What's Everyone Playing Their Mp3's On These Days?

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I'm still Winampin' out. Turn me on to something new. I'm getting bored.

― ZionTrain, Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

....uh, iTunes? s'free.

― giboyeux (skowly), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

iTunes/iPod/Malata CD/DVD/mp3 player

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

iTunes / iPod

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm with you on the iTunes but is there a "Firefox" of music players? In other words, raging against the machine?

― ZionTrain, Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

http://foobar2000.org/

― todd (todd), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Perhaps the title should be 'OTHER THAN iTunes and iPod.'

― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

iPod when outside, Winamp inside. I only use iTunes to buy singles from iTMS (buying albums is a waste, you can get a new CD for $10 or less with enough looking) and transferring stuff. Winamp is so much less intrusive and less demanding of system memory, and it's possible to find plugins for pretty much any function you might need.

― telephonething@gmail.com, Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:46 (twenty-one years ago)

"i'm with you on the iTunes but is there a "Firefox" of music players? In other words, raging against the machine?"

The "machine" is Microsoft and, in this case at least, Apple is kicking its fat ass.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Thursday, 5 May 2005 20:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Uhh, Apple is the Microsoft of online music.

― mikef (mfleming), Thursday, 5 May 2005 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)

for desktop purposes... itunes, winamp or (insert your device here)

― ZionTrain, Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:01 (twenty-one years ago)

"Uhh, Apple is the Microsoft of online music."

Yeah, but iTunes doesn't crash every 15 minutes.

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Ti-84. also great for text-based rpgs & cheating on math exams.

― joey b, Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I use 1by1 bcz it's the simplest and smallest. The guy does a MP3 wave editor prog as well.

http://www.mpesch3.de/

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Winamp. I skipped v3, almost moved to something else, but they redeemed themselves with the new version.

― Xii (Xii), Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Foobar2000, but have fun setting up the UI.

― lmao=what, Thursday, 5 May 2005 23:57 (twenty-one years ago)

creative zen jukebox & winamp

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Friday, 6 May 2005 00:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Ti-84. also great for text-based rpgs & cheating on math exams.

a fine machine, but i'd say the the TI-99 is more along the lines of what he's looking for. it enables you to synthesize speech and hunt the Wumpus.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Friday, 6 May 2005 00:04 (twenty-one years ago)

foobar2000, once you figure out how to customize it, it really is the best

― peter in mtl (spaces are allowed), Friday, 6 May 2005 00:11 (twenty-one years ago)

100GB X-Clef out of the house (love, love, love it--revolutionised my appreciation of my collection (or 2/3rds of it). WinAmp 2.6 or so at home, though I also have 5.x something.

― I.M. (I.M.), Friday, 6 May 2005 00:27 (twenty-one years ago)

4GB Zen Micro (silver).

― ath (ath), Friday, 6 May 2005 00:40 (twenty-one years ago)

iTunes mainly, but I also have a few other programs that I hardly use (okay, never use). I've been so used to iTunes for a couple years now, that I don't really feel like changing to a new one.

btw, iTunes will have a new version (4.8) out this week or next.

― buck van morrison (Buck Van Smack), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Oooh! What's going to be new? Just the usual bugfixes and whatnot, or something exciting?

― astropatty (adr), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I have another question: what is everyone *ripping* at these days? I'm using AAC/128kbps, but I have a feeling this will bite me in the ass at some point if I want to buy another player besides the iPod.

― Keith C (kcraw916), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Same here, Keith, but I'll be damned if I ever switch from Mac, so...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:36 (twenty-one years ago)

192 mp3 lame, still, works fine for me. AAC isn't going to go away though

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm quite interested in that too. I'm ripping at MP3 VBR above 192kbps, which seems very adequate, after listening to some of my sister's 80kbps rips. (xpost)

― astropatty (adr), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

version 4.8
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1046

― buck van morrison (Buck Van Smack), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, it's all about VBR for me too. Do Microsoft's claims about the superiority of WMA to MP3 hold any weight?

― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh! Does this mean we'll be able to write the contact information from within iTunes, or still have to save them out in MS Office or equivalent and just copy them using iTunes? I've never used contacts on the iPod for this reason, but I often think they could be quite handy for things you might need out and about (I have used the notes function for shopping lists, if only to feel space-age).

― astropatty (adr), Friday, 6 May 2005 01:43 (twenty-one years ago)

mp3 LAME VBR alt-preset-standard

Winamp 2.81 because iTunes sounds *awful* to my ears on Mac and PC and no amount of playlist bollox can really compensate for that IMO.

― insomniac at work, Friday, 6 May 2005 01:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, we're talking about hardware mp3 players too?

iRiver H-120

― Xii (Xii), Friday, 6 May 2005 02:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh! Does this mean we'll be able to write the contact information from within iTunes, or still have to save them out in MS Office or equivalent and just copy them using iTunes? I've never used contacts on the iPod for this reason, but I often think they could be quite handy for things you might need out and about (I have used the notes function for shopping lists, if only to feel space-age).

-- astropatty (patrickalla...) (webmail), May 6th, 2005 10:43 PM. (adr) (later) (link)

Why would you use iTunes for that? There's this program called iSync.....

oh wait

― A homunculus of Darby Crash, .... created for the purposes of *EVIL* (ex machina, Friday, 6 May 2005 02:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Do Microsoft's claims about the superiority of WMA to MP3 hold any weight?

No: Multiformat 128kbps Listening Test

― todd (todd), Friday, 6 May 2005 03:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I rip at 224kbps VBR. Down to 160kbps VBR sounds generally fine except on certain kinds; I'll take a 128kbps VBR if I have to (or if, in the case of the 1981 set's appendix disc, I'm trying to represent as much music as possible--where the "rock" type stuff suffers more than the synth or sparer stuff). 192kbps is about the lowest I can take, non-vbr. Using headphones (Etymotics, usually) I listen to CD if possible.

― I.M. (I.M.), Friday, 6 May 2005 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I.M., it sounds like you are thinking of VBR as ABR, i.e. average bit rate. You might consider experimenting w/quantizer-based VBR, i.e. the encoder aims at a certain quality instead of a target bitrate. E.g. LAME encoder w/--alt-preset standard switch, which is pretty near "transparent".

The answer to the initial question would be Foobar, except that Firefox looks perfectly presentable and is easy to adjust settings in. Foobar's great (and its replaygain functions are indispensible), but it's ugly and none too inviting to the new user.

― 666 (Robust Cookies), Friday, 6 May 2005 05:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Winamp 5.08, 5GB Zen Micro (black), 192kbps or VBR. It all seems fine.

― box of socks, Friday, 6 May 2005 05:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I finally found an encoding setting that I'm happy with, after lots of trying. LAME version 3.90.3 , using "--alt-preset extreme". This results in a VBR file with an average rate around 200-240kbps. I listen to music on studio nearfield monitors, and this is the first time I can't really tell that I'm listening to an mp3.

Also, this page has plenty of explanation of LAME settings and what they do.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

mpg123 for playing individual mp3s, and my own playlist thingy front-end.
(Which lets you manipulate the playlist in vi.)
galette for ripping cds, because it's the only thing that runs under Solaris.

― shieldforyoureyes, Wednesday, 18 May 2005 23:04 (twenty-one years ago)

where is the love for sonique........

― m0stly clean (m0stly clean), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 23:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I still use Winamp. I've just gotten used to it, and can't stand iTunes and other giganto programs that make listening to a song a big resource eating event. Anyway, all my stuff is organized by filename/directory.

What's the appeal of Fubar2000? The website's a little cryptic. And what's replaygain? Why's it better than winamp?

