iTunes for Windows

[Gonzotek]

iTunes for Windows (and an update for Mac) has been released. I love my Winamp, but having an iPod, I _need_ iTunes for smartplaylists, aac, the Music Store, and audiobooks. (Unless someone updates the iPod winamp ml plugin, wink wink, nudge nudge Justin!)

iPod updated too, voice recording activated, along with some other new stuff.

/me is downloading now. I'll report my experiences after playing around with everything.

-=Gonzotek=-

[Raas]

Any one tried it yet? What do u think?
I think it's sweet(but not as good as Winamp!)
I really like the format and the way it looks.

[LawnGnome2005]

It takes over as the only program that can write Mp3s to your iPOD. Not a good thing imo. Will stick with my mac version

[InvisableMan]

HURRRRRRR *plop*

this is the essence of ipod.

[Gonzotek]

iTunes needs a little more tweaking, but there is nothing majorly wrong with it, and it does get some things very right.

The iPod update seems very nice, the contrast is mucho improved and the new game is fun. You hear a clip of music and try to guess what its title is from a list randomly chosen and shown onscreen.
Although this isn't due to the iPod update, but iTunes for Windows release, I can now use the alarm function. The app I was using didn't support playlist correctly and the alarm function could only beep or play all songs.

[edit] Threads merged. Link-ref posts removed. I owe you both a post .

-=Gonzotek=-

[duh]

not as good as having EAC as a ripper, Nero as a burner, and Winamp as a player/library, but iTunes certainly puts MusicMatch to shame (not the big of an achievement but still) as the BIG all-in-one jukeboxe. i recomened iTunes to my sister as an alternative to MM and hopefully she will use iTunes (yeah I'm trying to get her to the EAC, Nero, and WA combo but it takes time).

[idynkydnk]

I can't put the artist before the song name and I doin't like that

[zootm]

yet to download it... what does it do so differently, that is good?

[Psythik]

WTF is Apple thinking???? Making iTunes only compatable for Windows 2000 and XP??? Where's the Windows 98, ME version? Damnit not everyone has a pc fast enough for XP ya know! Oh well, might as well give it a try...

[edit]Man 20MB download? Why is it so large? It took almost a minute to download! [/edit]

[zootm]

2000 and XP will run on any computer capable of running 98/ME competently. just turn all the shinyness off.

[Gonzotek]

Originally posted by zootm
yet to download it... what does it do so differently, that is good?

For me it's the excellent free integration of iPod features. A few other programs have been able to work with the iPod, winamp included (with a unreleased ml plugin). But none offered access to everything that the mac iTunes could do, or if they did, they cost money and I wasn't interested in paying even more that I already ahve for the ipod and the hardware accesories I've gotten so far:
$500 for 30g iPod + $35 for FM transmitter + $50 for Belkin auto power adapter + $50 powered firewire hub (non-powered firewire on the 4pin laptop port). And I still want to get a pair of Sennheisers and maybe a clear case of some kind. Tooo much money...at least now I can use the iPod to it's fullest potential.

-=Gonzotek=-

[PearlJamRicky]

Originally posted by ScYtH
WTF is Apple thinking???? Making iTunes only compatable for Windows 2000 and XP??? Where's the Windows 98, ME version? Damnit not everyone has a pc fast enough for XP ya know! Oh well, might as well give it a try...

[edit]Man 20MB download? Why is it so large? It took almost a minute to download! [/edit]

i have a computer running xp here and its a pentium mmx 166 with 64 megs of ram... (Its not the one im on right now though)

[zootm]

Originally posted by Gonzotek
For me it's the excellent free integration of iPod features. A few other programs have been able to work with the iPod, winamp included (with a unreleased ml plugin).

but what if you don't have an iPod? does it offer anything?

[LollipopLustKil]

Besides downloading music? No.

[zootm]

since i'm unlikely to be able to connect to the downloading service, i'll take it that it has nowt to offer me then. bummer.

[LollipopLustKil]

That, and the service totally sucks. Refer to DJ Killer's comment in the SHOUTcast forums about a test he did.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....21#post1131221

[jpeg7383]

I realize that it is likely folly to even argue for iTunes in a Winamp community, but...

Originally posted by zootm
since i'm unlikely to be able to connect to the downloading service, i'll take it that it has nowt to offer me then. bummer.

I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn stupid zootm. So, because one person (and it's questionable if they've even tried it, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt) says no you're going to take their word for it? Come off of it, download it and form an opinion on your own. I realize you may want to know a little bit about it before you try it, but you SHOULD try it (and a Winamp forum isn't exactly the best place to get, in general, non-biased opinions.)

I also really do not understand why you wouldn't use iTunes because you don't have an iPod or because you don't plan on downloading music from the iTunes Music Store. So what. iTunes also happens to be a really great mp3 player, aside from integration with the iPod and access to a digital store.

