6 ms·

Was using Winamp 5 for the past year but recently switched back to v2.95, which is allegedly the best version out there. Although it's 10 years old (!!), it's

by bbx 13y ago

Was using Winamp 5 for the past year but recently switched back to v2.95, which is allegedly the best version out there. Although it's 10 years old (!!), it's still the best music player available: lightweight, fast, responsive, and kept simple. I had hopes for the Windows 7 Media Player. But it turned out to be a dreadful experience. Me: Can't I pause that song by hitting space? WMP: No, there are no keyboard shortcuts! Me: I wanna play all the songs of this folder! WMP: Ok, but I'll mess up the order! By the way, are you interested in purchasing more songs from this artist? Cause I got a VirginMega link just right here! Me: No thanks... WMP: Why not? I mean, iTunes gets away with it, why can't I? Me: I just want to play some music. WMP: Really?? JUST that?? Me: I wish.

sandGorgon 13y ago
Did you ever try Foobar 2k - its arguably a better replacement for Winamp on windows
- TheSOB88 13y ago
  Seconded - Foobar2000 is a great music app. No visual bells and whistles, just functionality. It gets out of your way, and it's fast. Also, it was developed by some of the people who originally developed Winamp.
- delluminatus 13y ago
  I think foobar2000 was created by a (the?) developer who worked on Winamp many years ago, before it was bought.
  - pit 13y ago
    Yes, Peter Pawlowski. According to Wikipedia, he is "a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft." EDIT: He's also been working on an audio player called Boom: http://perkele.cc/software/boom http://perkele.cc/software/boom
    - kevingadd 13y ago
      Peter was notable for maintaining a lot of the audio output backends for Winamp. People who had problems with their Creative Labs sound cards (read: basically anyone who owned one) causing playback glitches in Winamp would post about it on the Winamp forums and peter would get really cranky and eventually figure out how to fix it. (:
- kristofferR 13y ago
  TheSOB88, you're hellbanned so barely anyone can see your comments.
  - Achshar 13y ago
    What's this about? Parent's unsername is not TheSOB88.
    - Anderkent 13y ago
      You have to enable a setting to see [dead] posts, and you can't reply to them. That's why people post as siblings, hoping that the banned person will come back to the thread and see their name.
    - Helianthus 13y ago
      HN has an amusingly childish policy of hellbanning individuals it deems inappropriate or otherwise objectionable--hellbanning hides the banned account's comments to everyone unless you set "showdead" to true in your account preferences. Some users have started kindly informing the hellbanned posters that, for whatever reasons, don't seem to notice that no one ever responds or upvotes their comments. If I may get on my soapbox (if I wasn't already), I find the whole thing symptomatic of Silicon Valley's culture of networking hell and reputation management. It's a policy of elitism; a policy that disenfranchises in the name of some fictional notion of quality; a policy that demonstrates just how rotten the tech industry is at heart. Why do I go that far? Because community culture is indicative of so many things. This is the community and atmosphere that pg set up, that pg creates, moderates, and maintains. pg may not be formally 'responsible,' but he's certainly at the head. Because I'm an asshole, but not enough of one to get hellbanned (at least on this account), I am in some state of suspension: an artificial delay imposed on every request. (That's what I don't get about HN's moderation: what, did you think I wouldn't notice that you're essentially trying to herd me like chattel? I stubbornly keep this account kicking out of simple contrariness.)
      - eksith 13y ago
        That's all well and good, but let's take a look at what the trigger was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615120 . If you ran a community -- and realistically there's nothing stopping you from doing so -- would you tolerate that kind of nonsense? I know I wouldn't want to hang around there if you did. You're right (to continue going slightly meta), it's a policy of elitism, but in the same vein as Wikipedia. They too are still around as a result. Side note: Quality is quantifiable to a degree and is by no means a fictional notion.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  TheSOB88, you've been hell banned for almost half a year by now.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  I agree, I've used foobar2000 [1] for over ten years when Winamp (my previous goto music player) started to get all crashy and hangy for no good reason. It's pretty solid, can handle massive playlists and has nice clean and simple UI with no cruft. My only wish is that they did foobar2000 for Android. [1]: http://www.foobar2000.org/ http://www.foobar2000.org/
