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While iTunes works well for this, some of us still don't own iPods, and don't like installing a huge program like iTunes just for the podcasting feature.

My current favorite is winamp, although if Democracy Player ever became stable, it would be #1 in my book.

The only Podcast I listen to is The Frequency, dedicated primarily to Christian Music News, reviews, and interviews. (without being super cheesy)

Personally, I prefer Winamp over iTunes. Winamp 5.2 has support for the iPod. You can create playlists, import mp3s, pretty much everything that iTunes can do. If you don't want to upgrade to 5.2, there is a plug-in for Winamp that does the same thing. The nice part about the plug-in is that it allows you to copy songs OFF of your iPod and onto your hard drive.

AACP or sometimes known as ACC+

Thread on configuration Here

Old software? (Okay, as of 5.12 or so, it seems to run okay for a restricted user, but it key features like the Media Library still won't work right).

Isn't this like reporting on something exploiting an old bug in xmms or likewise?

A fixed version of Winamp was released even before any of the mainstream media had published their reports. Isn't this rehashing the same?

Winamp 5.12 and older are vulnerable? Wasn't this the point of the original article? What does this have to offer than the same old story when it comes to all software. Upgrade to remove those nasty bugs.

I believe you can find the fixed version here, its been there for a week:

http://www.winamp.com/player/

For starters, you can go to www.oldversion.com and get winamp 2.95 along with a bunch of other versions. The train wreck that was winamp3 was also mostly corrected when they went to winamp5, and if you see from (http://www.winamp.com/player/free.php) there's a "lite" version that weighs in at 0.85MB, and which supports mp3, wav, ogg, au, midi, cda, aac, etc. Since it doesn't support modern skins, I would suspect that it's probably just a rehash of 2.9x

I don't use the video features of Winamp. They were present in 2.95, but they weren't bloated yet. And I don't think it was a grab at the windows media player headspace. It really seemed like they just tacked it on because it wasn't hard to do. I think it uses the windows renderer and codecs anyway, just without all the crap in WMP.

Anyway, yeah, I still use 2.95 of winamp, just like I still use instant messanger 4.8. I'm open to change; I'm just not going to "upgrade" to a bloated product. What is it with software these days, anyway? Every piece of software tries to be everything to everyone. Ugh.

~Will

Link to WinAmp Free Player.

I had a similar situation a number of summers ago when both my brothers and my own computer occupied a KVM switch with one set of speakers. I'm assuming that you already share files over your network, because otherwise this solution is useless unless all your music is on the media center PC. This Winamp plugin will allow you to control Winamp on your media center PC through an internet browser. Simply type in the internal IP and you're all set (once of course you set up the plugin to begin with; a fairly easy task). Since playlist files need not reside on the local computer (ie the media center PC), but just at an accessable location (anywhere on your LAN), your entire colection can stay right where it is (be it on the server or the media center). It might not be the most elagant solution, but it works.

Above of all to me the silliness on their answers page("Moscow is the capital of Russia." etc..) shows they arent very serious.

[ironic remark]yeah, i know what you mean... just like winamp... http://www.winamp.com/about/team.php [/ ironic remark]

no problem

And with the ml_ipod plugin for winamp, you won't ever have to look back!

Here's an interesting example of using AJAX to control a desktop app. Works great and seems to be the most portable, user-friendly technology available to get the job done. The fact the the client can use a browser without installing any sort of extraneous client software is worth something in usability. http://classic.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=1 46128

for not capitilizating their assets. Open (the latest version of) Winamp. Open Open Media Library, click on "Winamp Video". You see 10000+ VCR quality music videos (1750 artists, top names). The same thing that APPLE is sucessfully selling at $2 a pop, AOL/TW has been giving away on Winamp for 5 years, except that Apple has a fraction of the # of videos.