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 23:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Replaygain makes it so that the music you play always has the same volume, so you won't be needing to be raise the volume bar for weak tracks. Fubar is popular because it is very basic if you want it to be, but has enough plugins/gadgets to allow it to do most anything you want (transcoding, tagging, etc).

― svend (svend), Thursday, 19 May 2005 00:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Windows media player indoors and my Sony MP3 playing CD player out, but I'm gonna get a Sony NWE107 cos it looks like a player that at last has everything I _need_

― mei (mei), Thursday, 19 May 2005 15:50 (twenty-one years ago)

MusicMatch and Creative Zen Touch

― Candicissima (candicissima), Thursday, 19 May 2005 15:52 (twenty-one years ago)

This thread is making me want to FUBAR

― ZionTrain (ZionTrain), Thursday, 19 May 2005 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

yer kidding yerself if you don't use iTunes. it's the best music player/organizer available. check out doug's apple scripts for all plug-ins (scripts) to help do the things iTunes isn't preprogrammed to do. why peepl be hatin on iTunes and iPods? yall be crazy

― bgo, Thursday, 19 May 2005 17:18 (twenty-one years ago)

itunes is driving me nuts, it really does hog up my resources. I have something like 160GB of songs though so that might be why.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 19 May 2005 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

you need to split your library into seperate libraries..helps with the huge 100GB+ archives

― bgo, Thursday, 19 May 2005 19:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I was unable to install the qt player without installing iTunes and The iTunes Helper (whatever the fuck that is). Fuck iTunes.

Get one Creative Player.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, 19 May 2005 19:55 (twenty-one years ago)

iTunes is slow, clumsy and requires numerous ridiculous hacks/tricks to behave half even hald properly.
Oh, an dit's ugly.

― mei (mei), Friday, 20 May 2005 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

It have gained more joy from iTunes than from using any other computer program in my life. Actually it's not even close. As long as your mp3s are tagged, your computer is up to the job (I accept it hogs resources but my two-and-a-half-year-old eMac is still coping with it fine), and your Library isn't too enormous (mine is about 30GB) then it's unstoppably good.

Were there any mp3 players before iTunes that used a database-based-on-ID3 tags approach rather than a file-and-folder-organising one? If not then it was a pretty amazing leap of imagination.

I barely even think of iTunes as a program - it's hooked up to my stereo and it's just like the best front end to a hi-fi ever.

Oh how I love Smart Playlists.

Enough gushing.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 20 May 2005 14:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Itunes was not the first to use ID3 databases, I'm sure of that. I hate that approach, but it's been around for years and years. I assume that was one of the reasons that the whole ID3 scheme arose.

But them I'm still using the old folders 'n filenames method. Maybe cause I download my MP3, and the tags are wrong, missing, or useless like 75% of the time. So NTFS is my database.

Anyway, if I ever want to use a slow, memory devouring MP3 player, I can always use a "Winamp Modern" skin. For the true ultra-slowdown experience, alpha blending is a must.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Friday, 20 May 2005 23:30 (twenty-one years ago)

iTunes....

1) It sounds like shit.
2) There is no 'enqueue' on click function?? Do the designers have any idea how annoying & missed that is?!
3) Can't search by physical folder names - like my 'incoming' folder for instance. Braindead! (they may have fixed this by now who knows).
4) Creates stupid duplicate references of mp3's in my 'library' from my .m3u lists in my CD rip folders.

I can't stand the way it always seems to be suggesting "no, you need to do that this way". I just want to be able to play my mp3's with the minimum of fuss, sorry. iTunes = the maximum of fuss.

Oh, I'm sure it works great when you've studied & tweaked every function of the smart playlists and associated hacks & scripts. Meh.

