I've used winamp for a hell of a long time. I like it. It does everything I need it to do, I'm used to the way it works. I like the API, I wrote a plugin to make it work the way I want.

However, recently I've been thinking perhaps it's time I took another look at the competition. See if there is something better. Not because winamp lacks anything I need, but because I might not know yet that I need a feature.

So, what do you think serious competition for winamp is? What player is better? Why is it better? What is the killer feature it has that winamp doesn't have?

I'm going to spend some time using each player and do a bit of a comparisson. For my own interest really. Tragic really.

I'm looking at MusicMatch and WiMP. MM because it's got some neat features according to a guy I work with, like album art and recommendations, and WiMP because so many people use it because windows shoves it down their neck.

But what do you people use and why?

No flaming me for being a nullsoft-fan-boy or whatever. I'm taking the time out to have a look at whatelse is there, so play nice.

i only ever use lowercase ascii so winamp is just awesome for me
no punctuation either

Ever thought about using foobar?

There's nothing wrong with liking WinAmp 2.xx, since that was a very clean series. Many people don't like the WinAmp 3.xx series though. I've never used it, but it always looked bloated to me (they never had a lite version, for example). A poll was recently done, and Winamp 2.91 was the 2nd most popular audio player here.

The most popular? Foobar 2000. Hosted right here at Hydrogen Audio, and developed by a former WinAmp developer, who basically got sick of how things were going there.

I'm not sure if I'll bother looking at Foobar immediatly, it's still pre 1.0 isn't it? Hardly fair to compare winamp 5.0 to something that's not yet hit 1.0.

You would be surprised.

Version numbering isn´t only about product quality.

Several developers use it to keep track of it´s completeness.

If you have a roadmap to implement features and your goal is about 10 features you can go from v0.1 to v1.0 while they are being added.
Just because you had only implemented 5 features and is at v0.5 doesn´t mean that these 5 features aren´t working good.

IMO, judging a program solely by its version numbering is really a bad choice.

Not really the point tho is it? If FB2k is currently better than 5.0 of winamp despite being pre 1.0, then how much better would it be at 1.0. If it's not 1.0 ready then if I find downsides to it then is that because that area is not ready yet? Or because it's crap?

has to be 'production' client for me to judge it fairly.

[edit]sipping a post in under me there: see I'm looking at features, so if fb2k doesn't have a feature yet, but will have in 1.0 and I mark it down...[/edit]

It's far better to wander carefully with the numbers than to make a large jump without a point.

v0.7.1 has meant a lot of builds and a lot of time to accomplish, there are always more things to add and optimize.
Your ways of reasoning are in this context more trollish than objective, it's quite annoying with people who make assumptions and speak rubbish.

You seem really eager to reject foobar2000. If you are really looking for new features you may not know you need, yet, then it is unwise to discount one of the most mature audio players out there today, due entirely to it's version numbering system. Perhaps you were biased against it before you even posted here.. *shrug*

1.0 is a programming mile-stone. It usualy means that this is the first production client that a company has issued. Be it a peice of office software, a game, an mp3 player.

1.0 says "This software is ready, we've added our base feature set, and knocked out all the bugs we could find. It's ready for you to use it."

To evaluate software that is new you have to give it a fair chance. 1.0 software will typicaly not be as mature as 5.0 software.

Winamp 5.0 is basicaly a continuance of the 2.x tree with the 2 major version increment being a marketting thing. Winamp 3 was not Winamp 3.0 really, it was "Winamp 3", a new product. Winamp 5.0 is really winamp 3.0. The whole Winamp 3 thing buggered that up nicely though. I've always hated winamp 3, I've always been a winamp 2.x user.

Winamp 2.x is very mature code. It's had loads of bugs bashed out of it, and had time to develop a deep and rich set of features.

Peter's had a couple of years max (forget when he started fb2k) to develop his player. Sure it's had a lot of work and a lot of features. I'm not saying it's a pile of rubbish or anything. I've not used it.

I'm just saying I don't feel it's fair to Peter to evaluate his player against winamp until he considers it mature and stable enough to be a 1.0 release. It may be rock solid and stable now for all I know, never having run it. But it doesn't have it's final feature set maybe. Whatever, it's not fair to Peter to say that fb2k is not as good as winamp when it's not 'finished' to the 1.0 level (at least).