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  also nice: http://www.aimp.ru http://www.aimp.ru
- drakeandrews 13y ago
  Does it fade out songs when you pause them? If so, where can I download it and where can I donate to whoever wrote it?
  - jarek 13y ago
    Yes, preferences > playback > output and select output method DirectSound http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Preferences:Output http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Pre... http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/foobar-5_files/image001.gif http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/foobar-5_files/image00... ; http://www.foobar2000.org/ http://www.foobar2000.org/ ; http://flattr.com/thing/51681/foobar2000-freeware-audio-player http://flattr.com/thing/51681/foobar2000-freeware-audio-play...
- notJim 13y ago
  Agree about Foobar. It's about the only app from Windows that I miss when using OS X. Anyone have a Mac player they use with similar philosophy/featureset to Foobar?
  - wires 13y ago
    cog http://cogx.org http://cogx.org ; less features IIRC
    - notJim 13y ago
      Heh, I'm listening to the album in their first screenshot. Gotta be a good sign.
throwmeaway2525 13y ago
You just weren't meant for each other!
ygra 13y ago
Ctrl+P was the shortcut for Pause, if I remember correctly. WMP wasn't that bad, but Foobar fits my needs much better. For a ten-year old Winamp I'd have my doubts about Unicode support at the very least.
twentysix 13y ago
You should check out aimp[1]. It looks and performs like winamp and has similar functionality. [1] http://www.aimp.ru/ http://www.aimp.ru/
- ansgri 13y ago
  Unfortunately, recently they started messing with the design and the result is much worse than transition from Winamp 5.3x to better versions. Multiple playlist tabs, though, are great. Fortunately Audacious has them too.
venomsnake 13y ago
Give AIMP a shot. Same as winamp2 but with built in flac and cue support.
m_ram 13y ago
I used Winamp heavily until the version where they added video support. That version was extremely buggy for me and I used the previous version for several years until I found Foobar2000. It looks like 2.90 was when they added video support: "added integrated full featured video support (NSV and DirectShow (AVI,ASf,MPEG,etc))" -- http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=130748 http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=130748
AsymetricCom 13y ago
The nice thing about old, simple software is that the attack vectors are often known publicly and are easy to work around. In the instance of Winamp, older versions of 2.x have a buffer overflow exploit in the playlist parsing. So.. don't load playlists from untrusted sources, something most people never do anyway.
rplnt 13y ago
There's Winamp Lite for you. I don't miss anything from the pre-3 times.
fddlr 13y ago
I use Windows 7 WMP every day because the media keys on my laptop only work with that and I have never ever encountered any of those problems you are talking about. - I can pause/unpause with space. - The song order remains after I drag in the folder. - Right after the very first start (i.e. on clean win7), it asks you if you want to see ads of songs of similar artists you listen to.
zacharycohn 13y ago
I always preferred 2.89, but that's mostly just me being picky.
mikestew 13y ago
WMP is why I bought an iPod. As a Microsft employee at the time, I struggled longer than any mortal should to get WMP to sync music to my 2003-era Windows Phone. I eventually realized that any kind of synchronization and general usefulness in using WMP with a Windows Phone was nothing but marketing lies. So one day I said, "get in the car, honey, we're going to buy iPods." iPods led to iPhones, which led to iOS development and Macs, to the point that there are no more Windows machines in the house and I haven't done Windows development in about five years. All kicked off by the fact that MSFT couldn't make a software music player that didn't suck.
username42 13y ago
I have also an old version of winamp because a melomane of my friends told me the transitions between songs was better in old winamp than in recent one.

