After 15 Years Of Whipping The Llama’s Ass, Winamp Shuts Down

smarteyeball said:

Winamp was great for the visualizations. Used to use it when I had a Projector setup. No others came near it from that aspect...

MediaMonkey can use some of the WinAmp visualizations. To be able use some of them, you have to run MediaMonkey in XP SP3 mode, such as with the one I use (Geiss 2).

Tried it a few times... never really got into it. Always been very happy with Windows Media Player and Clementine. No loss to me.

I never could stand Windows Media Player. It was a temperamental PITA for me to use and the visualizations would play for only 20 minutes.

Hi there
I still use it - first it rips CD's great and uses GRACENOTE for automatic tagging which for Classical Music is a much better database than some of the FREE data bases out there, and secondly it plays in Folders simply and easily which a lot of other players don't do -- I can never be bothered with PLAYLISTS etc etc.

Plays FLAC natively too. Has also a good built in Mixer -- I HATE ALL THOSE FIXED PRESETS you have in modern players - we don't all like Boomy Bassboxes that typical computer speakers have which are usually geared for highly compressed mp3 music that people are used to listening with on bud earphones or set for film type effects rather than proper dedicated music listening.

VLC has some sort of mixer in it (go to Audio effects) but the Winamp one is simplicity itself.

I'm glad I also downloaded the Android version for my phone too.

Anyway things change so I suppose something else will take its place - but unless VLC can slightly improve the GUI for playing AUDIO files I'll just keep winamp for as long as it continues to work - or run it indefinitely from a VM.

My problem with some of the more modern stuff around is that we'll undoubdtedly be bomparded by commercials in any new type of version or urged to "Go Pro" and pay to avoid the commercials.

Like a lot of others here I don't like Windows media player or windows media centre at all.

Anyway if you like Winamp grab it while it's still around. (Till Dec 20)

http://www.winamp.com/media-player/all


Cheers
jimbo

I agree that Gracenote is much better than free sites like Freedb. It's a pity even the paid version of MediaMonkey uses Freedb (many of the people that upload to that site are drunk, stoned, or insane). I personally love playlists, especially with MediaMonkey, which makes them easy to use (WMP is flat obtuse). Many albums have a track or two I don't like. Using a playlist allows me to exclude those tracks from play. I often have music playing for hours just for background music. Using a playlist allows me to cue up enough music that I won't repeat tracks.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I agree that Gracenote is much better than free sites like Freedb. I personally love playlists, especially with MediaMonkey, which makes them easy to use (WMP is flat obtuse). Many albums have a track or two I don't like. Using a playlist allows me to exclude those tracks from play. I often have music playing for hours just for background music. Using a playlist allows me to cue up enough music that I won't repeat tracks.

Hi there

For a lot of people Playlists are fine - however most of my listening is Classical Music so I'm used to popping in a CD and just playing the whole thing.

For me say I rip 3 Mozart CD's to a Mozart XXX folder I can just get winamp to play the folder - the 3 CD's say without any bother at all -- and with the phone application I can either connect to the folder remotely on the PC and play it on the phone or download a copy locally on to the phone's SDHC card and play from the local folder.

I've arranged my music library in reasonable folders and as 99% of my music all has been ripped from CD's then for me the whole idea of using playlists is more trouble than it's worth --although WINAMP will certainly use playlists if you want to -- it's just with a lot of OTHER players you HAVE to use playlists.

Cheers
jimbo

Technically, MediaMonkey plays from a playlist but, if I want, I can just click on the folder and just double click the first track; it will copy the entire album into a temporary playlist and start playing. Adding another album to the list is just as easy; right click on the folder and click on Play Last (I can also choose single albums that way by clicking on Play First but I prefer to see what's going to be playing in case there are tracks I would rather not play; those are easily excluded). I can choose to save the play list or not; the only playlists I ever save are groupings of similar genres; Like you, I mostly listen to Classical and have playlists of all Vivaldi, all Renaissance, all Baroque, all Easy Listening, various mixes of several random albums, etc. I can play from albums, saved play lists, or search results (such as composer, genre, artist, etc.).

I have my music arranged in folders, one album per folder. I let MediaMonkey do the arranging for me. When I rip my CDs, I also scan the liner notes (and even the CD itself) into a PDF file I keep in the folder with the album tracks. Once I have the liner notes backed up, I discard the liner notes and case and store the CD in a file case designed for the purpose (for now, I'll eventually destroy them). I can treat the folders like the individual CDs, using Media Monkey as an unlimited CD changer (I used to have a 400 CD changer but that thing was bulky and a bit of a PITA).