I've not decided on a real basis for comparison yet, but what if I think "God I could never use this player because it doesn't do x" when that is a feature Fb2k has planned but not yet implemented?

It's just a case of giving peter time to get a 'completed' product out. A full feature set. I'm not trolling here. I'm wanting to compare production clients that have a finished feature set. Sure after 1.0 a product adds more features. Typicaly because of user request, or commercial pressures. Peter doesn't have commercial pressures. He's not Valve getting half-life2 out. Or Lucas Arts getting SWG out. He doesn't have to compromise and decide to add such and such a feature past 1.0 if it's something he's planned to implement. He can wait till that feature is in to release 1.0. So it's polite to wait till 1.0 before I take a good look at his player.

Yes, i think foobar is better too.....but he is very advanced and difficult to setup.

Theres no presets for equalizer.....how i can equalize the sound in foobar ??

Its millions of questions....and i didnt find any good helps or tutorials for this program.....that is the reason for which i continue with winamp

I can remember when foobar2000 first made its appearence (this was when I used winamp2). I downloaded it and loaded it. When it loaded up I thought "What the F*** is this crap?"

But as time want on and new releases of foobar2000 came out, I started to think "Waw, I love this program". Now I have completely removed winamp2,3 and have even tried 5, but non of them feel as complete as foobar2000 for me

brand of fishstick

You shouldn't judge other products by your misconceptions, the way you (or anybody else) perceive 1.0 might be very different from the way foobar's dev. thinks of it. Try 0.7.1, it's a full fledged product, the scale of the numbers is unimportant and completely irrelevant especially when you are the one asking about alternatives.

Really it is like asking on the Winamp forum, which is the best player (as FB2K is hosted here) imagine the unbiased responce you would recieved there Not only is it biased, it is very unconstructive, each player is different:

want the most popular: try Winamp or Windows Media Player,
want something that can record from TV or organizes well then Media Jukebox,
want to have no control of your audio - try MusicMatch
there is the new iTunes, offers simplicity and good organizing,
there are QCD, Coolplayer each with a popular following,
and there is my very own dBpowerAMP Audio Player, with good organizing and the ability to synchronize your collection with most portable mp3 players (including those forgotten),


Yet it is not even discussed what the guy wants, rather agressive zelotry (IMHO) if you do not submit to FB2K, very sad for HA - can we see some moderation please.

{edit spelling}

Totally agree with LPTB.
And Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is just another instance of a software that hasn't reached the 1.0 numbering level yet but that is already commonly used with great satisfaction.
By the way, it is described as "Technology Preview". And so could be foobar2000.

Anyway, you can choose any player you like. But I don't understand how version numbering can be a major criteria to guide your choice.

See, I was under the impression that HA was a music community that happened to host the fb2k forums, not a fb2k community that happened to be a music place. I thought users here used many and varied players so it was a good place to ask. Guess I was off beam.

Downloaded your app, and Media Jukebox (already had music match)

I'm not touching iTunes or RealPlayer because they do loads of things I hate, things like constantly stealing file associations, tray notification of 'important' news (in real's case at least, I hear iTunes does that kind of stuff too, and I dislike the way apple are dealing with artists with the whole itunes issue)

I haven't heard of any universally accepted convention for version numbering, E.g., I'm using Miranda ICQ 0.3.1 for instant messaging, and I'm pretty sure it is not going to reach 1.0 status anytime soon.

Heh. That reminds me of an old rule of thumb: Microsoft products become usable when they hit 5.0

Anyway, the decision whether you should look at foobar2k, or anything else for that matter, is yours to make. It's just that I don't find your reasoning to be valid.

I suggest disregarding the 0.x status and giving foobar2k a try. For me, as well as for many other people on this forum, it does the job better than anything else.

There's no immediately logical reason for anyone to use more than one player if a particular one has proved itself technically superior, as well as in the requisite feature set.

I use a family computer, so Winamp stays on. And of course, Winamp 5 has great support for Winamp3 skins...

People tend to dismiss FB2k at first, for the atrocious (default) GUI , and for the confusing Preferences layout, until they play around with it more. What is displayed when I start up this player is a far cry from its freshly-installed look.

We are a music community. The majority of this community seems to prefer foobar as an audio player.

