how i am going from 5.666 to 5.8

[musicf8]

Anybody still using XP probably knows about the PosReady registry key.

I would hope so... but still.. "Runs stable on" anything pre-7 seems pointless

[MrSinatra]

I agree, and I loved 7, but 10 is far and away their best OS.

[Sensei Le Roof]

Good, I can agree, but I don't know about "best".

[gaekwad2]

Windows explorer is still a total piece of crap. Give me XFCE any time.

[MrSinatra]

i setup winamp on a second system and this time had a problem i didn't have the first time. basically all the filetypes that had been correctly associated with winamp previously, were now set to other apps, like VLC, even audiotypes.

it was a minor pain to set it back, i had to go to settings > default apps > set defaults by app (at the bottom of the screen) b/c winamp was not recognized anywhere else, and it couldn't seemingly be done from within winamp either, or en masse, each extension set manually.

winamp also is not reporting its install size to the installed apps list.

[OT: having a similar issue with mp3tag, as there is now a windows store version, but if u install it, it seems to run concurrent, not overwriting the existing install, and if u uninstall the older ver manually, u might lose your mp3tag windows context menu items as i did]

[musicf8]

So I am curious, MrSinatra, notice any benefits of 5.8 Beta vs 5.666 Pro worth upgrading? Or nothing really worth it to be good enough to sticking with 5.666 Pro

[MrSinatra]

I mean, that's what my posts in this thread are about. Having now used 5.8 quite a bit, I think it's a completely worthwhile upgrade, with lots of small positive changes that add up to a better user exp overall. I think it's quicker and more stable, and leaner. Hopefully Benski et al can get some autotagging in there, and maybe R128, and address some of the quirks reported, but for me and my usage I would not continue to use 5.666 anywhere.

[musicf8]

Thanks

[DJ Egg]

I see there's been no mention of the AAC Encoder.

We couldn't ship enc_fhgaac with 5.8 because 1) we've no aac encoding license and 2) it was licensed by FhG to AOL.

The default Windows Media Foundation AAC encoder is limited to AAC-LC only, i.e. it doesn't do HE-AAC

We made the 5.8 installer not delete enc_aac / enc_fhgaac on upgrades, so it will still be there.
For clean installs, you'll need to grab it from the 5.666 installer or elsewehere......

[kzuse]

We made the 5.8 installer not delete enc_aac / enc_fhgaac on upgrades, so it will still be there.
For clean installs, you'll need to grab it from the 5.666 installer or elsewehere......

On Upgrade, AAC+ encoding will continue to work. Even on XP. That's fine!

[Wineroz]

i just want to clarify that winamp crashing on me was VERY rare in 5.666, which i considered very stable. i assume 5.8 will be even more stable.
[...]

I could not recall problems with Winamp 5.666 crashing- until it started to happen something like a year or half a year before. But is happens so rarely that I do not bother with this, because whatever is the root cause it must be something outside of Winamp - or Winamp cannot handle my every growing ATF code anymore


As for switching to 5.8- when I will have to switch to Windows 10 then I will probably try it out. And I will be switching to Windows 10 after buying new hardware- which will be few months after Windows 7 will be no longer supported

I just do not like wasting time and energy on some hypothetical improvements when what I already have is still working good enough. I prefer spending this time on things like listening to music o sleeping

[MrSinatra]

Ok, so I want to clarify something I find confused in the release notes, and also something I believe I was wrong about.

5.8 does not include JTFE and unicodetaskbar fix plugins on new, fresh installs. That is clear. However, if u have an existing install of winamp, 5.666 or below, and u have those 2 plugins, the installer will remove / delete the unicodetaskbarfix, but it will IGNORE the existing JTFE plugin, leaving it in place and operational.

I previously thought the installer removed both.

I am more and more convinced every day that 5.8 is a worthy upgrade.

Btw, I realize a few people still use AAC, but i think no one has commented bc it isn't popular, and bc it persists on upgrade installs. Is there really a reason to encode lossy to anything other than mp3?

[gaekwad2]

For low bitrates, definitely.
At higher ones, technically AAC is better too, but whether the difference is audible... (at least those who use 320kbps mp3 would be better off with 256-ish AAC).

[MrSinatra]

I guess my point would be that storage space / costs / constraints aren't a concern anymore. Given that, I doubt most people could tell a 160kbps or above mp3 from a AAC file. Most listening situations are less than perfect, either hardware, environment, or both. Also, mp3 is so universal. So why bother with AAC? Plus, AAC is itself confused, with the different types of it as Egg points out.

To be clear, I think winamp should support it to whatever extent is possible, that's not the issue. I just can't see why anyone would want to encode a CD or whatever to AAC instead of mp3. Anyway, I think all of that is why Egg hadn't seen any AAC comments yet.

[NJK]

. Also, mp3 is so universal. So why bother with AAC? .

bandwith off course

with limited bandwidth you can stream in 48 kbps AAC and have a decent amount of listeners while a 128/160 or 192 kbps mp3 stream would leave a radio station or internet stream with just a handfull of listeners
and the prices of streaming hosts go up with bandwith.

so 100 listeners on 48 kbps aac is cheaper than 100 on 192 kbps mp3.