Which player is best for me?

[Tronic]

My absolute requirements:
-Multi-threaded "add directory": UI must not freeze during that operation!
-Support for Winamp2 gen and in plugins.
-Working shuffle and other basic features.
-Stats (total playing time of all songs in list, etc)

Would be nice too:
-Support for all Winamp2 plugins.
-Small memory footprint, low CPU usage.
-No need for big add-on libraries (.NET framework, etc).
-Written in some real programming language (yes, that means C/C++).
-Extremely high quality decoding (always 24 bit precision for MP3, up to 96 kHz when that is possible).
-No integrated CD burner, music library, CDDA ripper, radio station and kitchen sink (I already have one with my Mozilla).

Why Winamp2 doesn't match my requirements:
-Freezes for a long time on add directory (even with load titles on display/play).
-No option for fast loading of all titles right after load (but not on load); of course threaded load would solve this problem too.
-Crashes when adding all my songs to playlist (talking about 100 gigs of MP3, dunno if it's the amount of 'em or some broken file that makes it crash).
-Decoding quality isn't perfect.

And for Winamp3.. We all know why not that, right?

So, what are your recommendations?

[Eric Barker]

No, why not WA3?

Honestly, for the life of me, I can't understand why everyone complains about WA3, the component system is beautiful, and you can run WA2 plugins through a free component addon. The libraries are neat, even if I don't use them very much. Some people say it's slow, I don't get it, it's instantanious on my computer. I have it run in my startup folder, and leave it in the background, and have had very few problems. Best of all over WA2, NO GAPS BETWEEN TRACKS. Sure there are those "gapless plugins", but none of them seemed to work all the time, plus they would create a 2 second buffer and lag playback for a bit. Naw, I don't see one possible thing WA2 has over 3, only reason why they haven't discontinued the old one is some stupid whiners don't like change. Either that, or there's some old features that WA2 has that I never used.

Oh, I don't know about visualizations though, I'm not into that sorta thing... if I want a multi-media experience, I'd rather watch something that was created to go with the music, not like a visualization or a music video that was tacked on later.

- Eric

[Bizznatch]

Winamp .02a

[Tronic]

Originally posted by Eric Barker
No, why not WA3?

Honestly, for the life of me, I can't understand why everyone complains about WA3, the component system is beautiful, and you can run WA2 plugins through a free component addon. The libraries are neat, even if I don't use them very much. Some people say it's slow, I don't get it, it's instantanious on my computer. I have it run in my startup folder, and leave it in the background, and have had very few problems. Best of all over WA2, NO GAPS BETWEEN TRACKS. Sure there are those "gapless plugins", but none of them seemed to work all the time, plus they would create a 2 second buffer and lag playback for a bit. Naw, I don't see one possible thing WA2 has over 3, only reason why they haven't discontinued the old one is some stupid whiners don't like change. Either that, or there's some old features that WA2 has that I never used.

Oh, I don't know about visualizations though, I'm not into that sorta thing... if I want a multi-media experience, I'd rather watch something that was created to go with the music, not like a visualization or a music video that was tacked on later.

- Eric

WA3 *is* really slow (there's easily noticeable latency even in scrolling of the playlist, or going thru the preferences panels), can only load 8370 of my 13-thousand songs (when adding 'em in a single "add directory"), etc.

And yet, WA3, while adding all this new graphical stuff, still doesn't do a simple thing as separating file loading into another thread. The UI freezes for a long time on "add directory", just like it does on WA2. Professional software don't behave that way.

Oh, did I mention it eating up 31 megs of my memory and a fairly large chunk of CPU time?

It just is crap.

Btw, advanced crossfader does the gap removing pretty nicely on WA2 too.

And now that I remember, let's add some more "nice to have" features:
-AC3 S/PDIF pass-through playback (no, the WA AC3 plugin cannot do that yet).
-Randomizer that picks rarely played songs more often (so that doesn't always play the same songs).
-Randomizer OPTION that makes it prefer songs often MANUALLY played by user (because the user obviously likes those songs).
-Saving of playlist to disk when it is changed, not when program is exited (to prevent losing changes on a crash).

[whiteflip]

My Recomendation: Shut the fuck up pussy.

[mark]

i agree with bizz and whiteflip!

[Twilightseer]

Originally posted by whiteflip
My Recomendation: Shut the fuck up pussy.

This was uncalled for. Be warned.

