what music library/playback program do you use?

[prophetik]

i generally use iTunes, but i'm growing annoyed with the simple fact that it doesn't allow you to put in more than one artist for a track. it just takes them and amalgamates the names together.

i also want one that allows for more organization.

i loved the old version of realJukebox, back in 2002 or 2003, that allowed you to organize based on any parameter you can think of.

so, what do you use?

[Fishy]

I use Foobar because it has nice tabbed playlists and easy wav/mp3 conversion and a generally simple interaface. I have winamp also for use with chiptunes. If Foobar played chiptunes I wouldn't need it at all.

[The Pezman]

Zoom Player (http://www.inmatrix.com/), mothafuckas. It's set up in a similar presentational style to Windows Media Player, but because it's not as flashy or bloated with all sorts of online features, it runs incredibly smoothly. Supports just about any format under the sun (I encode all my music in Monkey's Audio), and I have spoken with the developer through email to talk about ways to improve the player.

If anyone here knows how to write chiptune filters, let me know. ZP would support those as well.

[jmr]

I've been using Winamp as long as I've had a windows computer. It plays nearly everything, and lately they've been adding a lot of transcoding tools which make it extremely useful for converting for my Mp3 player.
I don't really use the library features, though. I rarely have more than 5 gigs of music (some of that's lossless) on my hard drive at a time, and most of it eventually gets archived to a DVDR. I use a disc cataloging program (Advanced Disc Catalog) to keep track of everything instead.

[supremespleen]

I just listen to stuff with Winamp. It works decently and is pretty.
For organizing? I tag everything and use Windows Explorer. None of that iTunes crap on my box.

[Mustin]

WINAMP

It really whips the llama's ass...

Love Winamp. It's awesome and sexxy and makes .WAVs and plays all chips and can even mute chip channels and make .WAVs/.MP3s out of the tracks.

Neat!

[Doulifée]

Winamp. using the library a lot to create playlist at will.

[Bahamut]

I use iTunes, only cause I'm on a crappy Macbook. Otherwise, I'd use Winamp exclusively - Foobar is out simply because it doesn't recognize CDex ID3v1/2 tags.

[MaxFrost]

right now, I use winamp...but as soon as Amarok 4 comes out, I'm going to that. I like how it works, and have been wanting it for my windows box, but as it's currently windows only, gotta live without it :(

[Brithor]

Winamp... does all I need a player to do.

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

Winamp and Kbmedia player.

[anosou]

iTunes, mainly because it intergrates nicely in my other mac-software.
for ogg and flac I use Cog, just because it can.

[Imagist]

Um... WMP works fine for me. WMP 10 though, any other version but Classic is awful and I find myself missing some functionality when I try to use Classic.

[OverCoat]

I used winamp for many a year, but recently switched to XMPlay (http://www.un4seen.com/). Think of it like a lightweight Winamp 2.xx with a useable library [tag stuff regardless of filetype] and the same amount of playback functionality. Well actually it's better, because the default music module playback doesn't suck goats, and accurate mod playback is something I need.

[RedFusion]

Definately Winamp.

Because of one major thing that is the best feature out of any media player out there. (That I know of.)
Cross-fade.
It makes listening to music, changing tracks, pausing tracks, and stopping tracks, and scanning tracks SO MUCH MORE PLEASING TO THE EAR. I can't stress that enough. I hate nothing more than every single other player out there, when pressing the 'pause' button in the middle of a roaring guitar riff or a soaring crescendo, greets you with an ABRUPT SILENCE.

I can't believe why any other media player doesn't realise that it's things like these that are important (at least to audiophiles like me), not "omg I can see the album art of the song I'm listening to" as WMP or iTunes seems to think.

Also, Winamp has plenty of other features such as customizable skins, a good media library now that rivals iTunes', easy-to-queue songs, auto-tag (which is really quite useful -- it managed to name and tag some of my Japenese Video Game ARRANGEMENT albums correctly), and supports a million audio file types.

I was forced to use iTunes for a while because I had an iPod and I liked the 'play-count' feature, now that the new Winamp has iPod integration, as well as playcounts, I love Winamp even more now that I'm back to using it. And I hate iTunes even more.

The only extroadinarily minor thing I think that iTunes has over Winamp is that it has a better shuffling system. (I.e. putting the whole playlist on shuffle won't double-up on playing a song that's already been played recently -- Winamp does that sometimes. However, this can be fixed very easily, just by turning off 'Repeat' on Winamp, and leaving on only 'Shuffle'. )

Not to mention that skins like this:
http://www.winamp.com/skins/details/142201
Just make using Winamp so much cooler. Aesthetics ftw. Alongside the cross-fade playback, of course.