Obvious conclusion left to the reader.

? What exactly is there to set up ?



Wrong... (there's none bundled, that's right)



Like, enable the equalizer and move the sliders. You know, the same as in all other programs?



I didn't see any questions from you before.

By all means, let's be fair to Peter. I'm sure he's losing all kinds of sleep over your estimation of his numbering system.

By the way, what ripper do you use? (since EAC is regrettably, but obviously, unavailable to you, and will likely remain that way for quite some time).

Regards,
Madrigal

I shall detail an impromptu tutorial here, firstly assuming that you have FB2K installed and opened, with the equalizer plugin:
1. Open 'Preferences' from the 'Foobar2000' menu.
2. Click on 'DSP Manager', under 'Playback' in the directory tree.
3. Doubleclick on 'Equalizer', if it is in the right column. If it is in the left column, go on to Step 4.
4. Play a song. Any song. Preferably one you like.
5. Click on 'Equalizer under 'DSP Manager' in the directory tree in Preferences.
6. See those vertical bars? Generally, the 4 leftmost are for bass, and the 5 rightmost are for treble. Those in middle, are for middle frequencies. Doh.
7. While the song is playing, you may think, "Hmm, the bass sounds thin and watery, not punchy and heart-thumping at all." In this case, drag any or some or all of the 4 leftmost sliders up until you get the earthshaking bass you want. Go on to Step 8.
8. While the song is playing, you may think, "Hmm, the singer sounds like he/she has a damn flu, or has cotton wool stuffed down his larynx" or "Are these cymbals underwater or what?" In this case, drag any or some or all of the rightmost sliders up until you get the desired eardrum perforations.

Because I assume that most people using Winamp's equalizer presets typically use the 'Bass and Treble' one, I shall not detail a step for the 'middle frequencies'.

An equalizer is there for people to tweak their own music, not have someone do it for them. If there are presets, and the presets are good, fine. If not, experience Original Audio ©.

That was sarcasm. I'm a bit miffed at the massive jumping down my throat for not wanting to evaluate an un-finished peice of software with a mature peice of software.

My reasoning is simply that a 0.x version number generaly means that a peice of software is unfinished, may lack features and may have bugs. Yes, there are other programs that are perfectly useable in 0.x releases. Yes foobar2k may be useable at 0.x release status. But it's still not finished in the eyes of it's developers.

The argument that no software is ever finished, or that fb2k is fantastic at 0.x is moot if Peter doesn't consider it finished.

I've chatted to peter a lot in #nullsoft before he ended his association with Nullsoft. Based on my knowledge of him I would guess he'd say that 0.x of foobar wasn't 'finished'. So I want to give him a chance to 'finish' his work before I compare it to the competition. Or at least get it to a full client release.

Peter may however consider his player already better than winamp, but is it better than the other competition? Is it fair to put it up against everything else when he hasn't finished it's base feature set? (By base I mean 1.0 done what I intended style release).

I don't have any pre-conception about fb2k other than it's not finished. I don't have any problem with Peter. I just wanted to wait till his product was done. That's all. Out of respect for him.

But, no, that's not good enough for you lot. You all love foobar2k so much you can't possibly let what you perceive to be a critisim of it go sliding past without having a go at me back.

I did say:



I'm evaluating the other players for my own interest. To see if there is anything better. I didn't want to look at fb2k till it was done, till it was ready for the world.

Frankly I am no longer interested in your foobar-fanboy zealotry for fb2k. If Peter thinks it's ready fine. But I'll wait for him to tell me that. I think if he thought it was ready he'd be at 1.x, based on my previous associations with him.

Sigh. I'm sure he's not. He may think his product is stable enough for releases to users. But he almost certainly thinks it's not finished. I just want to give him the chance to add all the features he thinks a media player should have before I compare it to other software that the developers think has all the features it should have.



Easy CD-DA. Which I've used for a long time, since way before EAC was widely known. I have 0 problems with Easy CD-DA, I paid for it long ago, I've never seen a reason to change software.

If I have to believe what you stated in the original post, you wanted to do a comparison for your own interest.

You were suggested an alternative audio player.

If you are doing a comparison for your own interest, it is totally irrelevant whether the software is considered finished or stable by anyone.

