see it as a playlist editor
with real-time auditioning. Perfect! Except for one little thing . . . Winamp supports DSP plug-ins.

Its products like iZotopes Ozone and OSS/3D that make computer-played music fun. And, that is after all, the name of the game.

When someone makes a DSP plug-in for FB2K, it'll likely become my default player. Until then . . . .

Dex

I disagree. In fact, I believe that the majority of people, on this board at least, frown upon the usage of "enhancers." I believe they are more concerned with the most accurate reproduction of the original recording as possible, and this is where fb2k really shines (both in practice and in theory).



If you look around, you'll notice that there are already a bunch of DSP plugins for fb2k, just none of the more gimmicky "enhancer" type. And FWIW, fb2k's DSP system is also technically superior to Winamp's on a number of different levels.

I understand what you're saying here, but I think the underlying principal here is, if we're
talking about WinAmp or FB2K, we're talking about playing back mp3's. Or mpc, or ogg, on a computer sound card.
You get my drift. A cheap 20-year-old Pioneer/Sony/Marantz system purchased on eBay
will still outperform the "best" sound card you can buy today . . . with certain qualifications.
I don't think most of "us" have $1000 sound cards in our 'puters.

If I put the "original" CD in my JVC player, through my old Sony V-FET amp, through my Yamaha 1000's,
it blows away the computer! So . . . the "enhancers" are there just for the "fun" element.

And, they are fun.

Dex

Edit: Hey Dibrom, I missed that last comment. Are you saying there are DSP plugins for FB2K?
I haven't seen them. Where? I would love a FB2K plug-in for sound enhancement. Maybe I misunderstood
you.

Edit 2: Sorry Dibrom, don't mean to "flail" on you, but I don't think its fair to call iZotope's Ozone "gimicky". Its fairly well respected mastering software in its "pro" incarnation. The WinAmp plug-in is just a subset of that technology. When set properly, its effect is very subtle, yet nice.

The hifi "blows away" the computer. Yeah basically I agree with this statement. However have you uploaded a CD to the hard disk using Windac and then played them on either Winamp or foo2k. This ofcourse is thru a digital output and then into a quality DAC thru a hifi. My system comprises of a very high quality DIY amp and speakers of my own design which all sounds simply superb using top quality drivers etc. Anyway the CD player is/was a TEAC VRDS T1 transport and D1 dac ie £1050 cd player. Now this all sounds very good ect but using the computer as a transport gives vast improvements over the TEAC transport. This is explained in a few hifi mags of mine. But in short its something like a computer buffers all the data which eliminates all the errors in the data stream and eliminates jitter completely, thus providing if you will a perfect data source for a DAC.

This maybe not entirely acurate so dont pull it to pieces but the general gist is the same.

No, no, no, you got it all wrong, it is a picture viewer! Don't you see? You can even make it play "sounds" when you change pics! Unfortunately i still don't see why they love it, as the pics obviusly have some parts missing, with holes and weird thingies like changing characters in them.

Some people failed to notice that Genjuro's "joke" has worn off.

0wnt!


I have still yet to see the holy ABX performed between Foobar and Winamp, so any claims by Dibrom or anyone that Foobar is 'better' mean less than nothing. Heh, damn the mindset of scientific rigor that HA has given me



Personally, I won't move from Winamp until FB2k looks reasonable and acts how I want it. A semi-'you vein tosser' statement I know, but I use enough notepad windows when working, I don't need another one clogging up my space. Winamp is visually much smaller, and even its default skin is 100x more attractive to the eye - seeking, time display, playlist.. that's what it needs. (forgive me if this is misinformed, I haven't used fb2k for a LONG time)

And on a note more in tune with this thread, I don't like using software by people that have personally annoyed me, they don't deserve me as a user. ZzZzZzZzZz is one such person, he came across as arrogant and belittling to those with less knowledge than him. To me, that attitude spells.. actually it'd be deleted here

Oh yea, my last gripe is the name.. Fubar2000.. that is about as embarrasing as it gets, I had enough trouble stomaching Ogg Vorbis a year ago..

Ooh ooh, Milkdrop is essential, as trippy graphics make a great backdrop when you have people round and put your 'stereo' (pc) on..

I understand what you say regarding Peter Pawlowsky... He may be arrogant and harsh sometimes, but in my opinion that's not a reason for not using foobar2000. Well, maybe I'm just sick of hearing that excuse for not using foobar2000... That's like saying that you wouldn't use Macs because Steve Jobs is arrogant... The difference in this case is that you get a much more closer interaction with the person.

Regarding the name... I really like the foobar part. Maybe we'll get a foobar3000 in the future :B

The interface is still the only valid excuse for not using foobar2000 (though it fits my needs and I now prefer it to Winamp's interface...)

cya

PS: use whatever makes you happy

"Looks"+"enough notepad windows"+"visually smaller"+"attractive to the eye"+"seeking, time display, playlist..."+"that's what it needs"= foobarlooks
So yes, this was a bit misinformed...