So this is my Winamp is superior to iTunes (and probably alot of other audio players) rant that I've wanted to get off my chest. YESSSSSSSSS.

[Darth Lime]

I would use Winamp more if it had the good library settings that Windows Media Player has. I also like the functionality with Windows Messenger, telling my friends what I am listening to. If Winamp had those, I would use it way more than I already do.

[Arek the Absolute]

Winamp with chipamp really is all I need/use.

[RedFusion]

I would use Winamp more if it had the good library settings that Windows Media Player has. I also like the functionality with Windows Messenger, telling my friends what I am listening to. If Winamp had those, I would use it way more than I already do.

http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/151526

A Plug-In that does exactly that.

Works for me with Windows Live Messenger and the latest version of Winamp.

<3 Winamp. Oh, and, the plug-in can also let you show your songs in the NORMAL
ARTIST - SONG
labelling convention, not like some retarded SONG and THEN ARTIST display that shows on everyone else using media players, thought up only by some microsoft fool.

[HalcyonSpirit]

Winamp. It does what I need it to do (play music) and not hoard computer resources (most of the time, anyway; every couple weeks it'll have a hiccup and hog the CPU, but exiting the program fixes that easily enough). Making multiple playlists and saving them is easy enough (provided you've organized your music decently), as is loading said playlists. And the skins customization... Let me just say that I would use Winamp just for the skins. Particularly the one I'm using right now, MMD3. Fits right where I want it (at the top of the screen, in the title bar of windows) so that I can have the "Always on Top" option on without it getting in the way. Honestly, I would use Winamp just for that.

[Fritz the Cat]

WMP/Winamp. If there's a song I like, I put it on my MP3 player; I only play music on my computer if I'm deciding whether or not I want to keep it.

[anthonium]

I use Winamp. I don't care much for organization. I just pick a file and play. heh.

I've heard good things about Media Monkey as far as organization goes and even better is the fact you can use MediaMonkey to manage your library in conjunction with Winamp as the player. It has both a free and pay version: http://www.mediamonkey.com/product.htm

[Gollgagh]

MMD3

Yeah, that's pretty much the quintessential Winamp 5 skin.

Also, WinAmp here. Does everything I want it to with as little fuss as possible.

I use Winamp. I don't care much for organization. I just pick a file and play. heh.

I'm the same. I do have all of my music categorized in its own separate folder, but I guess probably everyone does that.

[prophetik]

right now my biggest knock on winamp is that when you're opening files (with "L"), it only shows midis, even when se to 'all sound files'. no mp3s, no wmas, no WAVs. it is SO annoying.

it seems everyone goes with winamp. anyone know what the functionality with iPods is? is it any good for syncing?

[Skummel Maske]

I've always been using Winamp. I've never been a fan of advanced features though, I enqueue the files I want in the playlist from my well-organized folders, and that's it. Where's the crossfade function, or is that a plugin? :P

[Gollgagh]

right now my biggest knock on winamp is that when you're opening files (with "L"), it only shows midis, even when se to 'all sound files'. no mp3s, no wmas, no WAVs. it is SO annoying.

Hmm, nope, don't know what you're talking about.

It shows all files for me.

[anthonium]

Well I just installed MediaMonkey and I LOVE IT even though I'm not much for organization. It has it's own built in player but as I said earlier you can use Winamp as its player. It really has great organization. I suggest you try it out: http://www.mediamonkey.com/index.htm

[shikigami]

im actually surprised at the amount of people i know who dont use winamp. winamp used to be a universal constant.

[Katsurugi]

I still use Winamp. I'm just really sticking with it ever since version 2.x. I tried Foobar for a little while, but didn't like it because it was a bit too minimalistic and didn't really want to both looking into plug-ins just to make it look pretty when minimized. Winamp 5 isn't too bloated if you keep most of the default settings.

I have old habits like using WMP for playing CDs and such. Maybe it's just me but I always have this suspicion that Winamp is going to overwrite my current playlist if I associate it with CDs.

[djpretzel]

Hmm, nope, don't know what you're talking about.

It shows all files for me.

This is a known bug and limitation with Windows as opposed to Winamp; there's a limit to how many extensions can be filtered for in the file open dialog, and when Winamp is associated with more extensions than that limit, it stops showing them and you have to pick just one.