The fact that instead of trying it you started argumenting why you shouldn't try it, together with the trolling on IRC that people 'were jumping on you', convinces me that you are a troll. And trolls are not welcome on any forum I moderate. Goodbye.

I can think of a major reason for the 0.x version numbering, and also a reason that may keep some developers away for quite some time.

The API tends to change. New features are added, existing interfaces are improved and/or extended. The API version number is changed to force authors to recompile with the new SDK. Of course, more recently, newer interface versions just gained new GUIDs and older versions of the same interface are still supported by the core.

I've already seen at least one developer state that he is waiting for 1.0, where he hopes/expects the API to freeze permanently.

The idea of the API freezing does not appeal to me. There may yet be more ideas that could be implemented. Or, maybe it's just a side effect of my habit of almost never planning anything more than a day ahead.

Fluid... ever evolving... that's the stuff... (Just wait until we're reading your mail for you! huhuhu)


</off-topic>


Now, about other players. You could always inspect Coolplayer. It was the former favorite of roj. There is also Quintessential Player, which is now roj's favorite of the hour. His reasons don't seem to stray far from general placebo in the audio quality, but the user interface and features may appeal to you.

Oh, and I hear that Apollo has a great playlist management system, but I haven't tried it for myself.

Don't forget Sonique. It would rival QCD and Winamp if it didn't have only one developer working on it. Development is ongoing, albeit slowly.

RealPlayer does not do anything if you just install it without rush and custom setups well. Why are you saying these things if you don't even know what you are saying?
After reading few of your post, i don't even understand if you are looking new and good players to test or you are whaiting us to say that Winamp is your only change.
If you realy like to try new player, you should try what we are offering to you and not to deny that they are "ready".

If you have'nt ask this straight from peter, you don't know the answer. 0.x Does not mean anything else exept that it is older or newer than 0.3. If it is a(aplha), b(beta) or RCx version, then we can exept that it is not ready. Your Winamp 2 is not ready also because there is coming Winamp5 and that is not ready eather becaus it is beta stage or do you think it is ready?
Sure foobar2000 will develope further, but after every aplha, beta and ReleaseCandidate test there is ready version to use. As you can see even WinAmp is developing more again.
An even if you use pre 1.0 version of foobar2000 you can also judge it when it gets to v1.0. There is nothing harm in that.

I mean no harm to you, but i think you have weard attitude.

I have installed recent RealPlayer builds on my machine, last time was about 6 months ago, and it's just too much of a pain in the ass to get round all the little notification things it does. I also don't like the fact it's plastered with adverts etc in the free version.

I've used it a fair bit as I used to have to watch streaming videos in real for training, I don't like the player, I don't like a lot of the things it does by default. I don't like the way it does lots of things.

iTunes I've heard friends using and having similar problems with, and other things, but mostly I don't like Apple's attitude towards the artists, it's business model with iTunes sucks nearly as much as P2P does for the artists.

I've had a nice briefing from a reasonable member of these forums on the strengths of Coolplayer, QCD and fb2k, these seem to revolve primarily around audio reproduction. I am not an audiophile. I can't tell the quality difference, so if the reasons to look at Coolplayer and QCD are the audio quality, then I think I'll skip them for now.

I may or may not look closer at Sonique. I think it's primarily an eye-candy player though from what I've heard and read on the subject. Skins are not of interest to me either. I will look a /bit/ closer, but until there is a public release of a stable enough version 2, it might be premature. 1.x may be too outdated, version 2 too unstable.

I'm looking at MusicMatch because it has some features that I'm interested in trying out. Features that don't just relate to high quality audio, it's got a different media library, it has a suggestion engine apparantly.

I'm looking at media jukebox because after it was suggested by Spoon the "organises well" is of interest.

I'm looking at dbPowerAmp because of the MP3 player integration being of critical importance to me.

I'm looking at WiMP because if it does the job, since it installs with windows, it might be worth sticking to, and so many many people haven't found a reason to look for anything else. Most of the people in my office use it and see no reason to change, so I'm checking out the latest version.