The only thing iTunes left me with was a greater appreciation for, and usage of Wincue (+Winamp 2.91)

That reads my music folder at startup (inc. ID3 tags) sorts by date and time added and puts the whole list in 'last added' order by using reverse sorting (I just ctrl-r the selections I cue into WA). That is more than I need. I can search by folder name too, and filenames, if I haven't got round to naming them yet. I never have to access my folders via Explorer at all if I don't want to.

Incidentally, I found no even half-way acceptable program for clear & consistent tagging on the mac platform. I'm pretty anal about things like that.

― fandango (fandango), Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Wow, that's a larger rant than it looked in the reply box.

If it works for you, great. But it doesn't for everybody.

If I could find an even reasonable substitute on the mac platform at all, I might not be selling my iBook already :-O

― fandango (fandango), Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:26 (twenty-one years ago)

and filenames, if I haven't got round to ~~naming~~ tagging them yet. obv.

― fandango (fandango), Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:29 (twenty-one years ago)

you need to split your library into seperate libraries..helps with the huge 100GB+ archives

how do you do this? is this a new feature?

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:49 (twenty-one years ago)

the tongues you have tied: http://www.solterosongs.com/music.htm (thanks to tangents)

― youn, Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:55 (twenty-one years ago)

oops sorry wrong answer different question

― youn, Saturday, 21 May 2005 00:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Is Winamp 2.91 really the best thing out there? That's a shame, if it's true. Or is this some kind of sign that I'm a pathetic old curmudgeon? "I only use winamp 2.91 and windows media player 6.4. In my day we had to edit autoexec.bat everytime we played a different .mod!" But I guess it's cool and modern to wait a minute and a half after clinking on an MP3.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Saturday, 21 May 2005 05:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Winamp 5.09 with the classic skin is virtually equal to using 2.91, but with less bugs (not that there were many, but 5.09 is faster and uses even less memory than 2.91). WMP10 is pretty nice, great tray-docked miniplayer but is a bit slower & crashes too much on my machine.

The idea behind iTunes is cool but the inflexible execution is a huge missed opportunity and pretty much the worst advertising that Apple could ever have done to pull PC users in.

Things iTunes for Windows frustratingly doesn't do:
- have a progress/quickskip bar in the mini player (that's the most essential control ffs!!!)
- support drag & drop into the miniplayer (seriously, this is the most rediculous omission ever)
- once you've searched & found a song, where is a quick "play this album" option?
- whole albums do not collapse in the catalog filelist
- allow column sorting/searching in both fysical drive/path/drive volume/filename/extension fields and ID3 tags (how fucking difficult is that???)
- support cataloging removable discs (CDRs/DVDRs/etc) by drive volume or a customizable field
- do enqueueing into the playlist properly (as mentioned above)
- add your own radio streams to the radio list
- allow searching in the radio list
- have a small pulldown playlist window in the mini player to see what's up next.
- snap the miniplayer to window edges
- if I don't want to burn CDs with iTunes, then disable the fucking CD burning service (gearsec.exe), instead of running it automatically even when iTunes is not even running!!!
- if I don't have an iPod, then disable the iPod Service instead of running it automatically

A lot of these omissions are so obvious that I can't imagine how Apple could possibly screw it up.

― Siegbran (eofor), Saturday, 21 May 2005 14:45 (twenty-one years ago)

One thing that I really like about Winamp is that you can drag and drop links from the web browser. The only other programs I've ever seen do that is Windows Media Player Classic.

And I didn't realize that 5.x was actually faster than 2.9. I use 5 w/ classic skin on all my modern computers, but I have a p166 laptop that I assumed would choke on 5, so I spent like 45 minutes hunting down an older version. Now I feel dumb.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Sunday, 22 May 2005 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

And yeah, iTunes doesn't make me want to switch to the Apple world. Neither does Quicktime for PC. You can't even go fullscreen! And I don't think it uses any of the videocards acceleration features to make the video smoother. Quicktime videos suffer from horrible tearing and stuff, when WMV never does.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Sunday, 22 May 2005 15:39 (twenty-one years ago)

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