You can't say a valid excuse now...

Hmmmm... I have a vague memory of a whip or goad of some kind, used on camels. Must have been popular in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. Terrorism, I say... Terrorism!

As for Foobar, I remember from the military it means "f*cked up beyond all recognition." Oh wait, that was FUBAR... my goof.

What it means then, is a programmer's term for a general variable. Sounds very exciting. Errm...

LOL... I agree with your assessment of the bizarrity of these names. I ask myself "what were people thinking?" and immediately realize that they weren't.

And Milkdrop... Oh yeah baby... it rules, it ruulleees! B)

AngelGR: I was referring to the standard interface. That's the most used one. Like I said, I like the standard interface 'cause I have foobar2000 minimized in systray most of the time, but I have no problem understanding some complains about it (not just the "is ugly" ones). UI design is subjective and much more difficult than it seems.

cya

Yeah milkdrop is pretty cool but I prefer G-Force, visualisations are still something I miss with foobar.

lol..

If your mindset were occupied with "scientific rigour", then you'd probably have considered the implicit superiority of one approach vs another simply from an engineering and mathematical approach.

Also, if you bothered to take more than a cursory and dismissive look at the technology, you'd probably realize that there are many things that already can be tested (for example, lowing the output bitdepth to test the effectiveness of the noiseshaping, etc).

Can't say I'm surprised by this attitude though..

Edit, oh, and note that not once did I say "sounds better". Technical superiority and improved subjective performance are two very different things.. thus the whole ABX point is rather misplaced to begin with.

Ummm, Ok, but I can not accept that as fact.

So in your opinion, outside of the noise-shaping techniques (dither is yummy), is foobar2000's ideal decoding method (ASIO? 32bit float?) implicitly superior to the MAD decoder method (24 bit int, Kmixer not bypassed)?
I have not been able to tell any difference between the two with my reference system or my headphones, and I prefer the winamp (2.x) skins by several nautical miles.

Yeah, Im unsure by what was meant exactly. Certainly a decent amplifier will be better at driving decent speakers than a line-out, but....so? A good 24bit sound card should have a higher SNR....but, again....so?

I disagree. In my opinion, cards such as the Revolution sound as good as anything you can get. Just plug some headphones to it or connecting the card to a good external amp. I mean, the output quality of this card puts it over the level of perceptual transparency. Same probably for any good quality card, be it unexpensive or not. On the other side, some old cheap hi-fi equipment may in some cases be inferior due to SNR (too much hiss) or other kind of issues.

On the other side, I agree that if you like "fun" sound, you use the methods you want, in order to achieve that. And I have nothing against you liking that.



What soundcard do you have? Have you tried any level-matched ABX tests? I'd bet you'd be surprised from the result of such a test.

As to Foobar2000 being better for listening to music... If you don't use or need its built-in unique processing features (such as for example the advanced limiter, or the floating-point "clippingless" internal processing plus volume/attenuation controls), or or have somewhat equivalent processing using Winamp plugins, I think that in most cases, it is just a thing of having a fuzzy feeling, knowing you are playing the music the best possible way, but with dubious real audible benefits.

My Winamp evolution:

1. A long time ago: Winamp 2.xx
Listening to : Pink Floyd - Have a Cigar

2. Not so long ago: Winamp 3
Listening to: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

3 Now: Foobar2000
Listening to: Pink Floyd - Shine on You Crazy Diamond

I hawe used Winamp sence 1.xx version. After i found foobar2000, Winamp met its replacer. I don't know how much palcebo efekt it was, but sound of foobar2000 was somehow more pleasing than Winamp.

I guess I did sorta paint that scenario with a wide brush. I should've also realized that perhaps most people in this forum have better-than-average sound cards. Most of my friends have whatever card that came with their computer.

My own soundcard is one of the higher up models made by Aureal before they went out of business. They are the company that built the Turtle Beach cards. This one is either close or the same as the Montego, not great, but not too bad either. I know that if I put the original CD in my JVC player, it clearly sounds better than an mp3 played on the computer through either WinAmp or FB2K.
Both the soundcard and the JVC go into the Sony as Aux 1 and Aux 2 respectively, the audio chain past that point is identical. The line-out of the Sony then feeds back to a small Pioneer receiver on my desk that feeds another smaller set of Yamaha's for when I do "casual" listening while perusing the forums. (Perhaps I'll post a picture, in that other thread. )

Anyway, the crux of it all, is just that for mp3 playback, I enjoy the subtle effect of Ozone, which fb2k can't do right now.

Dex

And what if you play the MP3 with a hardware MP3 player and the original CD in the computer ?

