Winamp 3 sucks

[Ioman]

I am sorry guys, but I am not impressed with Winamp 3 at all. It feels clunky. Takes forver to seitch between songs too. Anyone else feel this is incomplete software?

[LinkDJ]

Yeah, i agree. It's a nice concept, but it was ruched. Rushed over the period of 5 years. Very terrible. I hope they can get it ironed out by Winamp4

[Ioman]

Originally posted by LinkDJ
Yeah, i agree. It's a nice concept, but it was ruched. Rushed over the period of 5 years. Very terrible. I hope they can get it ironed out by Winamp4

I am going to see if I can get Winamp 2 off the net. somewhere.

[LinkDJ]

http://classic.winamp.com/

They havent killed it off yet!

[flashfire]

Went back to WinAmp 2 myself. Plugins were handled much better in 2 and winamp3 as a whole seemed slow and cludged together.

[llbbl]

Its probably Asswholes OnLine fault. They are responsible for funding the RIAA so it wouldn't suprise me that winamp 3 now contains spy ware that reports directly to the FBI so that they can come and arrest you. Speaking of which, if you don't remember what you clicked when you installed then i would reinstall and uncheck that box.

Winamp 2.80 works great for me. I have no problems. Maybe when I am bored someday I might go and download it just to see what you guys are talking about. Probably by that time they will have a new version out.

[Ioman]

I just noticed when I went to uninstall Winamp 3 from my other system, that the uninstall icon said AOL on it. This is pretty sad guys....is AOL everywhere these days? Can companies like Winamp not build a business model sound enough where they can sell their own product without the need for huge corporate branding?

Music Match certainly has been able too, Sonique seems to be doing it...

[LinkDJ]

Nullsoft, the makers of winamp, have been owned by AOLTW for a couple years now

I think the resistance to advertising in winamp is a testament to how important freedom and no ads are to Nullsoft. The only thing winamp does is add AOL icons to just about everything, but when you think of how KaZaa invades your privacy, icons is a much better alternitive

[dang]

Very true Link.

kazaa and Morpheous just blow my mind, and its amazing how many people dont even know what schemes they are up to.

have you heard of their new deceptive crap they are doing now?

They install spyware that will redirect commision to them when you buy something online.

For instance, if you purchase something from amazon or something from a site that is supposed to get commission from the sale, kazaa/morpheus's new spyware will redirect the commission to them. its crazy.. make me sick.

[LinkDJ]

That's why i love kazaalite, they're about to release their kazaa 2.0 lite client

www.kazaalite.com

[llbbl]

I heard that RIAA companies are hiring other companies to flood the P2P networks with bogus songs. Has anyone encountered any yet? How can you tell ? Me on my ole dial up has been off P2P for a while.

I used to get viruses renamed to .mp3 on Audiogalaxy alot.

Everyone should download lavasoft ad-aware to make sure that you don't have any spyware cooking in the background.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/aaw.html

[DizzyG]

I prefer xmms -- linux version of winamp. but I do like one thing about winamp 3...that is the support for .ogg file types. I have become a really huge ogg supporter as they are their own standard getting away from MPEG and the MPEG committies. You may not realize this but every client, every encoder every ripper is supposed to pay the mpeg committie (the group who comes up with MPEG standards) a royalty for every instance of their softwrae. OGG is open source, the spec is free, you only pay if you want to have their libraries instead of developing your own.
I encode everything at a Variable bit rate which keeps the file size around that of a 128k encoded mp3, but it's so much better. The quality is around that of a standard 192k mp3, but the compression is so much better. The highs sound better the lows sound terrific, the mid always sounded fine with mp3, but htis does it in far less space. The mpeg committee got lazy and greedy and we should all support ogg.

Back to winamp, I have all of these encoded files in .ogg and it's nice that winamp can now play them.
Diz

[Ioman]

Can Winamp 2.8 not play .ogg files? I thought it could. The thing that bothers me about Winamp 3.0 is how bloated it is. It just doesn't feel quick and reliable and I even have trouble streaming music through it.

Dang, didn't you meet the founders of .ogg in NYC when you were there? I know you have their e-mail addresses right? We should hit them up and do an interview of some sort, get their product some more awareness.

[DizzyG]

Ummm, I've never been there Ian...New York City that is. I've never met them. I don't know about that particular version of winamp. I do know that whatever I had on my 2000 box didn't play them so I upgraded. I also know that it crashes a lot on windows 98.

Diz

[Ioman]

Originally posted by DizzyG
Ummm, I've never been there Ian...New York City that is. I've never met them. I don't know about that particular version of winamp. I do know that whatever I had on my 2000 box didn't play them so I upgraded. I also know that it crashes a lot on windows 98.

Diz

I said Dang, not Diz lol. Dang is the guy who runs this site with me. He is a software engineer at Real Networks and was just recently in NYC at some media conference I beleive.

