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Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

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71–80 of 91 posts

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#71
post #3

Every promising technology/company that gets gobbled up by the bureaucratic mega fauna enviably end up being re-chewed and strewn about as piles of dung (to be burned to repel mosquitoes). AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first, a product/service creating, maintaining and selling entity second. Oh sure, the execs may think they're "creating and maintaining" a product/service, but their mindset is "how do we m…

Another anecdote: ICQ was the very, or at least one of the first instant messaging applications, and acquired by AOL in the late 90s "for US$287 million in cash up front and $120 million in additional payments over three years" [1]. It was a huge story in Israel at the time. The company is still there, but I don't know a single person who still uses it today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ

A couple years ago, AOL sold ICQ to the Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies for around $187.6 mil. I believe it's still popular in Eastern Europe, Russia and a few other areas.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#72
Anyone remembers MusicMatch Jukebox? The first versions where quite good. Specially the capability of ripping to MP3.

Today, two media players I like in Windows is: MusicBee ( http://getmusicbee.com/ , quite fast last time I tried) and MediaMonkey (previous versions where good, current versions became bloated).

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#73
post #4
post #2

I guess I am the only person in the world still using Winamp. Just feels odd when I listen to mp3s and can't look up the ID3 tags with alt-3. And I never felt the need for a 'library', 'database' or huge spaceship cockpit UIs either.

> And I never felt the need for a 'library', 'database' or huge spaceship cockpit UIs either. Probably because you never experienced them. There are things "you feel the need for" (e.g water in a desert) and things you have to use for a while to say "fuck, how did I do without those?".

No really, there's actually people who prefer more basic players.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#74
post #64

Don't forget AVS (Advanced Visualization Studio). Good old software rendering, and programmable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tka07_LC534

I kept using Winamp for long after it got rubbish because it was the only thing you could use http://www.milkdrop.co.uk/ on.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#75

For those on Linux or Windows, Audacious is a beautiful audio player heavily inspired by Winamp 2.x, both visually and mechanically. It supports Winamp Classic skins out of the box, and comes with quite a nice one as stock. Screenshot: http://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/audacious.png Homepage: http://audacious-media-player.org/

Of you can use xmms on Linux. It's not dead yet!

http://www.xmms.org/

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#76
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is interested, see deadbeef for the linux equivalent of foobar2000: http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/ (But personally, I use MOC: http://moc.daper.net/ )

How do these compare to VLC? Is VLC not actually a good audio player?

It does the job just fine for just about any format, but playlist management in VLC is pretty awful, IMO.

edit: I'm using WinAmp for my MP3s, but I might take a look at foobar2000 as well

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#77
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just run foobar2k under Wine. It works pretty well.

It has been named in this thread before, but you might not have seen it. I used to run foobar under wine, but honestly, deadbeef[1] works better from an integration point of view (global shortcuts, GTK etc.). [1] http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

This looks interesting. I'll have to check it out, thanks.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#78
post #67

I use Winamp now but only because of its support for FLAC. I hate its UI, its far too messy and complicated with all kinds of windows that can be docked, undocked etc. Its unfortunate the developers have never understood the concept of "less is more".

Well, I don't want to sound like an evangelist, but foobar2000 plays FLAC just fine, with gapless playback and whatnot and the interface is quite the opposite of Winamp's.

Hmm, thanks will check it out, I'd not seen that one before!

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#79
post #3

Every promising technology/company that gets gobbled up by the bureaucratic mega fauna enviably end up being re-chewed and strewn about as piles of dung (to be burned to repel mosquitoes). AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first, a product/service creating, maintaining and selling entity second. Oh sure, the execs may think they're "creating and maintaining" a product/service, but their mindset is "how do we m…

"AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first" Isn't its main problem today that it's a content farm operated by new-age antivax no-signal-to-noise peddler Arianna Huffington?

Ha! Yes, that too.

Of which I'm sure they were thinking how to make money off of first, not how the hell to increase quality afterwards. Kinda like what happened to Java after being inherited by Oracle when they bought Sun.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#80
post #3

Every promising technology/company that gets gobbled up by the bureaucratic mega fauna enviably end up being re-chewed and strewn about as piles of dung (to be burned to repel mosquitoes). AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first, a product/service creating, maintaining and selling entity second. Oh sure, the execs may think they're "creating and maintaining" a product/service, but their mindset is "how do we m…

Another anecdote: ICQ was the very, or at least one of the first instant messaging applications, and acquired by AOL in the late 90s "for US$287 million in cash up front and $120 million in additional payments over three years" [1]. It was a huge story in Israel at the time. The company is still there, but I don't know a single person who still uses it today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ

I've literally only met "one" person who still uses ICQ and I have no idea who he talks to on it. He's much older than I am, someone I look up to, but he's also a bit weird.
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