AFAIK, the only way to work around this would be for Winamp developers to design their own file open dialog rather than using the native OS dialog, which imo they really should have done by now, given Winamp's popularity with input plugin developers and hence likeliness of being associated with numerous file types.

FYI, I use Winamp, and just upgraded to 5.5 on my main machine for testing with Chipamp. It's a little slow to launch, even with the Agent, but my biggest beef by bar is its closed source status and affiliation with AOL...

[Fritz the Cat]

im actually surprised at the amount of people i know who dont use winamp. winamp used to be a universal constant.

Well, as I said, I only use it long enough to decide if a song is worth keeping.

[shikigami]

oh, and on linux i use xmms. its a thing of beauty.

[Schwaltzvald]

Meh I stopped liking winamp after WA3. Stuck with foobar2k as it does the job for me; playing music files ranging from mp3 to lossy.

[Kanthos]

I rarely play music at home nowadays, and run too much on my PC at work to let using a player there be an option, so I use my iPod at work and iTunes at home because I can't be bothered to set up something better.

[megadave]

work - ITunes (No I don't use their store those greedy bastards)
home - winamp

[suzumebachi]

i use winamp. have for years.

[south pacific islander]

I use Media Player. reson being is that I can't get used to Winamps organizing. It's very annoying to me. I use itunes when I need to rip foreign cd's since their library is larger.

[po!]

I used winamp for many a year, but recently switched to XMPlay (http://www.un4seen.com/). Think of it like a lightweight Winamp 2.xx with a useable library [tag stuff regardless of filetype] and the same amount of playback functionality. Well actually it's better, because the default music module playback doesn't suck goats, and accurate mod playback is something I need.

XMPlay is great.. really small and uses a constant 3 megs of ram. i would be using it now, but NSFplug doesn't work properly on it. so i'm still using good 'ol Winamp

[SynthesizedStampede]

I use Winamp over here mainly because I need it to run ormgas. That and to me it seems that it runs videos faster than Windows Media. Ionno though, I'm considering of uninstalling it and just sacrificing ormgas for the sake of my PC, considering it's VERY old and only has 12 gigs of memory. Yes, you read that right: 12 gigs.

[Fenrir]

I absolutely loathe iTunes, and so I stick with winamp for music, Media Player Classic for video, and Creative Media Organizer whenever I need to rip a CD.

[cocoelmono]

I've been using Winamp for a long time, pretty much since the .mp3 format became popular. I don't use the Media Library within the program, but just organize the files on my hard drive and make .m3u's for playlists if I want them. And I love the plugin support for winamp. For people who have used Winamp and choose to use another program instead, what are the reasons?

Also, this is my first post here... hey.

[prophetik]

This is a known bug and limitation with Windows as opposed to Winamp; there's a limit to how many extensions can be filtered for in the file open dialog, and when Winamp is associated with more extensions than that limit, it stops showing them and you have to pick just one.

AFAIK, the only way to work around this would be for Winamp developers to design their own file open dialog rather than using the native OS dialog, which imo they really should have done by now, given Winamp's popularity with input plugin developers and hence likeliness of being associated with numerous file types.

FYI, I use Winamp, and just upgraded to 5.5 on my main machine for testing with Chipamp. It's a little slow to launch, even with the Agent, but my biggest beef by bar is its closed source status and affiliation with AOL...

is there any way around it?

yeah, i'm not diggin the AOL crap either. and the winamp remote stuff hogs my entire CPU ALL the time. so i just closed that down. remote was the only thing i was interested in in the new release, and it's kinda ghetto when you're actually listening to your music.

it would have been nice if they'd have done the same thing the Zunes did - allowed you to send a limited-use song to a friend or something. but i guess that it'd be too easy to just use the equivalent of tunebite on it.

[FiremanJoe]

For playback, I use Winamp. I think I'm still using about v5.3 - I really like the interface and the ability to use plugins for chiptunes and such, but the library search function gets to be a little too slow these days.
For tagging files, I use Mp3tag. - It's great for tagging all manner of audio files and organising them.
For ripping, I use Exact Audio Copy and the LAME and FLAC encoders. - Incredibly reliable tool; great quality rips. There's no other way to do things.

When it comes to video playback, I've got the Combined Community Codec Pack, DivX Player, Nero Showtime, Media Player Classic

I really dislike iTunes and Windows Media Player... eurgh.

[prophetik]

i don't remember off the top of my head. does the new version of winamp offer a favorites list for streamed music, or a list of streaming stations like itunes does? i'd like to start streaming more, but i just never think to do it with winamp because i've only got a few station.