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Quintessential is what Iused when I was still a Windows user; it hasn't been in active development for several years, but it's still there for download.

You could always just re-encode rather than re-rip, that's 10 minutes work to set soundKonverter up (on KDE) and then just leave it running overnight. Quintessential player can be persuaded to do similarly on Windowz. You just need to have a decent amount more bitrate available in your source oggs as you want to output to your mp3s - a 'budget' mp3 player is unlikely to get any advantage out of a higher mp3 bitrate that 128kbps anyway, so if you have 196kbps or above oggs, you'll probably get away with it.

If you want native ogg playback, you could try an iriver player - the H-300 series is out of production now, so they'll either be cheap or expensive, they're complete bricks, but they play oggs, as do some other iriver players - there were a few which don't (such as the H10), so do check.

Quintessential Player is a GREAT little music player. It's got skins, it's got fanciness, but at the end of the day it's small (2.2MB download) and fast--on my ancient laptop (P2-233) I started using it because it was the only thing that would play audio without skipping and with less than 100% CPU. (In fact, it normally consumed about 20% CPU.)

There's also a media player with a comprehensive library and all of the bells and whistles in development. Bigger, but still fast and light to run.

I stopped using winamp when they removed the stream-saving feature "because no one wanted that". I do not imagine I will ever use winamp again. I use QCD Player for my media player and I see no reason to change. (Note: This is not Quintessential Media Player, which I think is junk.)

The current versions of winternals software work fine. However, they will become obsolete soon, so the quest for replacements (either programmed by my own lazy and not-as-good hand, or found elsewhere) has begun. RootkitRevealer is the worst loss, I think. The others will age well enough.

Aside from foobar2000, you can try QMP (http://www.quinnware.com/). It comes with some bells and whistles, but most things are easily disabled if you don't want them, like the media library or Gracenote stuff.

Complexity? In 2006, Winamp is by far the lightest, fastest, and least complex of all the major Windows media players.

Anyone have experience with this: Quintessential Player?

Note that it says you can rip CDs at full speed. WinAmp requires you to pay to do that.

For all those interested here is the link: Quintessential Player

Once upon a time, I used Winamp.

And it was good.

It was fairly lightweight, I could load in huge playlists of college-napster-garbage without slowdown and I knew all the hot keys for searching and what not.

Then that llama came into the picture. I think it must have been version three or four (I can't remember) when there was a damned llama or alpaca or whatever in a green field. Now, I love llamas and alpacas, don't get me wrong. The problem was that now Winamp was about "graphix" and "features" that were once plugins that I didn't want.

I don't know why they thought Winamp needed to be able to play videos but it did now. I don't know why they thought Winamp had to show stupid tripping-on-acid-harmonograph visualizations but it did now. I don't know why they thought Winamp had to melt songs together but it did now ... etc.

On top of that, the memory footprint in Windows was crazy. And my roommate tried to put skins on Winamp that just made my computer shit its gourd. I was disgusted ... the hot keys may have still been there but what I was looking for in a media player was not. For some reason, they seemed to think that competing with Windows Media Player meant mimicking it to every detail. Fine. I never want to touch Windows Media Player, it's about as useful as my appendix. And now I feel the same way about Winamp.

Now there's a spyware flaw in Winamp. Am I surprised? Not really. They have gotten so complicated that there's probably a thousand holes in that application. They definitely lost site of what I was looking for--a plain jane slim audio player. Winamp's executing a remote method invocation through a playlist that can trigger itself to be automatically loaded and ran? Now that sounds like a "feature" I want my audio player to have.

Is this the first time this has happened? Nope, remember the zero day exploit that targeted skins in 2004? There's been a myriad of security issues with Winamp since it became more and more complicated.

"Gee, the way our audio player loads playlists isn't very secure. But it works and the people who use our application aren't interested in security--they're interested in playing AVI files on their audio player!"

So what would I recommend? Well, if you're using Linux, I can think of at least ten things better but XMMS would probably be my favorite. If you're running Windows, I like to use Quintessential Player which can be modified to be as complicated as new Winamp or can be

That's interesting ... you've almost tempted me to install iTunes on my machine and look for this music.

What I forgot to mention in my original post is that I do not use iTunes. I rip my cds using CDex and then listen to them using Quintessential Player. Never had a need for iTunes and, frankly, I've never really been interested in Apple.

Tunes is probably good for buying music. For playing music, I find it about as bloated and awkward as Windows Media Player 10.

Yeah, I tried iTunes for a while, but didn't didn't really get into the way it worked. QCD is the one I keep going back to; http://www.quinnware.com/.
It feels like the Firefox of media players - the basic player is fairly lean (2.5 megs download) and you can add plugins for just about everything.