by bbx 13y ago

sandGorgon 13y ago

Did you ever try Foobar 2k - its arguably a better replacement for Winamp on windows

TheSOB88 13y ago
Seconded - Foobar2000 is a great music app. No visual bells and whistles, just functionality. It gets out of your way, and it's fast. Also, it was developed by some of the people who originally developed Winamp.
delluminatus 13y ago
I think foobar2000 was created by a (the?) developer who worked on Winamp many years ago, before it was bought.
- pit 13y ago
  Yes, Peter Pawlowski. According to Wikipedia, he is "a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft." EDIT: He's also been working on an audio player called Boom: http://perkele.cc/software/boom http://perkele.cc/software/boom
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    Peter was notable for maintaining a lot of the audio output backends for Winamp. People who had problems with their Creative Labs sound cards (read: basically anyone who owned one) causing playback glitches in Winamp would post about it on the Winamp forums and peter would get really cranky and eventually figure out how to fix it. (:
kristofferR 13y ago
TheSOB88, you're hellbanned so barely anyone can see your comments.
- Achshar 13y ago
  What's this about? Parent's unsername is not TheSOB88.
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    You have to enable a setting to see [dead] posts, and you can't reply to them. That's why people post as siblings, hoping that the banned person will come back to the thread and see their name.
  - Helianthus 13y ago
    HN has an amusingly childish policy of hellbanning individuals it deems inappropriate or otherwise objectionable--hellbanning hides the banned account's comments to everyone unless you set "showdead" to true in your account preferences. Some users have started kindly informing the hellbanned posters that, for whatever reasons, don't seem to notice that no one ever responds or upvotes their comments. If I may get on my soapbox (if I wasn't already), I find the whole thing symptomatic of Silicon Valley's culture of networking hell and reputation management. It's a policy of elitism; a policy that disenfranchises in the name of some fictional notion of quality; a policy that demonstrates just how rotten the tech industry is at heart. Why do I go that far? Because community culture is indicative of so many things. This is the community and atmosphere that pg set up, that pg creates, moderates, and maintains. pg may not be formally 'responsible,' but he's certainly at the head. Because I'm an asshole, but not enough of one to get hellbanned (at least on this account), I am in some state of suspension: an artificial delay imposed on every request. (That's what I don't get about HN's moderation: what, did you think I wouldn't notice that you're essentially trying to herd me like chattel? I stubbornly keep this account kicking out of simple contrariness.)
    - eksith 13y ago
      That's all well and good, but let's take a look at what the trigger was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5615120 . If you ran a community -- and realistically there's nothing stopping you from doing so -- would you tolerate that kind of nonsense? I know I wouldn't want to hang around there if you did. You're right (to continue going slightly meta), it's a policy of elitism, but in the same vein as Wikipedia. They too are still around as a result. Side note: Quality is quantifiable to a degree and is by no means a fictional notion.
mtrimpe 13y ago
TheSOB88, you've been hell banned for almost half a year by now.
teh_klev 13y ago
I agree, I've used foobar2000 [1] for over ten years when Winamp (my previous goto music player) started to get all crashy and hangy for no good reason. It's pretty solid, can handle massive playlists and has nice clean and simple UI with no cruft. My only wish is that they did foobar2000 for Android. [1]: http://www.foobar2000.org/ http://www.foobar2000.org/
PavlovsCat 13y ago
also nice: http://www.aimp.ru http://www.aimp.ru
drakeandrews 13y ago
Does it fade out songs when you pause them? If so, where can I download it and where can I donate to whoever wrote it?
- jarek 13y ago
  Yes, preferences > playback > output and select output method DirectSound http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Preferences:Output http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Pre... http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/foobar-5_files/image001.gif http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/foobar/foobar-5_files/image00... ; http://www.foobar2000.org/ http://www.foobar2000.org/ ; http://flattr.com/thing/51681/foobar2000-freeware-audio-player http://flattr.com/thing/51681/foobar2000-freeware-audio-play...
notJim 13y ago
Agree about Foobar. It's about the only app from Windows that I miss when using OS X. Anyone have a Mac player they use with similar philosophy/featureset to Foobar?
- wires 13y ago
  cog http://cogx.org http://cogx.org ; less features IIRC
  - notJim 13y ago
    Heh, I'm listening to the album in their first screenshot. Gotta be a good sign.

throwmeaway2525 13y ago

You just weren't meant for each other!

ygra 13y ago

Ctrl+P was the shortcut for Pause, if I remember correctly. WMP wasn't that bad, but Foobar fits my needs much better. For a ten-year old Winamp I'd have my doubts about Unicode support at the very least.

twentysix 13y ago

You should check out aimp[1]. It looks and performs like winamp and has similar functionality. [1] http://www.aimp.ru/ http://www.aimp.ru/

ansgri 13y ago
Unfortunately, recently they started messing with the design and the result is much worse than transition from Winamp 5.3x to better versions. Multiple playlist tabs, though, are great. Fortunately Audacious has them too.

venomsnake 13y ago

Give AIMP a shot. Same as winamp2 but with built in flac and cue support.

m_ram 13y ago

I used Winamp heavily until the version where they added video support. That version was extremely buggy for me and I used the previous version for several years until I found Foobar2000. It looks like 2.90 was when they added video support: "added integrated full featured video support (NSV and DirectShow (AVI,ASf,MPEG,etc))" -- http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=130748 http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=130748

AsymetricCom 13y ago

The nice thing about old, simple software is that the attack vectors are often known publicly and are easy to work around. In the instance of Winamp, older versions of 2.x have a buffer overflow exploit in the playlist parsing. So.. don't load playlists from untrusted sources, something most people never do anyway.

rplnt 13y ago

There's Winamp Lite for you. I don't miss anything from the pre-3 times.

fddlr 13y ago

I use Windows 7 WMP every day because the media keys on my laptop only work with that and I have never ever encountered any of those problems you are talking about. - I can pause/unpause with space. - The song order remains after I drag in the folder. - Right after the very first start (i.e. on clean win7), it asks you if you want to see ads of songs of similar artists you listen to.

zacharycohn 13y ago

I always preferred 2.89, but that's mostly just me being picky.

mikestew 13y ago

WMP is why I bought an iPod. As a Microsft employee at the time, I struggled longer than any mortal should to get WMP to sync music to my 2003-era Windows Phone. I eventually realized that any kind of synchronization and general usefulness in using WMP with a Windows Phone was nothing but marketing lies. So one day I said, "get in the car, honey, we're going to buy iPods." iPods led to iPhones, which led to iOS development and Macs, to the point that there are no more Windows machines in the house and I haven't done Windows development in about five years. All kicked off by the fact that MSFT couldn't make a software music player that didn't suck.

username42 13y ago

I have also an old version of winamp because a melomane of my friends told me the transitions between songs was better in old winamp than in recent one.