How about Smart Playlists that allow you to sort your collection of mp3s instantly with database like rules?

How about the five star rating system that integrates with said playlists allowing you to make sure that what you've tagged as your 'favorie' songs are included (or excluded if you don't want to hear the song and give it one or two stars.)

How about being able to type something into the search field, while iTunes refines the current playlist (or entire collection if you have your library selected) with each keystroke?

Not to mention the fact that even if you don't plan on buying anything from the iTunes Music Store, you can still use it to get a 30 second preview of songs, if you're looking for something to download/buy/whatever.

It has its faults, there is no skinnability to the program. While that isn't necessarily a requisite option when it comes to a digital music player, it is a nice one (I actually rarely have the program on screen, but I'll be the first to admit I wish you could skin it.)

It also uses a little more resources than Winamp does. But, I hope nobody is surprised by that. To me, it's not a big deal, it doesn't bother me in the least (and I don't have an Athlon64 with 2 GB of RAM by any means, my computer isn't even 1 GHz.)

I know you're all deeply in love with Winamp, but give iTunes a chance. Don't dismiss it the first time something doesn't work the way you expect it to. It's a powerful program, if you allow it to be.

[zootm]

Originally posted by jpeg7383
I realize that it is likely folly to even argue for iTunes in a Winamp community, but...I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn stupid zootm. So, because one person (and it's questionable if they've even tried it, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt) says no you're going to take their word for it? Come off of it, download it and form an opinion on your own. I realize you may want to know a little bit about it before you try it, but you SHOULD try it (and a Winamp forum isn't exactly the best place to get, in general, non-biased opinions.)

was planning to. my time is just a little occupied right now. was looking for opinions... that's what forums are for!

Originally posted by jpeg7383
I also really do not understand why you wouldn't use iTunes because you don't have an iPod or because you don't plan on downloading music from the iTunes Music Store. So what. iTunes also happens to be a really great mp3 player, aside from integration with the iPod and access to a digital store.

i was asking what it did other than those two things that is good... you're the first one to reply

Originally posted by jpeg7383
How about Smart Playlists that allow you to sort your collection of mp3s instantly with database like rules?

like the library in winamp or the database in foobar? or more complex? i like simplicity in these things, but i'll admit this intruiges me.

Originally posted by jpeg7383
How about the five star rating system that integrates with said playlists allowing you to make sure that what you've tagged as your 'favorie' songs are included (or excluded if you don't want to hear the song and give it one or two stars.)

good idea, although i doubt i'd use it

Originally posted by jpeg7383
How about being able to type something into the search field, while iTunes refines the current playlist (or entire collection if you have your library selected) with each keystroke?

press "J" in winamp or F3 in foobar for this feature. "jump to song" isn't an exact replica, now i think about it - the search field in the library is though.

Originally posted by jpeg7383
Not to mention the fact that even if you don't plan on buying anything from the iTunes Music Store, you can still use it to get a 30 second preview of songs, if you're looking for something to download/buy/whatever.

didn't say i didn't want to use it, said i couldn't connect. unless it works through the HTTP proxy that provides my sole connection to the internet :/

Originally posted by jpeg7383
It has its faults, there is no skinnability to the program. While that isn't necessarily a requisite option when it comes to a digital music player, it is a nice one (I actually rarely have the program on screen, but I'll be the first to admit I wish you could skin it.)

skins aren't a big thing to me. i'll admit i've fallen in love with the new winamp5 one though. i was using foobar for a long time, minimised to the system tray

Originally posted by jpeg7383
It also uses a little more resources than Winamp does. But, I hope nobody is surprised by that. To me, it's not a big deal, it doesn't bother me in the least (and I don't have an Athlon64 with 2 GB of RAM by any means, my computer isn't even 1 GHz.)

shouldn't be a big problem. i use foobar for background music in games - it's lower profile. the rest of the time i don't notice it

Originally posted by jpeg7383
I know you're all deeply in love with Winamp, but give iTunes a chance. Don't dismiss it the first time something doesn't work the way you expect it to. It's a powerful program, if you allow it to be.

just the new beta, to be honest. i was using foobar since i discovered it right up until the beta came out.

i will try it though.

[Gonzotek]

Smart playlists are a nice feature and queries in Winamp's media library compare, but there are some advantages/disadvantages to both implementations.
For instance:
I prefer Winamp's method of building the query with a typed in command, as opposed to iTunes point-and-click and fill in the blanks method.

iTunes allows you to set limits (i.e. not more than 35 songs/hours/mb). The ratings, last played and playcount tags useful when you want to mix things up a bit. Winamp doesn't support these, but I imagine it should be possible sometime in the future.


