Vocal Voices

Yes, yes yes! It is the most comprehensive, versatile and ubiquitous music player ever and it is still free.

For those of us who like our music this is absolutely the best news. The mavericks of Nullsoft who started the whole thing off flogged it to AoL and there was a clash of ideologies. Winamp was a free project, anyone could get hold of it. Developers could produce plug-ins and Nullsoft would adopt and protect them. AoL, on the other hand, wanted to make money out of Winamp and that was always going to be tough. The few things their team could add did not make it worth buying when the last free version had just about everything. Then it began to become bloatware and we all left. However, rather than letting it drift back to the to its original idea AoL decided to kill it. Thankfully it has been saved by Radionomy.

The new version is 5666 and comes with a lot of the old plug-ins embedded, and at a 9.85MB download it is quite small. It will be a long time before it needs any new plugin work and unlike the bloatfest it had become it is pretty light on resources. The one big thing it has over recent rivals is the sophistication with the way it works. A lot of work went into making it do things seamlessly for its users and that is still there. Many other music players have a long way to go on that count.

If you like music and want a player that works out of the box and is simple to get to know, give Winamp a try. You will not be disappointed. Download - install - play.

Thanks for that. I don't think I've used Winamp since about 2000. It's installed and working it's way through my 200gig music library....

I gave up in about 2003 when it got so bloated that unless you had a very much top end machine it would freeze. Multi tasking became almost impossible on even an above average spec.

If you have Process Explorer, or similar, as Task manager go have a flip through the tabs. You will be pleasantly surprised at how few resources it is using.

Hmmm, Windows8 is much more friendly on that score. One foreground process, one background process elevator. Although it's not playing music.

hmmm, dragged and dropped a playlist. Asked it to paly. It's spent ages "processing it". around 800 tracks. MediaMonkey, on the other hand, just played it. I wonder what it was doing??

Hmmm, not sure.

I created some large playlists and they loaded instantly, but I was using the menus from the Playlist Editor...... and it was after Winamp had done its work building the library. The ones in the media library also load and play instantly.

Hmmm, external M3U drag and drop. Probably it. I'm sure it's a one time thing and I don't know if it was still indexing the media library or not after the load. That is possible. I'll try another one tomorrow and see how it goes.

Nope, tried another one. It does this with all imported playlists. It has to go through and verify every track and it does it every time before playing.

V irritating....

I cannot repeat it.

I just opened a folder of 723 tracks, all mp3, and added them to Playlist Creator3. I shuffled them about and saved the playlist as m3u.

Winamp loaded it straight away to play in randomised form. I have to say that my naming convention is very simple: Artist - Track. No track number, album title, composer, year, genre.......... If I see Clash - London Burning I already know what to expect.

Are you loading OGG or FLAC or maybe a mix those and mp3?

Ah my playlist of 800 odd tracks spans hundreds of folders and even sub folders.

Which is probably the problem.

Example

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:185,Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\02 Wichita Lineman.mp3
#EXTINF:159,Glen Campbell - Galveston
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\04 Galveston.mp3
#EXTINF:175,Glen Campbell - Where's the Playground Susie?
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\05 Where's the Playground Susie-.mp3
#EXTINF:176,Glen Campbell - Gentle on My Mind
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\06 Gentle on My Mind.mp3
#EXTINF:176,Glen Campbell - Honey Come Back
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\08 Honey Come Back.mp3
#EXTINF:154,Glen Campbell - Dreams of the Everyday Housewife
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\10 Dreams of the Everyday Housewife.mp3
#EXTINF:193,Glen Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy
Music\Music\Glenn Campbell\My Hits and Love Songs Disc 1\18 Rhinestone Cowboy.mp3
#EXTINF:201,ABBA - S.O.S.
Music\Music\Abba\Abba\04_SOS_-_Abba_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:196,ABBA - I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
Music\Music\Abba\Abba\07_I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do_-_Abba_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:230,Abba - Dancing Queen
Music\Music\Abba\Arrival\02_Dancing_Queen_-_Arrival_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:243,Abba - Knowing Me, Knowing You
Music\Music\Abba\Arrival\05_Knowing_Me,_Knowing_You_-_Arrival_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:186,Abba - Money, Money, Money
Music\Music\Abba\Arrival\06_Money,_Money,_Money_-_Arrival_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:254,Abba - Fernando
Music\Music\Abba\Arrival\11_Fernando_-_Arrival_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:254,ABBA - Super Trouper
Music\Music\Abba\Super Trouper\01_Super_Trouper_-_Super_Trouper_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:294,ABBA - The Winner Takes It All
Music\Music\Abba\Super Trouper\02_The_Winner_Takes_It_All_-_Super_Trouper_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:274,ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me
Music\Music\Abba\Super Trouper\09_Lay_All_Your_Love_On_Me_-_Super_Trouper_-_ABBA.mp3
#EXTINF:293,ABBA - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

That is why I rip to one folder, sort out the tags, then throw everything into a few folders: Rock, Easy Listening, Heavy Metal, Soul. I let Explorer sort the order out.

From what is in your list I see that we have similar taste in some kinds of music.