8 ms·

Sometimes I think I'm the only person who never liked Winamp. I always found it awful. Why do I need fancy skins for a media player? I found Foobar2000 and n

Sometimes I think I'm the only person who never liked Winamp. I always found it awful. Why do I need fancy skins for a media player? I found Foobar2000 and never looked back. I know you can customize the hell out of Foobar...but I personally loved the default "giant list of searchable songs" format.

Groxx 14y ago
I generally used it because it had better format support than others I'd tried, but no, I hated it too. Tiny buttons, non-resizable interface, bleh. It's everything I hate about skeuomorphic interfaces.
- conradfr 14y ago
  Tiny buttons ? ctrl-d ;) edit: or the Big Bento skin.
  - shrikant 14y ago
    I wanted to suggest that as well, because it doubles the size of the main window and everything in it. But then I didn't bother, because it freakin' doubles the size of the main window and everything in it!
huhtenberg 14y ago
It wasn't the skins, it was its .exe size that was fascinating :)
notJim 14y ago
At the time, there was nothing out there that competed with WinAmp--it was simple, fast, and pretty easy to use. It also had features like global hotkeys (before media keyboards were common, or before I had one anyway.) From what I remember, there was a giant-list-of-songs thing (I never used it, but I remember going to parties and there would be a computer sitting somewhere with the giant list of songs up.) Anyway, Foobar came out 5 years after Winamp, and was in fact written by someone who worked for Nullsoft, so I wouldn't say they were competitors exactly, more like Winamp inspired Foobar.
shuzchen 14y ago
Perhaps you were late to the Winamp game? According to the wiki, fb2k came out 5 years after winamp (and was done by a former nullsoft contractor). When winamp was in its prime there really wasn't anything else to compete with it.
ArcticCelt 14y ago
The point of the article (and most people who say that Winamp use to be great) is that it was good for it's time before AOL acquired them in 1999. So did you use Foobar then? Of course not, Foobar initial release was December 2002.
MBCook 14y ago
Winamp had tons of skins, but I only ever used two. One was the default, the other looked like an old wooden jukebox. But that wasn't the reason to use Winamp. I started using it when it was basically the only game in town, but for a long time there was no reason to switch. Winamp had a few things going for it: 1. It was amazingly small, and consequently it was terrifically fast. The tiny window also gave you all the information and controls you needed, hogging preciously little of your 800x600 or 1024x768 display. 2. I could use it efficiently. My favorite feature (which I still miss sometimes) was you could bring up a box and start typing a song name and jump straight to playing it. I think it was the J key. When you got in your mind "Hey, I'd like to hear X", you could do it in a second or two. 3. The ecosystem was huge. There were thousands of skins (most terrible, some looked pretty amazing) and tons of plugins. People made visualizers, ways to control the software with external interfaces, all sorts of neat stuff. It still amazes me how small Winamp was. I didn't like Winamp 3. I tried it for a while but it felt bloated and the jump feature was gone. Despite the near universal unhappiness, the developers defended version 3, making them seem out of touch. After a while I downloaded the previous release again (2.95?) and used it for years. I eventually moved to iTunes shortly before I got an iPod. The last I heard about Winamp was a few years ago when Winamp 5 came out. My reaction then was amazement that it was still around. I'm amazed it's still around now.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  No substitute, but in iTunes on OS X, cmd+option+F with the song/artist/album you are looking for, and then, [Tab][Space] accomplishes the "Select a song / album / play list and the PLay" - it takes about a second as well (particularly as the [tab][space] gets ingrained in your finger DNA.) With all that said - iTunes has grown into a bloated beast that I hope Apple gets around to fixing ASAP. PS: If anybody knows how to remap something other than the awkward cmd+option F to "Search Music" - and for mega-bonus points, do so globally, I would be forever be in your debt - unfortunately "Search Music" doesn't appear to be one of Spark's (http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php) actions.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
jlarocco 14y ago
The good versions of Winamp were essentially a giant list of searchable songs with a lightweight skin. It was fast and lightweight and was able to handle thousands and thousands of songs in a single playlist. 10 years later and both iTunes and Clementine will choke if I add 5k songs to a playlist, yet Winamp 2 handled it without a problem. The skinning feature was overrated, and I never understood why there were so many skins. In the years I hung on to Winamp 2, I may have changed the skin one time. Most people picked one and forgot about it. I think I heard somewhere that Foobar2000 only exists because Winamp 3 messed everything up so badly. I don't know if that's true, but Wikipedia says Winamp3 was release in August 2002, and the first release of Foobar2000 was December 2002, so the dates would be correct.
- gcp 14y ago
  The author of foobar2000 was a (former) Winamp developer. So yes, the correlation is strong.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  I remember wa vs fb discussions about who was the lighter. At the time (i think it was around 2007), with a heavy medialibrary, Winamp5 ended using less ram than Foobar. Everyone was surprised. Random jump, isn't winamp v3 a reaction to Sonique ?
masklinn 14y ago
> Why do I need fancy skins for a media player? You don't. Meaning you don't have to use them if you don't want them. I never used any theme for WinAMP. Although I know friends who did, and enjoyed more organic shapes for their mp3 player. > I found Foobar2000 and never looked back. Sounds like you were really late to the party, fb2k's very first public release came around 5 years after WinAMP's... and shortly after the Winamp 3 release which was universally panned. Not only were Winamp 1 and 2 pretty much the only game in town, they were the only players which could 1. actually decode mp3s without skipping on a basic machine of the time and 2. offer the features now taken for granted like playlists and shuffle modes, as well as rapid metadata edition or efficient keyboard shortcut. It also provided a number of very good plugins. Don't take me wrong, I'm currently an fb2k user, but fb2k was in many ways a response to the bungling of Winamp3 (Peter Pawlowski freelanced for NullSoft, and as noted earlier the first public release of fb2k shortly followed that of Winamp 3)
- polyfractal 14y ago
  Yeah, I probably was pretty late to the party. I was still pretty young around that time, and my memory is hazy. I know I used Winamp (some version) to play all my crappy Napster MP3s. I don't remember anything good or bad, just that I used it. And then at some point I remember hating Winamp...probably version 3 from the sounds of it. I think that's when I switched to FB2k
mattgreenrocks 14y ago
I liked Winamp even though I hate app skins, generally. fb2k is way too far into the "customize your own player" territory for me. I just don't care (much less have the time) to apply all sorts of tweaks to make it look even halfway decent. It's like the Linux mentality applied to Windows. And then the plugins break at minor version upgrades.