Something I'd really like to see in Winamp are sub-queries, where you can right-click on a ml query and a menu option exists:"Add Sub-Query..." which will basically be an "AND" joiner between the parent query and whatever you add. Then the new query shows up a subitem in the tree beneath it's parent query.


...not sure how much sense I just made, but it seems like a pretty good idea to me

[jpeg7383]

Originally posted by zootm
was planning to. my time is just a little occupied right now. was looking for opinions... that's what forums are for!

Then I appologize, but it certainly sounded like you had made up your mind on iTunes before even trying it (and sadly, I think there are people who will do just that.)

Originally posted by zootm
like the library in winamp or the database in foobar? or more complex? i like simplicity in these things, but i'll admit this intruiges me.

I can't speak for foobar as I've never used it before. But more complex than Winamp. You can create normal playlists, which is just a regular list of songs. And you can also create a smart playlist which allows you to create the list of songs by editing rules. For instance (and I won't list options unless someone really wants me to, there are a lot), if you wanted to make a playlist that included all songs from artist X, you would make the rule (from drop down menus and a field to type in the variable) [Artist] [is] "X". If you also wanted all songs from album Y in the playlist, you would create another rule [Album] [is] "Y".

It's a lot more powerful than that, however. That's just a simple example. And the nice thing is, it automatically updates. So if you have a rule [My Rating] [is greater than] [Four stars] and you rate a song with Four or Five stars, it is automatically included in that playlist.

Originally posted by zootm
good idea, although i doubt i'd use it

Certainly understandable. Many people have huge playlist and I would not suggest going through the entire collection rating the music. But it's still a nice feature that you can use as songs you happen to like are played.

Originally posted by zootm
press "J" in winamp or F3 in foobar for this feature. "jump to song" isn't an exact replica, now i think about it - the search field in the library is though.

Just to clarify how it works. Lets say that I typed Blue into the search field. The playlist would be refined (temporarily, as soon as you cleared the Search field, it would revert to what it normally is) to any song where Blue appeared. So all songs with Blue in the Title, Artist, Album, Genre, etc. field would be displayed. Even if it were "Blueberry" it would be included. I'm not sure I'm explaining it very well, but when you use it, it will be obvious.

Originally posted by zootm
shouldn't be a big problem. i use foobar for background music in games - it's lower profile. the rest of the time i don't notice it

And that's one case where you certainly shouldn't be using iTunes. There's no call for it if you're going to be playing a game. But if you're just browing the web, or whatever, I think iTunes is a great choice.

[will]

Originally posted by jpeg7383
I think iTunes is a great choice.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.....


Don't mind me, carry on.

[jpeg7383]

Originally posted by will
HAHAHAHAHAHA.....

What a fantastic argument you've made.

[will]

Originally posted by jpeg7383
What a fantastic argument you've made.

not an argument, a burst of laughter

This is an argument (but i've posted it elsewhere)

iTunes mem useage: 36mb (7.5 for winamp)
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 pane in the browse thing)
Smart views not as powerful (although perhaps a bit easier to 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)

[jpeg7383]

See, that wasn't so hard.

Originally posted by will
iTunes mem useage: 36mb (7.5 for winamp)

I don't know where you get this from, I just loaded it up to check it and it uses at most 10.x while onscreen and as little as 6.x when minimized. Still more than Winamp, but less even than Explorer.exe, not to mention the other various support crap that is running (but that is beside the point.)

Originally posted by will
20mb download (wa5 is 4.6)

I can only see this being an issue of time for people on dial-up, I assume this is what you're getting at? I honestly don't think this is a big deal at all, but whatever.

Originally posted by will
lacks skins.

No argument, I already said I wish it could be skinned.

Originally posted by will
visulisation is totally dwarfed by wa5's AVS and milkdrop (which can go 25fps at 1280x1024 here)

Pretty much no argument again. However, am I the only person that doesn't use visualization. I understand that it's maybe something you would want every once in a while, but I don't think I've ever felt like staring at a vis while my music played... I'm usually doing other stuff on my computer.

Originally posted by will
UI is sluggish, and I don't really like it.

Yep, it is (at least on my computer, I haven't seen how it performed an a relatively new computer.) Maybe it will be fixed or improved in later releases, this is after all the first iteration.

And it's cool if you don't like it, you're entitled to that. Personally I think it looks good, but I'd rather have skins.

Originally posted by will
Library browse thing unconfigurable (i want rid of the genre pane in the browse thing)

Right click on those "tabs" and uncheck Genre (there are also many other things you can check that aren't shown by default.)

Originally posted by will
Smart views not as powerful (although perhaps a bit easier to use) than wa5 library views.

I haven't downloaded the WA5 beta yet, so no comment.