Hmmm, that would be an interesting test. I'll set it up this afternoon, and report back the results a bit later.

Dex

I am trying to not be an ass about this

I don't see how you can say that, 'in practice Foobar2000 really shines in accurate reproduction' without providing me any proof and expect me to believe you

To me, engineering and mathematical approaches lead to things such as judging encode quality by using a frequency biased mathematical comparison of waveforms.

If you can't hear a difference with blind testing with your gifted hearing, there is no chance in hell I could tell the difference. If that is the case, I think it's fair to imply that to you or I, there is nothing separating them in terms of quality?

Please tell me where there's a flaw in that?

Mac: sorry for asking (maybe you already answered this before), but do you use the output plugins Peter Pawlowski made, with SSRC (only really important in some cases), in Winamp? And, more importantly, do you use the ReplayGain plugin in Winamp?

If the answer is yes, then you must agree that having a player that supports this out of the box makes it better for users that don't know better.

If the answer is no, then you are missing some features that make music listening more "correct" (ReplayGain for example).

When writing this post, I remembered when a friend of mine (who's not so much into these audio things) tried foobar2000. The first impression was really bad, mainly about the UI. The next day he told me that foobar2000 sounded a little better, with less distortion. I never gave him such kind of impressions about foobar2000, and so it couldn't be placebo effect. I had given him some ReplayGain'ed files and maybe that's why it sounded better (together with the dithering)... Isn't that a good thing? I'm not able to prove this and I may be violating the forum TOS with this statement, but it really did happen.

I'm not going to discuss this anymore, cause I think it's pretty useless... I agree that there isn't a big difference in the output quality between foobar2000 and Winamp and I also agree that foobar2000's UI results from a completely different philosophy, that a lot of people dislike.

m0rbidini, I don't use either the output plugins or replaygain.. it has taken me till just recently (~11 months here!) to read about replaygain and it's uses, I still don't use it in my music though

I'm just not convinced that out of the box and with no DSP's or EQ's there is any audiable difference between Foobar & Winamp :S

I find it very funny how most people at HydrogenAudio enjoy spitting in the plate they just ate.

2 examples: MP3 and Winamp.

Up to 6 months ago, Winamp was the best music player ever, it's features were unbeatable and everybody was using it.

Now, the very same people that said that say Winamp is crap, it utterly sucks and foobar is a godsend.

Same thing for MP3. 2 years ago, almost everybody was using MP3, it had great support, quality and users were happy.

Now, there are zealots for every "new" format that don't waste time on storming into threads and shouting "MP3 sucks, use Vorbis/AAC/MPC" (these are the offspring of the VQFers, it seems)

I personally enjoy AAC, but I still encode some of my CDs in MP3 for usage in my Expanium, and I'm very happy with the format.

Roberto

Obs: I hope the brainless jokers that plan to reply to this post saying "foobar is indeed a godsend" or some BS like that refrain doing so. You hopefully know who I am talking about. If not, just look at the first page of this thread.

Since I am one of the persons with a post in the first page, I'll answer...

Using your words: I will spit on anything that doesn't evolve fundamentally in a good direction, even if I used to eat it. But I didn't say I would spit on Winamp or MP3 (I still use both, though rarely).

/offtopic

Now a personal question, with no intention to start a flame war: why do you, being the Rarewares admin, have such a AAC-centric sig?

/offtopic

cya

edit: grammar

Because that's what makes RareWares stand out from the "competition" (or used to at least).

You can find Vorbis, MP3 and MPC binaries everywhere. But for a large period of time RW was one of the few places where you could find AACenc or Faad/in_faad

So, if I had put "get Vorbis and MP3 binaries at RW", people would say "so what, I can get that at official sites".

Remember that RareWares started as an AAC distribution point, in october of 2001. Soon after I offered the space to John33 so that he could use it to store his special Vorbis and MP3 compiles. The rest is story.

I could have put "Get latest AAC, MPEG4, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack and Lossless binaries at RareWares", but that would be overwhelming.

So there.

Regards;

Roberto.

BTW: About my former post, I wasn't thinking about you when I complained about spitting in the plate you ate.

I never found LAME till I found www.r3mix.com, and I never found --aps and Musepack till I found www.hydrogenaudio.org. I don't think 2 websites make up 'everywhere' .

That aside, I used to find Winamp fun to use. It still is fun to use and as un-bloated as ever (WA2, that is. Official version, build #488 of WA3 IS bloated and slow, but build #498 on their developer page is purported to be optimised fairly well). But after tracking FB2k on this forum, and using it, I find FB2k technically more interesting. I would, for example, never have known about Replaygain, 16-bit audio, dithering, Kernel Streaming, or APEv2 tags, if I never stumbled across FB on this forum. Ok fine, 16-bit audio and dithering stuff, I would have learnt a bit with the Winamp MAD plugin.