Why not try Quintessential Player? Much lighter in weight than Winamp, has plugins, has skins, and will play Shoutcast. http://www.quinnware.com/

I gave up on Winamp long, long ago.

• Borland C++ 5.0 IDE
• emacs 21.3
• FoxIt PDF reader
• gcc 3.3
• GIMP
• MikTeX
• Mozilla
• QCD player for MP3s and CDs
• BitTorrent

The only program I've found that really makes it run slow is the FreeNet Daemon (and I run that under the Sun JDK 1.5); everything else is fine. Then again, I obviously have avoided some of the real resource hogs like Office 2k3 and Acrobat 6.

The music stores that use WMA don't need to build the client that plays the music, organizes the music, and synchs the device. They can use Windows Media Player 10 or any other good client (Quintessential Player, J. River Media Jukebox, WinAmp, RealPlayer, MusicMatch) to play, organize, and synch. Having one store integrated into one app may be valuable to those that don't want a choice. Some would rather use a web browser to choose among a variety of stores and then choose their favorite music player/organizer/syncher with their purchased songs.

I highly recomend the Quintessential music player, It is a more minamalistic music player that's perfect for when you only want to play your some of your favorite songs. It has this cool feature where you just left click on the icon in the taskbar to pause and unpause it. Completely free software and it supports winamp plugins!.

Yup, totally agree with the above, with the addition of Quintessential Player (which made me ditch winamp)

Seconding FileZilla! It's been a godsend.

I'd love to see Xnews and QCD player up there as well. Just wish Xnews wasn't in such a stagnant state. :-/

Ad-aware
AVG 7 Anti-virus
QCD player
Real & Quicktime Alternative.
Skype
Miranda
SoulSeek
FileZilla

Apple has the Holy Trinity of online music: Software (iTunes), Store (iTMS), Player (iPod). You're just not going to beat Apple until you come to the field with at least those three pieces.

There are now several good players made by different companies and they are getting better every year. On the Windows platform, there are several music apps that many people prefer over iTunes (e.g. Quintessential, Media Jukebox, WinAmp, Windows Media Player). DRM music stores are getting better and more numerous.

Let's assume that there are or will be several good non-Apple players, music apps, and music stores. If a consumer likes to use Media Jukebox or Windows Media Player 10 to play/organize their music, why wouldn't he/she choose a good player that synchs with these programs? If that consumer wants to buy DRM'd music, why not choose a player that works with all of the good non-Apple music stores?

Maybe buyers don't want this choice. If a hardware company wants simplicity, they can just bundle Windows Media Player 10 and promote msn music. I would prefer to see the iPod support DRM'd WMA files and synch with the other popular music apps. I would prefer to see Apple license their DRM so iTMS songs can play on other players and apps.

It lacks one of winamps greatest features, The skinning!

no it doesn't

Winamp is a nice piece of software indeed, but I take it you have never tried this.
Much, much better. Uses less memory, plays anything you throw at it, great community, it's free - anything else I'm missing?
Also, please stop mentioning WMP. This is Slashdot, after all.

I gave up on winamp ages ago. Now I use and recommend QCD for window users. It has a lot features that I love. I really wish this could be on Linux.

I would definitely recommend Quintessential Player http://www.quinnware.com/ It supports MP3, Ogg, WAV, skins and has support for CD ripping/MP3 encoding etc... It can even use existing Winamp DSP and input plugins. Best of all it's free. :)

my favorite's quintessential player.

Hey, tried to visit your link for Quintessential, but it seems not be registered due to a misspelling. The proper URL is http://www.quinnware.com/

I'm a fan of Quintessential Player

It's already been succeeded. :p Well, I've been using Quintessential Player for a long time. IMHO it's far superior to WinAmp though the default skin for it blows. Foobar2000 is also pretty good. Sonique had potential, but I haven't heard much from it in ages. Those of corse are for Windows.... Linux you have mplayer and XMMS.

What alternatives are there to Winamp? I mean good alternatives and not just any old crap.
The best one I've seen for Windows is QCD

QCD is what I use.

Quintessential player is my new favorite http://www.quinnware.com/ Win32 only..

I gave up on WinAmp shortly after version 2.x (don't recall which one). Required a plug-in to support Vorbis, but no problem. Download the next version (for some reason), and find it gobbling up file associations left and right, pissing me off with changes to file and playlist management, and generally trying to do too much and doing it all poorly.