Originally posted by will
Doesn't support win98

Personally I don't see why it should need to support Win98. They made it for XP, if it doesn't work in 98 then it doesn't work. People need to migrate to XP eventually anyway.

Originally posted by will
No media library plugins.

Don't know what you're talking about, so if you could clarify.

Originally posted by will
No r3mix option for mp3 vbr encoding.

I have to claim ignorance as far as r3mix goes. I've never used iTunes or Winamp to encode anything, for what that's worth.

Originally posted by will
No stop button (i sometimes hit stop then play to go to the beginning of the song)

Yeah, I don't really understand it either, such is Apple. You could always just click the beginning of the track progress bar, but I agree it should have a stop button, or at least the option.

[zootm]

Originally posted by jpeg7383
Just to clarify how it works. Lets say that I typed Blue into the search field. The playlist would be refined (temporarily, as soon as you cleared the Search field, it would revert to what it normally is) to any song where Blue appeared. So all songs with Blue in the Title, Artist, Album, Genre, etc. field would be displayed. Even if it were "Blueberry" it would be included. I'm not sure I'm explaining it very well, but when you use it, it will be obvious.

this is identical to the library's search field in winamp 2.9+, and F3 in foobar.

[jpeg7383]

I just checked the Library out (first time) and yes, it's similar. I don't like that it "deletes" your playlist when you play a song that a search has narrowed down, though. It's easy enough to get it back, and maybe the behavior can be changed (I don't know since I've never used the Library until now) but I still don't like it.

Plus, the Library window is very cluttered, but I suppose that would be easy enough to change.

Side note: The WA5 beta install fails, so I can't check it out. :\

[Starbucks]

I've never used iTunes before. Does anyone know what quality level those mp3's are ripped at?

[LollipopLustKil]

Not exactly, but it is horrible.

Refer to this post, it gives some details on the quality of the songs.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....21#post1131221

{edit]not horrible, but bad compared to CDs[/edit]

[jpeg7383]

What mp3s? Do you mean the mp4s that you download from the iTunes Music Store?

If so, they're 128 (supposedly equivalent to a 192 mp3)

[jpeg7383]

Originally posted by LollipopLustKil
Not exactly, but it is horrible.

Bit of an exageration don't you think? The songs certainly aren't CD quality, and you could rip them yourself and end up with a better file, but they are far from horrible.

[LollipopLustKil]

Yeah, I did exagerate a bit.

[will]

As far as the memory useage goes, i loaded up them both and played some music, and took this screenie.

[zootm]

my question is what iTunes doing with all that memory?

[LollipopLustKil]

I wonder that too...

[jpeg7383]

You didn't let it play long enough then, it's only in the 31MB range right after it is launched. Start playing some music and leave it be for about 20-30 seconds or so, it will drop most of it.

I'll be happy to take a screen if you can't produce the results.

[Gonzotek]

If he can't reproduce your results, then your screenshot is meaningless to the fact that on his machine, iTunes reproducibly takes up significantly more resources than Winamp. On mine too, btw.

I'm still gonna use iTunes for its iPod integration, at least until some other free or low-cost Windows program can handle all the features it does. But it won't be my primary player or organizer. I can't even minimise it to the systray(that's just one more gripe, I'm feeling all the others mentioned), when I have many windows open it gets in the way. It could get better with time, of course, but as it is now, it's just not useful enough for me, iPod excluded.


Oh, I've seen several people tell will that he can turn off the genre pane. You can't. What you guys are talking about is the genre column. The genre pane is the big sub-window on the left of the other two big subwindows "artist" and "album" when you are in library "browse" mode. The genre column is the column that shows up with all the other metadata in the grid beneath the browse panes.

-=Gonzotek=-

[will]

Gonzo knows.

I've played 3 tracks in full without touching itunes, and it has stuck at 32,296k of memory for the duration.

[jpeg7383]

Sorry, I thought you meant Genre in the playlist column. I'm still not clear on what you mean by Genre pane in Browse though...

When you browse it adds the Artist and Album subwindows. The only thing to the left of that is the Source window...

As far as memory usage, I believe I know what the problem is. I found that minimizing iTunes is the key, not letting it play (it must have just had a laggy update in my process viewer the first time.) I guess it forces it to use less memory when it's minimized, then when it's brought back up it uses the memory it actually needs. Sortof like a cycle.

[Gonzotek]

Hey will! I finally found out how to remove the genre pane. It's
Edit>Preferences>General>Show genre when browsing

Doesn't make a lot of sense for it, the text size prefs, and the systemtray icon to all be located in prefs, when you've got a "View Options" menuitem whose coresponding window only contains checkboxes for the library columns. They should all be together in one coherent area, since they're all ui-related prefs.

[jpeg7383]

That explains why I didn't know what you were talking about, I've never had the Show Genre While Browsing thing checked.