Shadow Wolf
11-24-2007, 05:15 PM
OK guys, I'm finally doing it. I've been using iTunes for 3 years. It's awesome, and close to perfect, but I'm tired of trying to wrangle smart playlists to do what I want. So I switched to Winamp a month ago. Winamp has its faults, but it also does some things I like. But the point is, in 7 years, I have never found an audio player that does everything I want. So I'm gonna see if you guys know of anything. Here's the crucial things I want it to do.
1. The option to organize your media library using the folder structure of the audio on your hard disc. I have all 4000 something songs meticulously organized and categorized in folders already. Why should I have to do it again in whatever media program I'm using. The other thing is, I have certain soundtracks that are MASSIVE rips from games, organized in fairly deep folder structures, and they need to stay that way to make sense. For example, I have a World of Warcraft soundtrack rip. The files themselves are not very well labeled, but the theme for Darnassus is in "WoW Rip>Old World>Cities>Darnassus>Darn01.mp3." It would just be a hell of a lot easier to maintain folder structure and make that easy to find than trying to manipulate ID3 tags and smart playlists.
2. Watch my media folders and automatically add new files I put in there. Winamp does this, which puts it a step above iTunes. I don't wanna have to go find files in that sea of audio and add them to my library. I wanna drop the file in a folder, and next time I open my media player, it's there. Do that shit for me.
3. Ability to set a DEFAULT for each playlist as to what columns will be shown and in what order. I don't wanna have to set up every damn one separately. It's silly.
4. A respect for the awesome and mind boggling organizational power of an ID3 tag. iTunes has this in spades. Problem with iTunes is you can tag every field in the file, but no matter how hard you try, you can't use the browser to filter files by anything but genre>artist>album. They're shooting themselves in the foot there.
I REALLY do not think this is too much to ask from an audio player. Evidently it is though. There's a few plugins for Winamp that will get me really close to this, but they're extremely outdated. Also, keep in mind, I could not give a shit if this player plays videos, makes cookies, or feeds starving chinese children. I want an audio player and media library, and I want a good one. So there it is. This ultimate media player does not necessarily have to be free either. I want to know if it exists. Please tell me it does.
1. The option to organize your media library using the folder structure of the audio on your hard disc. I have all 4000 something songs meticulously organized and categorized in folders already. Why should I have to do it again in whatever media program I'm using. The other thing is, I have certain soundtracks that are MASSIVE rips from games, organized in fairly deep folder structures, and they need to stay that way to make sense. For example, I have a World of Warcraft soundtrack rip. The files themselves are not very well labeled, but the theme for Darnassus is in "WoW Rip>Old World>Cities>Darnassus>Darn01.mp3." It would just be a hell of a lot easier to maintain folder structure and make that easy to find than trying to manipulate ID3 tags and smart playlists.
2. Watch my media folders and automatically add new files I put in there. Winamp does this, which puts it a step above iTunes. I don't wanna have to go find files in that sea of audio and add them to my library. I wanna drop the file in a folder, and next time I open my media player, it's there. Do that shit for me.
3. Ability to set a DEFAULT for each playlist as to what columns will be shown and in what order. I don't wanna have to set up every damn one separately. It's silly.
4. A respect for the awesome and mind boggling organizational power of an ID3 tag. iTunes has this in spades. Problem with iTunes is you can tag every field in the file, but no matter how hard you try, you can't use the browser to filter files by anything but genre>artist>album. They're shooting themselves in the foot there.
I REALLY do not think this is too much to ask from an audio player. Evidently it is though. There's a few plugins for Winamp that will get me really close to this, but they're extremely outdated. Also, keep in mind, I could not give a shit if this player plays videos, makes cookies, or feeds starving chinese children. I want an audio player and media library, and I want a good one. So there it is. This ultimate media player does not necessarily have to be free either. I want to know if it exists. Please tell me it does.