Which makes me wonder - am I the only one using Quintessential Player (QCD)? Clean interface and option, playlist management that fit my sense of order, and a couple of easy-to-use plug-ins to add some additional functionality (like outputting the current track info for posting on my homepage). Anyone else like this particular piece of audio software?

In spite of all the shameless plugs for various assorted flavors of media players, I haven't seen one plug Quinnware yet. More specifically, their Quintessential Player. Sure the default interface might not be as "nice" as Winamp, but if you're using that OS from Redmond, WA, you get a player that also includes CD ripping/mp3 encoding.

Apologies ahead of time for the shameless plug, but I figured it's only fair to list alternatives in addition to the ones already provided!

In spite of all the shameless plugs for various assorted flavors of media players, I haven't seen one plug Quinnware yet. More specifically, their Quintessential Player. Sure the default interface might not be as "nice" as Winamp, but if you're using that OS from Redmond, WA, you get a player that also includes CD ripping/mp3 encoding.

Apologies ahead of time for the shameless plug, but I figured it's only fair to list alternatives in addition to the ones already provided!

The early winamp was good. I haven't tried recently, but the last winamp I tried was pretty bad. If you look around though you can still find good players for windows. QCD - I like it

To see the Microsoft Media SDK in action, visit Quinnware.com and download their QCD player (a very nice, free WinAMP-style player). Download the WMA input plugin (naturally there are plugins for MP4, Ogg, etc).

Go ahead. Try it. Buy a track from buymusic.com and then copy the file to another computer which has QCD installed. Play the track. Heck, re-encode into MP3, WAV, OGG, whatever. All without QCD (and the Windowd Media SDK) ever asking anyone for a license.

To see the Microsoft Media SDK in action, visit Quinnware.com and download their QCD player (a very nice, free WinAMP-style player). Download the WMA input plugin (naturally there are plugins for MP4, Ogg, etc).

Go ahead. Try it. Buy a track from buymusic.com and then copy the file to another computer which has QCD installed. Play the track. Heck, re-encode into MP3, WAV, OGG, whatever. All without QCD (and the Windowd Media SDK) ever asking anyone for a license.

from the QCD website:
Current Release
4.11 11/11/2003

Development Release
Build 67 15/12/2003

I've been using version 4.10. I haven't tried the development versions mainly because I just wanted to play mp3s in something other than windows media player and winamp 3.0.
Going through the version history, it looks like a lot of the recent changes were bug fixes. It looks like even their development release date is buggy so downloading that dev version might be fun...unless it's just DD/MM/YYYY

I didn't like 3.x for the reasons you described. I found a new player called quintessential that does a very nice job as a player without trying to do too much. We'll see if there's enough of a reason to go back.

I just tried Foobar2000 and it's not bad on paper -- it has most of the features that I'm looking for. But, its interface just seems a bit plain for me :-/. So, I think I'll stick with Quintessential Player (which also supports Ogg).

There are some very cool Ogg Vorbis software players available for Windows and some less-cool ones for Linux and Mac.

I think Vorbis has shown that it is an efficient, royalty-free codec worthy of more mainstream attention (read: hardware players) and there are plenty of converters to change over your existing collection of MP3s to a smaller (file size) collection of Vorbis without a noticable loss of quality.

Blows my mind.

Although WinAmp2 is superb, it does have one big flaw... ie its as unstable as hell on my XP machines.

WinAmp3 is more stable, but its also bigger and bloatier... I don't want to wait an extra 3 seconds for it to load just so I can listen to a song or a short wav file.

Microsoft's Media player is ok if a little dull... it's pretty stable but looks a bit crappy (especially the visualisations) and also has DRM implications... I don't like being told what I can and can't do with music I've bought, thank you very much.

By far the best MP3 player I've used so far is the Quintessential Player which is very much like WinAmp2 but much more stable. Wiggys Rating: 5 out of 5; gold star and a tick.

Can someone recommend a better Ogg player?

I recommend Quintessential. Plays all your favorite formats, completely free as in beer, good skinnability, gapless playback, and built-in stream ripping unlike the new WinAmps. Some people find the default playlist which can't be resized annoying, but if you look around on the site you can find some modifications for it.

Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?

All of the above. You get better sound at lower bitrates royalty-free.

Do p2p for Ogg exist?

Not sure about Kazaa, etc., but I do see .oggs occasionally on SoulSeek.

If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.

You wouldn't want to bother converting them because the resulting sound quality would be worse than the original MP3s, so you'd have to rip them again. (Since you do own the original CDs, don't you?) Nothing's stopping you from sharing files though, since any self-respecting software player (including Winamp, but I prefer Quintessential) plays oggs fine. Hardware, of course, is a different story.

http://www.quinnware.com