Groxx 14y ago

I generally used it because it had better format support than others I'd tried, but no, I hated it too. Tiny buttons, non-resizable interface, bleh. It's everything I hate about skeuomorphic interfaces.

conradfr 14y ago
Tiny buttons ? ctrl-d ;) edit: or the Big Bento skin.
- shrikant 14y ago
  I wanted to suggest that as well, because it doubles the size of the main window and everything in it. But then I didn't bother, because it freakin' doubles the size of the main window and everything in it!

huhtenberg 14y ago

It wasn't the skins, it was its .exe size that was fascinating :)

notJim 14y ago

At the time, there was nothing out there that competed with WinAmp--it was simple, fast, and pretty easy to use. It also had features like global hotkeys (before media keyboards were common, or before I had one anyway.) From what I remember, there was a giant-list-of-songs thing (I never used it, but I remember going to parties and there would be a computer sitting somewhere with the giant list of songs up.) Anyway, Foobar came out 5 years after Winamp, and was in fact written by someone who worked for Nullsoft, so I wouldn't say they were competitors exactly, more like Winamp inspired Foobar.

shuzchen 14y ago

Perhaps you were late to the Winamp game? According to the wiki, fb2k came out 5 years after winamp (and was done by a former nullsoft contractor). When winamp was in its prime there really wasn't anything else to compete with it.

ArcticCelt 14y ago

The point of the article (and most people who say that Winamp use to be great) is that it was good for it's time before AOL acquired them in 1999. So did you use Foobar then? Of course not, Foobar initial release was December 2002.