About people who think that the skimpier something LOOKS, the worse it is... They never get the point that more GUI means more bloat, eh?

Anyway, I think the majority of people will never be able to ABX the best configurations of FB and Winamp. Worst configurations, maybe.

Lame isn't the only MP3 encoder, you know?



Well, once you know about Musepack, it makes easier to find binaries. Case's Page, Frank's, musepack.org, musepack-source.de....

Yeah, but this is not the same thing. A look at how each player processes the audio data will make it clear why foobar2000 has at least a theoretical advantage over Winamp in terms of sound quality (and notice that Dibrom didn't say it's actually audible).

Winamp does this (I'm not sure if it's 100% correct, but it should get close ):

Decode audio, with bitdepth depending on the input plugin (most only support 16 bits)
==> processing performed by input plugin (like ReplayGain or dithering in the MPC or Vorbis plugins)
==> DSP processing, with bitdepth depending on the DSP plugin (most DSP plugins only support 16 bits, so if your input plugin can decode to 24 bits, you can't take advantage of that feature)
==> output.

As you can see, all audio processing is done in 16 bits (unless you use a combination of plugins that's compatible with other bitdepths), and the whole thing is just... messy, because too many tasks are left to the input plugins which should be carried out at a later stage. For example, it should not be necessary to include a hard limiter in the input plugin (which, for instance, is the case with the Vorbis plugin) - this type of processing should be done after all other processing (except for dithering) is completed. The purpose of this limiter is avoid clipping, but it's no use if it is applied before DSP processing (since there's no guarantee that the DSP plugin won't clip the audio data). The same thing goes for dithering - it should be performed after any other kind of processing.

Foobar handles the data like this:

Decode audio to 64 bits
==> apply ReplayGain
==> DSP processing
==> dither down to 16 bits (or whatever you've selected)
==> output.

All audio processing is done in 64 bits, so it will be more precise than Winamp's 16 bit processing, and dither will be performed as the last step before output (and limiting before that if you've configured it correctly). This is the main theoretical advantage in sound quality everybody is speaking of. Again, noone firmly said this is audible (leaving die-hard clueless zealots out of it for a moment ).

Apart from the theoretical improvement in sound quality (which isn't my argument for using foobar2000), it's just more convenient to have one central control for ReplayGain options, limiting, tag display etc., instead of having to configure it individually for each input format.

I'm not a foobar2000 zealot, I'm not bashing Winamp, I'm trying to be reasonable and point out where its flaws are compared to foobar2000 (since you asked), that's all.

So let's try to summarize:

Sound quality: they sound equally good - a draw
Looks: winamp wins
Usability & learnability: winamp wins
Availability: both are free - a draw
Geek points: foobar wins

And it's the last item that made up my mind - I use fb2k because I like tricky things. Fb2k has so many more fun checkboxes and dropdown lists and other options to play with than winamp has.

The problem is that both looks and usability/learnability are very subjective. My parents, for example, found foobar more straightforward than WA/WiMP. Set up properly, everything is easily accessible. The "killer feature" for them was the point-and-click Audio CD burning interface. Select the files to burn, right-click, click, and you're on your way.

In terms of looks, I prefer foobar, mainly because I prefer a standard interface. WA's default skin sticks out like a sore thumb, and there is no skin that gives WA a standard Win32 interface. (Buttons that create drop-down menus? WTF?)

I absolutely loathe the trend of applications towards "skinnability". It makes every single application have a different look and feel. It is this reason that I prefer Windows to Linux, as well: Windows programs are predictably familiar, GUI-wise.

Edit: Volcano beat me to responding to Mac, and with much better than my single-paragraph rebuttal.

By default now? Last I heard it wasn't set this way. This is, or rather was, an option. Changelog doesn't show this either. Can you give more details?

Winamp is only bloated when you have multitudes of plugins. My winamp used to use 14 MB of memory. So I took out the plugins I didnt need like those for mod files, midi files, cd audio, etc., leaving only those I needed (ogg vorbis, mp3, mpc). Now my winamp 2.92 is running at a handsome 2448 kB

What more details do you want?

There is at least one plugin (Resampler) that has a 32-bit mode, but the pipeline's 64-bit now.

I personally have 0.5 GB of RAM, and RAM is cheap, and 'bloat' is a relative term I suppose.
My full winamp2.91 install runs with about 7-8MB of RAM used with the Nullsoft MPEG Decoder, and more like 7.4MB with the MAD high quality decoder while foobar2000 (full) runs with about 7.1MB used.

Where is the "bloat" advantage? I just don't see it. Is this atypical?
Are we running 386's with 4MB or RAM here so that 100-200K makes a difference?

Using the MAD decoder I can hear no difference (placebo or otherwise ) whatsoever with api or aps mp3's, and I get to use my (easy to use, easy on the eye) coveted skins.