As for fb2k, I have several reasons for chosing not to look at it now. It's not at 1.0, which suggest to me it's not ready for me to look at, it's not got all it's features or may have bugs etc. Sure winamp is moving forward to 5.0, no software is ever really 100% finished, but there is that milestone where the 'first full version' the first intended full feature set is done. When winamp 1.x came out no-one had the idea for a media library/jukebox type app yet really so it wasn't a 'missing feature' and that is why software keeps increasing versions. Improvements to the way things work, new ways of doing things etc etc.

I did go to #foobar2000 to ask peter if he considered it fair to compare to winamp at this stage, but he was away and I just got the continuation of this swamping of fb2k fans attacking me for not wanting to look at it yet.

Besides, if I publish my thoughts on it, and I don't like it, I'd ineveitably get flamed because it's 0.x and 'not finished' whereas if I don't look at it because it's 0.x and not finished, I get flamed.

I'm not trolling. fb2k addicts just hijacked me.

As I already told you, you will get stoned to death by the zealots anyway the first time you write something negative. That doesn't mean you have to care about them.

Your misconceptions about version numbers have been flamed enough already in this thread so I'll keep off for now

it's obvious that you are not a programmer yourself ... there is *NO* regulation body that tests your software for "1.0" compliance/quality, so, if peter wanted to call foobar2000 1.0, 2.0 ... 7.0, 7.1, insteado of 0.1, 0.2, ... 0.7, 0.7.1 what would you said? it is very common this days to start numbering at 0.1, or even 0.001 ... have you ever tried mame? it is 0.65 i think, and running about 5 years, as the best emulator for arcade boards ... Have you ever tried Windows 1.0? what milestone was that then?

edit: i was a long time Winamp2 user that changed to fb2k long ago, and i have tried all of them, from wa to sonique, with qcd, freeamp, zinf, et all ... fb2k is way better, simpler, un ontrusive, etc ..

edit2: fb2k only missing feature was the (gfx) toolbar ... and it has it since 0.7 ...

In fact, he IS a programmer. He's the author of microamp and skinner and moderator of winamp developers' forum.
So strange to hear such things from him

-Eugene

Ok. I will say this straight so we don't have to go around this anymore. And the answer is NO. You don't have to change your audioplayer for anything. WinAmp is decent and i think thats the only thing what will suite your needs. It does not contain all the features what fb2k does, but i guess you aren't looking anything new.

Yay.. what a brawl over such a little thing i praise individual taste, and no, i dont like fb2k - i use wmp9 - and i've started to encode to the wma9 pro format, so i guess i dont belong on HA then

I like gui consistancy. WMP9 fits with my XP GUI. which is something i like. i really enjoy WMP9's library functions, auto-playlists, and, well - everything! (i never thought i'd say this about a Microsoft product, but hey.. things change).

Now everytime i say this, everyone says back "microsoft ripped it from itunes, its a bad ripoff, lame copy, blahblah".. so what? Every coder has gotten "inspiration" from somewhere. One guy made vBulletin - thus some other guy made phpBB, which is pretty damn similar - and i dont see that anyone calls that a bad ripoff..

And in any case, iTunes totally breaks with XP's gui consistancy. And it eats resources, but i'm not here to bash on iTunes - but to praise personal taste.. *everyone* doesn't like ferrari's. *everyone* doesn't like vauxhall's.. *everyone* doesn't like fb2k..

Not to be rude, but now and then HA.org seems like a elitist community - which is a sad thing. Everyone was a newbie some time. Everyone has asked the same questions at some point.

now what kind of an argument is that?! I don't like it because it's bad. why is it bad? because I don't like it. ...are we adults here or what?
this whole argumentation by themike is in my view totaly worthless, because it mostly discribes what some ppl said, that something that comes with windows have to be good etc

if somebody want's to compare different players (or whatever else), the person should be rel. openminded for sugestions, or do it totaly by himself, as otherwise there is no need at all to post in a forum!

everybody got the right to use what kind of app he want's, if it suits him, fine. a serious discusion about features, future of the player, bugs etc is also more than welcome in my view, but not this whole talking about how bad or good this and that is, without real proof, or the endless debating about version-numbers. I guess this is done primary to push oneself in the foreground, to get some atantion (just my guess, not meant as an insult).


so let's either stop this conversation or do some serious discusion here.