MBCook 14y ago

Winamp had tons of skins, but I only ever used two. One was the default, the other looked like an old wooden jukebox. But that wasn't the reason to use Winamp. I started using it when it was basically the only game in town, but for a long time there was no reason to switch. Winamp had a few things going for it: 1. It was amazingly small, and consequently it was terrifically fast. The tiny window also gave you all the information and controls you needed, hogging preciously little of your 800x600 or 1024x768 display. 2. I could use it efficiently. My favorite feature (which I still miss sometimes) was you could bring up a box and start typing a song name and jump straight to playing it. I think it was the J key. When you got in your mind "Hey, I'd like to hear X", you could do it in a second or two. 3. The ecosystem was huge. There were thousands of skins (most terrible, some looked pretty amazing) and tons of plugins. People made visualizers, ways to control the software with external interfaces, all sorts of neat stuff. It still amazes me how small Winamp was. I didn't like Winamp 3. I tried it for a while but it felt bloated and the jump feature was gone. Despite the near universal unhappiness, the developers defended version 3, making them seem out of touch. After a while I downloaded the previous release again (2.95?) and used it for years. I eventually moved to iTunes shortly before I got an iPod. The last I heard about Winamp was a few years ago when Winamp 5 came out. My reaction then was amazement that it was still around. I'm amazed it's still around now.

ghshephard 14y ago
No substitute, but in iTunes on OS X, cmd+option+F with the song/artist/album you are looking for, and then, [Tab][Space] accomplishes the "Select a song / album / play list and the PLay" - it takes about a second as well (particularly as the [tab][space] gets ingrained in your finger DNA.) With all that said - iTunes has grown into a bloated beast that I hope Apple gets around to fixing ASAP. PS: If anybody knows how to remap something other than the awkward cmd+option F to "Search Music" - and for mega-bonus points, do so globally, I would be forever be in your debt - unfortunately "Search Music" doesn't appear to be one of Spark's (http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php) actions.
- ghshephard 14y ago

jlarocco 14y ago

The good versions of Winamp were essentially a giant list of searchable songs with a lightweight skin. It was fast and lightweight and was able to handle thousands and thousands of songs in a single playlist. 10 years later and both iTunes and Clementine will choke if I add 5k songs to a playlist, yet Winamp 2 handled it without a problem. The skinning feature was overrated, and I never understood why there were so many skins. In the years I hung on to Winamp 2, I may have changed the skin one time. Most people picked one and forgot about it. I think I heard somewhere that Foobar2000 only exists because Winamp 3 messed everything up so badly. I don't know if that's true, but Wikipedia says Winamp3 was release in August 2002, and the first release of Foobar2000 was December 2002, so the dates would be correct.

gcp 14y ago
The author of foobar2000 was a (former) Winamp developer. So yes, the correlation is strong.
agumonkey 14y ago
I remember wa vs fb discussions about who was the lighter. At the time (i think it was around 2007), with a heavy medialibrary, Winamp5 ended using less ram than Foobar. Everyone was surprised. Random jump, isn't winamp v3 a reaction to Sonique ?

masklinn 14y ago

> Why do I need fancy skins for a media player? You don't. Meaning you don't have to use them if you don't want them. I never used any theme for WinAMP. Although I know friends who did, and enjoyed more organic shapes for their mp3 player. > I found Foobar2000 and never looked back. Sounds like you were really late to the party, fb2k's very first public release came around 5 years after WinAMP's... and shortly after the Winamp 3 release which was universally panned. Not only were Winamp 1 and 2 pretty much the only game in town, they were the only players which could 1. actually decode mp3s without skipping on a basic machine of the time and 2. offer the features now taken for granted like playlists and shuffle modes, as well as rapid metadata edition or efficient keyboard shortcut. It also provided a number of very good plugins. Don't take me wrong, I'm currently an fb2k user, but fb2k was in many ways a response to the bungling of Winamp3 (Peter Pawlowski freelanced for NullSoft, and as noted earlier the first public release of fb2k shortly followed that of Winamp 3)

polyfractal 14y ago
Yeah, I probably was pretty late to the party. I was still pretty young around that time, and my memory is hazy. I know I used Winamp (some version) to play all my crappy Napster MP3s. I don't remember anything good or bad, just that I used it. And then at some point I remember hating Winamp...probably version 3 from the sounds of it. I think that's when I switched to FB2k

mattgreenrocks 14y ago

I liked Winamp even though I hate app skins, generally. fb2k is way too far into the "customize your own player" territory for me. I just don't care (much less have the time) to apply all sorts of tweaks to make it look even halfway decent. It's like the Linux mentality applied to Windows. And then the plugins break at minor version upgrades.