[DizzyG]

Real networks? The ENEMY...I'm sorry I can no longer talk to you supporting the sworn enemy of my company.
Good Bye
DIz

[senoryoshio]

you probably already figgered it out, but Winamp 2.8+ can play .ogg files. The version history says that they added it in the 2.80 release. You can still get 2.81 off the winamp site. I've gone back to it; there just wasn't enough of a reason for me to commit 30-40% of my cpu processes to the dang thing (Winamp3) and it didn't sound any better. So yeah, my $.02

[DizzyG]

Well let me reconsider that. What part of real do you work for? Audio, video, streaming video? high bandwidth...what's your piece of the puzzle.
Diz

[DizzyG]

Hey thanks for checking into that but I'll continue to use my redhat box with xmms running. I like it very very much and well, it's linux and multimedia on linux is just snazzy.
Diz

[llbbl]

Originally posted by DizzyG
Real networks? The ENEMY...I'm sorry I can no longer talk to you supporting the sworn enemy of my company.
Good Bye
DIz

I didn't know that you had your own company Diz. That is cool :) :P

I agree that Real Player is a pain in the arse. I prefer the Windows Media Player 6.4 or QuickTime Pro.

I guess it does not bother me too much that dang work at Real, after all more power too him, maybe he can make things better ( less like spyware ). It is certainly better than my high tech job at the moment!

I think we can all blame Winamp3 on AOL those RIAA supporting mo-fo's.

[dang]

1) Yes I met the Emmett (CEO) and Monty (Tech Director) at Streaming Media East. They know one of the guys here at Real and we hung out with them one night.
2) Yes, I work for RealNetworks. I'm Test Lead on the RealOne Player
3) real does not produce spyware, contrary to many believes. I personally wrote a tool to decrypt any thing sent up by the player & jukebox to validate we dont send GUIDs, etc. I have one of my testers test before each release that we aren't sending anything up to compromise the users security. Of course, realone player has to send up some informatin, for example language id's, country code, your bandwidth settings in the player, and verifications for wether you can play the "premium" content, etc. but thats so you can playback content and view the webpages, languages etc for your settings in r1p.

[DizzyG]

Enemy...hahaha
I'm not going to say anything about the company I'm with. We're laying low at the moment, and I'm not the sole owner, I'm one of 7 partners who took a huge risk and pay cut to start this baby. I'm back on my normal salary now, but since we were the first people onboard we are the owners, if you look up the company you'll see my name on the company's paperwork.
Anyway, I'm not saying I have probs with real player or anything about spyware, although i've had my suspicions. I'll just leave it at that.

Diz

[Ioman]

Originally posted by DizzyG
Enemy...hahaha
I'm not going to say anything about the company I'm with. We're laying low at the moment, and I'm not the sole owner, I'm one of 7 partners who took a huge risk and pay cut to start this baby. I'm back on my normal salary now, but since we were the first people onboard we are the owners, if you look up the company you'll see my name on the company's paperwork.
Anyway, I'm not saying I have probs with real player or anything about spyware, although i've had my suspicions. I'll just leave it at that.

Diz

Where is the URL to your company Dizzy!? Let us know man, now I am curious!

[llbbl]

All I meant about spyware is that the installation procedure is not the best. All the stuff that you have to click through to see if you want to subscribe to this **** and that ****, all of which I have never wanted.

Also when you have it installed disabling it in the options menu is a mega pain in the arse. I sweare that they make new menus every version, making it more and more difficult to disable it from starting everytime windows loads.

[DizzyG]

Ioman
No WaY JoSe @!@

[Ioman]

Originally posted by DizzyG
Ioman
No WaY JoSe @!@

I betcha it is a porno company!!!

LAMERSS!!! Well I hope you make some good money bro.

[llbbl]

Originally posted by Ioman


I betcha it is a porno company!!!

LAMERSS!!! Well I hope you make some good money bro.

You know that isn't a bad idea. Porno is big business. I bet they haven't been hurt very much because of the recession. People probably have more time to waste online and what better way to do that than looking at p0rn. :P

[DizzyG]

lol
it's not a prono company. but I'm still Not tellin. maybe later folks, io, you have my icq I think.

Diz

[Ioman]

Just reading through this old thread, I did not notice on Winamps site if there have been any updates or fixes for Winamp 3 so that it takes up less system resources and so that it run faster. I am still with the older Winamp 2.81, how about you guys?

[IronSerif]

I'm runnin v 2.80

Although I like some of the skins for v 3, which is tempting me to switch, but I really didn't like v 3, so not sure if the updates are enough to make me switch.