[Tronic]

The problem with Winamp playlists was caused by non-ascii characters in filenames. Umlauts and other special characters very often break when moved over networks, and sometimes files with such characters in their names cannot be read at all. I my case a directory with even one broken filename was enough to make WA2 crash and WA3 quit loading files.

So, in short - NEVER EVER use ü, ä, ö or other fancy characters in filenames, thanks.

Currently The Core Media Player is the closest to what I'm looking for, mostly because it can play AC3 fine (and AC3 is a really cool thing).

[Bilbo Baggins]

I think you ask too much. If you want a player with those exact requirements, then I suggest you write your own. Winamp is a product that is designed to cater for a large number of people / computers. It doesn't matter what language it was written it, it works.

As for crashing when you try and load 100gb of music, you have to look at yourself and think "Am I really going to listen to all this music?". Cut your playlists down.

[anubis2003]

Like bilbo said, I would just make multiple playlists. Use Winamp 2 - it's the best available.

[Russ]

Originally posted by Tronic
My absolute requirements:
-Multi-threaded "add directory": UI must not freeze during that operation!
-Support for Winamp2 gen and in plugins.
-Working shuffle and other basic features.
-Stats (total playing time of all songs in list, etc)

Would be nice too:
-Support for all Winamp2 plugins.
-Small memory footprint, low CPU usage.
-No need for big add-on libraries (.NET framework, etc).
-Written in some real programming language (yes, that means C/C++).
-Extremely high quality decoding (always 24 bit precision for MP3, up to 96 kHz when that is possible).
-No integrated CD burner, music library, CDDA ripper, radio station and kitchen sink (I already have one with my Mozilla).

Foobar2000 fits all of those requirements except support for wa2 plugins. I know of no other player which does.

[edit]Oh and foobar has full support for unicode, so filenames with any characters in aren't a problem, provided the OS supports them[/edit]

[Eric Barker]

Jeeze, my average playlist is probably 10 songs long, I don't know what I want to listen to until just a few minutes before I put it on, anyway. I dunno why everyone has huge playlists, if the filenames are named correctly, I find it's much easier, when searching for a file, to just use the existing windows filesystem. Even if you do something big like throw a raive, you're probably only going to go through something like 30-40 tracks that night, tops (unless we're talking 8 hours, which most people are too drunk to care anyways). Even 100 tracks, which I think is EXTREME overkill, no problem.

I agree with Bilbo Bagins, I don't think nullsoft had in mind that people would put 1000nds of tracks on their playlists... I certainly wouldn't have occured to me had I been designing it... now that I know that people are doing it, still my response is "why?"

Question, if you have 13 bagilion songs in your play list, how do you know that you're going to like them, let alone want to listen to them when they come up? Most music out there is crap... maybe it's time you refined your taste a bit, you'd probably enjoy music a lot more. Too many people are using music as simple background noise as a soundtrack for your life. Cool concept, but as a musician, it pains me a bit, because it makes the songs and pieces that composers put a lot of effort into, less important, individually.

[GqSkrub]

i wonder what mr.007 would have to say about this? probably something like...

Bad idea! less songs!

[mark]

must pump more posts!

[real post] i just listen to a 1file playlist - shoutcast [/real post]

[whiteflip]

I have all of my music in my playlist and i just shuffle it.

Im sure 90% of the people here do that.

[eleet-2k2]

I dont know why you want it programmed in C/C++, unless you want it speedy, but the language doesnt matter, unless it's VB. Either trim the playlists to sizes more reasonable (who wants playlists in the MB's?) or code your own. Use Winamp 2, it's awesome.

[Tronic]

C/C++ also makes it small, because real windows libs are used and not some custom GUI components, like in Delphi (well, it is possible to do it wrong in C/C++ too, if you use .NET or some custom library).

And actually I've been listening a 1-file playlist now for few hours. "He Mele No Lilo" is extremely relaxing to listen, and one of those songs you don't really get mad of listening on repeat.

[Vie]

1 file? uh even I dont go for just one song over and over again...

[mark]

mines a shoutcast one though. and i use a stream ri- *is assasinated for saying you know what*

[Tronic]

I've had trouble finding Shoutcast stations with sufficient sound quality (and a music I want to listen, and that are 24/7). Looking 160+ Kbit/s here. Nearly all stations only offer 128 Kbit/s. Besides, if the Shoutcast worked intelligently, it would never recode the songs anyway (assuming that there is enough bandwidth to run the original bitrates). A recompression always reduces quality, even if converting to a higher bitrate..

