WinAmp vs iTunes (it's here)
 

Does Winamp really stand a chance now that iTunes is availible for Windows now? Yeah iTunes has no skins, simple "visuals", and probably uses a bit more CPU power than WinAmp. But spend a few hours using it and you become hooked.

Anyhow I'd just like to see this communities response to the Windows release of iTunes.

I like how iTunes is all nice and free for a full featured product with maximun ripping/burning speed

iTunes mem useage: 36mb (7.5 for winamp 5.0b1)
20mb download (wa5 is 4.6)
lacks skins.
visulisation is totally dwarfed by wa5's AVS and milkdrop (which can go 25fps at 1280x1024 here)
UI is sluggish, and I don't really like it.
Library browse thing unconfigurable (i want rid of the genre thing)
Smart views not as powerful (although perhaps a bit easier o use) than wa5 library views.
Doesn't support win98
No media library plugins.
No r3mix option for mp3 vbr encoding.
No stop button (i sometimes hit stop then play to go to the beginning of the song)

If you have any quieries as to why winamp has to have a pro version, check the Winamp Pro FAQ

Will, care to throw foobar into the mix ? :D


edit: usux will :D

grrrrrr, i would like iTunes, but apparently Europe and Japan is not important enough markets for Apple, fucking hell man, our disposable income nearly matches that of the United States... pricks!

Winamp5 > *

I see 20megs for iTunes and ten for Winamp. Of course I was looking at physical RAM usage. Not RAM allocation, which includes memory mapped to disk. Does memory really matter anyway?

Skins are something to avoid. Mucks up the interface.

No contest here. But is music to be listened to or stared at?

UI is a bit slow. You get used to the library browser. And it is most certainly customizable.

It has different viewing modes. To say it's not as powerful isn't really fair. It certainly is easier to use.

Doesn't support OS9.

It installs Quicktime for a reason.

It's not a freakin' tape deck! One of Winamp's biggest UI flaws was basing it on a cassette deck. You don't need both a stop and pause button. You want to restart, press space, left, right. Or use the mouse.

so was the timing to relese the public beta of winamp 5 timed to match the iTunes release?!

Yes.Skins let you have the interface the way you want it. They're good.tell me how to get rid of the genre panethe querying is infinatly more powerful, try using it. You can do anythingyeah, and it slows down everything one of the flaws you say, yet one of the reasons winamp gained popularity, because its easy to use. I'm sure you could find a skin with just the three playback buttons.

You mean column? Edit->View Options->Uncheck Genre.

EVERYTHING has a stop and/or pause button.
I may not need one but I want it anyway:rolleyes:

who said you dont need a stop button?!

lol.....i use the stop button all the time, and i use the pause button all the time too...

stop. if i have to leave, and want to hear the same song when i come back...
pause. if i am listening to a 55 minute remix, and have to leave, but dont want to come back and listen to the whole thing again.

/me goes to iTunes forum to spam Winamp:p

itunes was good for about 5 minutes. There's no options and it's not configurable at all.

I'm alos mad that winamp5 doesn't have the only feature I wanted(right click enqueue like winamp3) so I'm back to using winamp2 again :(

i wrote a pretty lengthy comparison with itunes against winamp, and some of the flaws of Apple's new media player. i think it's a worthy read.

nice work
i dont understand why apple doesnt understand the concept of maximizeing

Thanks for the awesome read. :D

To stop: press pause. To restart from the beginning double click on the song.

But, iTunes does suck, for many reasons. I doesn't seem to be able to put the playlists on a remote file server. With WinAmp all of my playlists are syncronized between all of my computers. With iTunes, this appears to be impossible.

Plus, iTunes insists on savings purchased music as \\Server\Artist\Album\SongName.m4p where as I want it as \\Server\Artist\Artist - Album - Song name.m4p.

There is a ton more, but it's all been brought up. I think if WinAMP (2,3,5, whatever) can play the M4p files then it'll be fine. I'll purchase with iTunes and listen with WinAMP.

/me gets reminded that I don't have an iPod yet..

Grrr...

i can't see iTunes being much cop vs. winamp5 or foobar, unless you have an iPod, or an apple fetish. i'll download and have a go at some point, though.

naw, pane. Next to artist and album on the Browse thingy.

zootm: its Winamp 5 bish!

I talked to Steve awhile ago about adding iPod support to winamp.

It's a good idea. Even though I despise all that apple stands for.

Already in http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....16#post1041916

see how much i rule even at times when things are involved that you never even knew i had a hand in? :igor::cool::p

I think I'll stick with i-Tunes for the moment,like it that much now.
The Equalizer owns Winamps by the way,nice to not having to install 3 dsp plugins to make it sound the way I want.
:p

itunes only works for America only.
It will never be the silightest popler due to that.

While Winamp is the Worlds most famous Media/Mp3 player.

Err, iTunes Music Store only works in America. iTunes itself works fine here in the UK ;).

yeah, you own us, and is completely unrelated to the fact that justin a) wrote winamp b) has an ipod c) likes writing cool code ;)

i have been using winamp for over 8 years im pretty stuck on it :)

itunes too big for me....
visuals suck
cant really tell big dfference in sound quality
loading files is ALOT slower then winamp
oh, a big one is....IT REORGANIZES YOUR MUSIC FOLDER!

I am tired so here are my quick positives and negatives for itunes when compared to winamp (i am sticking with winamp.)

iTunes Pros
-----
-Ease of use is throught the roof. My mom could use this fucking thing.
-Built in quality ripping and burning.
-iPod support
-Library does a perfect job of reading all my file's title, artist etc. Winamp fucks this up somehow.


iTunes Negatives
-------------
Most the negatives for me fall under the lack of a plugin system
- no dsp plugins (cant live without enhancer.)
- no input plugins. What about my MPCs? my psfs? smcs? and all the other random shit my winamp takes like a charm.
-ML isnt as powerful
-i guess lack of skins are a negative, but with such an easy use interface most people would never change it.


Right now the winner for me is Winamp. Most of the positives to iTunes I have seperate Apps that do loads better. Ripping? EAC baby. Ipod support? Ephpod blows iTunes out of the water. Burning? Nero works fine for me.

I doubt even winamp pro will have ripping and encoding support on par with (free) EAC or ipod support as robust as (free) ephpod. The burning might be cool though.

Yes, I know its hard for a program to do everything well that individual apps do well, but I think winamp could do it!

Winamp shall own over all media players, no other one can duplicate AVS without it looking shit *cough*WiMPy*cough*, and that alone makes winamp 10x better than anything else.

o, and btw, in regard to

music should be accompanied by trippy vis so that i have both visual and audio ectasy :)

[edit] sorry about the double post [/edit]

Go to Edit > Preferences > General
Uncheck "Show genre when browsing"

Was browsing through Slashdot and found this explanation, make of it what you will.

Indeed - Winamp wipes the floor in the visualization department.

While I agree, it is the least important part of a music player, versus, you know, functionality and stuff.