[ShadowDemonX]

Personally, for a music program I enjoy using MUCISMATCH Plus. I am a beta tester for them so I currently have the beta version 7.5. I love the program, basically no scripting flaws, Rips CDs flawlessly, has decent skins, and many add-ons. and it works perfectly with me Apple iPod MP3 Player!

[Archon]

MP3 players shouldnt use up a lot of system resources. Winamp2 is the best MP3 player out there, it opens, closes, wham! all done, nothing special, just an mp3 player..

Winamp3 for some reason feels the need of being a massive resource hog. Same goes to MusicMatch, which is really only good in that it can burn/rip CDs.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Archon
MP3 players shouldnt use up a lot of system resources. Winamp2 is the best MP3 player out there, it opens, closes, wham! all done, nothing special, just an mp3 player..

Winamp3 for some reason feels the need of being a massive resource hog. Same goes to MusicMatch, which is really only good in that it can burn/rip CDs.

Dont forget Real Player which FEELS bloated, even though Dang will argue otherwise. lol

[llbbl]

People get used to one thing and don't like it when you drastically change the performance of the program. I have never used Winamp to burn CDs. The program has always had the best skins and the best plugins. That and its a small quick player. You should be running the right software to correspond with the performance of the machine.

[llbbl]

PCmagazine has a good review of the different Mp3 player out. Winamp did not rate high, but I think they were taking into account the burning and ripping functionality. Maybe someone can find a link.

It sure would be nice if DT bought me a subscription to that magazine so I could have all that useful information right in front of me. Only $35 a year ...

[dang]

Hehe..is that a hint? :)

RealOne player in my opinion is way better then music match. You can play all the major media types with it: windows media player, quicktime, mpeg4, avi, divx, etc.

RealOne player uses up 6.2mg of memory during playback of an mp3 on my system, and about .5-1% cpu (oscilates)

You can watch dvds, vcds, burn cds, listen to or watch any type of streaming media, etc.

Love it.

[llbbl]

I do remember that the RealPlayer (.ra) format rated the highest for those people who enjoy classical music when compared to the other popular music formats. That did not make any sense to me because all the recorded .ra content that I have heard does not sound CD quality. What's going on here dang?

[dang]

Well, just like mp3 and wma, RA can be encoded into various bitrates.

the lower the bitrate, the crapier it sounds.

With the free version of realone player you can encode your cd's into 320kbps RA with ATRAC3, give it a try! It sounds awesome.

You can also unlock free mp3 320kbps encoding in realone player by downloading a small file from real.

I can't find it at the moment, but if anyone is interested, then I'll dig a little more and post a link.

[shorty]

I installed both 3 and 2.8 ;) and I get all the crossfades & improvements within in the DLL's for 3.. but they work in 2.8...

Anyone got any clue why that is?? ;)

[Ioman]

Originally posted by shorty
I installed both 3 and 2.8 ;) and I get all the crossfades & improvements within in the DLL's for 3.. but they work in 2.8...

Anyone got any clue why that is?? ;)

Perhaps they install the DLL's into the same directory, maybe under the system folder. That would be my guess.

[Unregistered]

why does everything have to keep on changing.cant they just keep it plain and simple...winamp 3 takes too long to load...uses too muc memory and isnt as user friendly....you dont need intricate skins...why not the base skin and the standard visualization....it plays music and has an equalizer what else do you need?

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
why does everything have to keep on changing.cant they just keep it plain and simple...winamp 3 takes too long to load...uses too muc memory and isnt as user friendly....you dont need intricate skins...why not the base skin and the standard visualization....it plays music and has an equalizer what else do you need?

Exactly. I just use the 2.8 version. I dont even have a skin for it. Why? Because when it's playing, I keep it minimized. I don't want to look at the damn thing, just listen to it.

[quig]

I personally like QCD Player (http://www.quinnware.com/news.html). Takes up less resources than Winamp 2 and 3. Lots of good lookin' skins too!

[Unregistered]

Hey I just found this forum searching for winamp 3 sucks, anyways i really don't like W3 i just unistalled it and went back to 2.81. the things that i didn't like are say when i double click a song in a folder it takes too long to start playing... another thing Winamp would stumble...not skip...it would actually speed up and like miss a beat....pissed me off, i first noticed it when watching movies with it it would speed up the movies for like 2 seconds...anyways the old winamp is better.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Hey I just found this forum searching for winamp 3 sucks, anyways i really don't like W3 i just unistalled it and went back to 2.81. the things that i didn't like are say when i double click a song in a folder it takes too long to start playing... another thing Winamp would stumble...not skip...it would actually speed up and like miss a beat....pissed me off, i first noticed it when watching movies with it it would speed up the movies for like 2 seconds...anyways the old winamp is better.

Welcome to the forums!! Please register so we can meet ya! :D

Do you think that Winamp 3 was stumbling because of your computer? I know that Winamp 3 is very CPU intensive so if you have an older system, that might be the cause.