Winamp does the job for me. Foobar is a fine, choice but I wish it had a nicer GUI. I am customed to how winamp is set up I suppose. I don't need a player to do("Insert foobar is better comment here") as many people on HA elude to again and again, just one that plays my music, sounds good, and is simple to use. Hence winamp is perfect to me. I did try JRivermedia center, quite a nice program too. More for organizing it seems, than playing.

I think you didn´t read what eltoder said:


Think twice bidz, I don´t see how THEMike can be considered a newbie...

i wasn't just talking about THEMike, i was talking in general.

Your failure to acknowledge the input of the others regarding this point is curious.

I think Garf was right the first time.

Trolls should not be fed.

This is more aimed at THEMike, but I don't think you should seriously consider Winamp 5.0 BETA if you don't plan on considering Foobar 2000 0.7.1

SHOULD you change your mind and consider using Foobar 2000, I'll tell you right now that it's difficult to use out of the box. Setting up the playlist formatting strings as shown here: http://pelit.koillismaa.fi/fb2k/index.php makes a world of difference, IMHO. As does having properly tagged files. That was the contributing factor in convincing me to switch from Winamp 2.91 to Foobar 2000.

It's just sad when software which has version 5.0 still suffers some bugs like years ago while the 0.x software has very little bugs and great functionality.

I have used Real player extensivly. I don't like the way it does things. I don't like it's banner ads. I don't like the way it invades my system. I am evaulating applications I am not familiar with. I am familiar with Real. I was not posting an extensive review of the application, merely mentioning I was discounting it from this exercise because I know I can't stand using it already.

I said that I'll investigate WiMP because it must have something going for it if so many people use it and see no reason to move to something else. Many apps come with windows and people decide they can't stand it and move on (What's that cut down version of office called again? I forget, but everyone moves on from that) but many people are moving back to WiMP so I'm going to take a look.



What input? There input is that "fb2k is dead good, and it's a final product at 0.72" I attempted to ask peter but he was not active in IRC and I got swamped with the same argument as on here, so I went to get on with some work. I've responded to numerous points.



Well I am a winamp beta tester, so I'm doing a lot of thrashing of the beta now, but I was planning on working from the fact I'm a winamp 2.x user as the base of my exercise. I don't pretend to be doing anything but saying "Hang on, I've used winamp for ages, I'm happy with it, so lets see how the competition is shaping up these days, see if I've missed anything".



I can honestly say I've never been affected by any bugs in winamp 2.8x and below. They've passed me by in my use. It's only since 2.9x that I've had problems, and the only one that leaps to mind was hitting enter when updating library meta data used to queue the file you edited and start it playing. But that got fixed after I reported it on the beta list. Drove me insane very briefly. But then I don't use the Media Library except when testing.

And you doubt that just because of version numbering...

Let's do it another way: what features do you expect from "final" audio player? What audio formats shoud be supported, what additional tools should be there, etc. Once we know what do you mean by "final product" we'll be able to answer if foobar2000 (or any other player if some people here use it) meets these requirements.

If you want to carry on "The Great Version Number Debate" please do so here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ST&f=17&t=14441

So this can get back to what I originaly intended. Some recomendations for other players, and what I should look for to appreciate them.

Ta.

If you're not interested in sound quality at all, then you should probably skip Hydrogen Audio too.

Though there should not be an audible sound quality difference between players which work properly, and are just playing (no DSP). If there is an audible difference, it's a bug, like mp3s in Winamp prior to v2.666.


But if this thread is basically "tell me about some new, cool, but totally irrelevant features in audio players" it probably belongs in OT.

If you don't mind spending ~ $40, then Media Center (9.1) is the way to go. Once you get a substantial library going, it's the handling of such that will become paramount, and nothing (and I mean nothing) does a better job. I use it in concert with EAC, OggDropXPd, and LameDropXPd (John...how's that new build coming along?). It's playback abilities rival FooBar and is certainly a lot prettier. I believe you mentioned MJ, so it's a natural fit. Latest build supports AAC. It doesn't support FLAC, but I'm looking to write a plug-in for it soon.

xen-uno

You can hide all those banners and adds from RealOne player. And it does'n do anything else what you have configured it to do.

What good is to tell you about some new players? You only tell us that they are bad before you even try them and always for some weard reason you won't even try them. Maybay it is easyer for everyone if you try google or some else search engine first.

"Big software projects never get finished, they only get released."

The guy who wrote this was really smart.