And I couldn't listen most of the songs out there on repeat anyway, but there are few that work that way too.

[whiteflip]

they should shoutcast in OGG vorbis. that way no sound quality problems. plus you can stream high quality vorbis files at a lower bit rate without the re-encode issues.

[Russ]

www.icecast.org

Oh, and what you speak of about streaming higher bitrate songs at lower bitrates without recoding is called bitrate peeling, but it doesn't work with vorbis yet, and development on it has been non-existent.

[whiteflip]

Oh I thought peeling was already implemented. Those bastards tricked me. oh well I still use vorbis.

[Russ]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=8860

[Bizzeh]

Originally posted by Tronic
WA3 *is* really slow (there's easily noticeable latency even in scrolling of the playlist, or going thru the preferences panels), can only load 8370 of my 13-thousand songs (when adding 'em in a single "add directory"), etc.

And yet, WA3, while adding all this new graphical stuff, still doesn't do a simple thing as separating file loading into another thread. The UI freezes for a long time on "add directory", just like it does on WA2. Professional software don't behave that way.

Oh, did I mention it eating up 31 megs of my memory and a fairly large chunk of CPU time?

It just is crap.

Btw, advanced crossfader does the gap removing pretty nicely on WA2 too.

And now that I remember, let's add some more "nice to have" features:
-AC3 S/PDIF pass-through playback (no, the WA AC3 plugin cannot do that yet).
-Randomizer that picks rarely played songs more often (so that doesn't always play the same songs).
-Randomizer OPTION that makes it prefer songs often MANUALLY played by user (because the user obviously likes those songs).
-Saving of playlist to disk when it is changed, not when program is exited (to prevent losing changes on a crash).

bollocks its slow... use a fucking real build of it... and if thats slow, get a fucking decent pc.. nuff said

[s0be]

you could use winamp 2 and create an external tool to add songs to the playlist. IE, have it sit here and make a list of the entire dir and do winamp2 --enque %s for them all

s0be

[whiteflip]

Ahh dulely noted. I still use vorbis though for its great sound quality at equal file sizes to that of Mp3's.

Peeling would be nice though If I wanted to cast them. Whether Ice or Shout.

[pearljam5555]

Barker, what are you saying??? Though 100 gigs is a lot of music (probably alot of ripped albums), that doesnt mean he is sacrificing quality. Most musicians can probably name thousands of thier favorite songs if they think about it for a second? You are trying to tell me you can only think of 10-100 songs worth their weight in salt? I find that hard to believe... My playlist is about 6,000 songs worth of quality music...

[ryan]

Anyone seen AngelPhish's old playlist? it's around 6000 something.

[Eric Barker]

Pearl:

I dunno...

I have about 200 albums, total... and I must admit that only about 1/4 of them ever get any play past the first month (and then rare occations)... that's just how music is, you can't strike gold with every purchase. Of the 50 I have, which average maybe 10-12 tracks per CD, some CDs with 6 long tracks, like my DT or Yes, and some with lots of little tracks (like Radiohead or Rush or The Tea Party, to name some of my favs. Of those, if I'm going to listen to things on a song by song basis, even the best 10% of my CDs I probably listen to 1/2 to 2/3rds of the tracks, if I am skipping around.

so, yeah, 100 songs to 200 songs I can imagine. And having fairly quick access to 1000-6000 makes sense too... it's just that, I don't see a need in putting all of those in ONE playlist. This defeats the computer's beautiful and slick system of being able to hierarchicly arrange files. I'd go ahead and have one playlist per band you have stuff of... maybe one for the oddball singles laying around... it's really quick to just press the "add" button, or the "open" button and just open a new playlist.

I can't fathom having ANY luck navigating the scrollbar of a 6000 track playlist. The "A"s would be like 300 tracks long to begin with!

Not having to open songs very often does speed things up, but past a certain size, having things just clumped into one place (one playlist) just slows things down considerably.

- Eric

[pearljam5555]

I guess I can understand where you are coming from there. The playlist thing I guess is just a matter of taste. I have no problem making my way through my playlist because i know what is there and they are all named to my liking. I usually just put it on shuffle and hit next til i find a song i am in the mood for, if I dont have any luck with that I just pick one myself.