If AOL/TW bothered to figure out how to make money, they would (at least) team with Apple to SELL this content (currently, they're only making a token effort to make money by showing an ad before playing videos..which is annoying and ineffective). If they were very wise, they'd turn around an Itunes like client and partner with Microsoft, Sony and other Apple competitors and CRUSH them.

I can't stand stupidity.
[rant done]

What's your point with the question, "All I have ever known is that to download music to your iPod or purchase music for your iPod you had to use iTunes - no execptions. Even books bought through audible.com needs iTunes to dowload the books to the iPod last time I looked"

Is it Apple's problem then that no one else writes programs to load music onto an iPod? How about Yamipod? I mean, what else are they going to do? Rely on Microsoft to write a program to upload music to their MP3 player? Does it bother you then that Sony uses SonicStage, Dell uses MusicMatch, and Creative uses Creative Media Source?

What's the problem with iTunes? Because it's free? Because it's crappy? Does that mean you don't use IE, either? Apple bought iTunes when it was called SoundJam, then released it as iTunes; and when it was first released, it was compatible with Rio, Creative, and Sony MP3 players; it was a generic MP3 jukebox written for Mac users because no one else would provide a decent one (sound familiar? Developers tend to forget about the Mac, so Apple usually takes it upon themselves to provide decent programs to their user base). Even as far back as last year, iTunes was compatible with OTHER mp3 players. I'm not sure if they still are, but I don't see why Apple would remove that functionality.

So why do we have to use iTunes? Because no one else (Microsoft, Creative, Sony, Dell, etc) is willing to write iPod compatible software. Only third parties who don't make MP3 players do.

So maybe I'll try again. You're asking, "Do I have to use iTunes to use an iPod?"

The answer is, "No you don't have to use iTunes to use an iPod". There are even WinAMP plugins for the iPod and people have also written tools to allow Windows Media Player to synch with the iPod. Why are you blaming Apple for the lack of iPod support from Microsoft and others? The iPod doesn't use secret sauce: All it does is create a database of all the songs to enable quick ID3 tag browsing without spinning up the harddrive, and it stores all the songs in a hash-table on the iPod to maximize efficiency and minimize tree depth.

More info on iTunes with other players.

I thought this would be nice as I'd get to listen to music at work, however the quality is so bad (highly compressed, low bandwidth)that it's not worth it.

Have you checked out ShoutCast? 30,000+ free internet radio stations, most of them commercial free, and streaming at the bitrate of your choosing (well, most stations). The sound quality is quite good, and can even reach spectacular quality using the combination of Winamp and a plugin called Ozone. Play around with the settings and listen to the difference... it's amazing what analog modeling can do for a 128k music file. Works with MP3s, Streams, and even videos too!

If 30,000+ radio stations seems a little overwhelming, might I suggest my favoriate station Beatblender (128k, streaming WMA) for some great ambient, work-inducing music.

I thought this would be nice as I'd get to listen to music at work, however the quality is so bad (highly compressed, low bandwidth)that it's not worth it.

Have you checked out ShoutCast? 30,000+ free internet radio stations, most of them commercial free, and streaming at the bitrate of your choosing (well, most stations). The sound quality is quite good, and can even reach spectacular quality using the combination of Winamp and a plugin called Ozone. Play around with the settings and listen to the difference... it's amazing what analog modeling can do for a 128k music file. Works with MP3s, Streams, and even videos too!

If 30,000+ radio stations seems a little overwhelming, might I suggest my favoriate station Beatblender (128k, streaming WMA) for some great ambient, work-inducing music.

There is a plug-in for most major desktop music players to allow iPod access (WinAMP for example. This site claims the iPod is supported by iTunes, WinAmp, Musicmatch, WMP, and Real.). There are also groups who have ported Linux to the iPod (like iPodLinux) and their efforts open up a wide variety of features and capabilities including ogg support.

Taft

Another example: It's getting harder to find apps that play "tracker module" music, and the programs that are available tend to be awkward and unreliable. Everything went to MP3, and mod music was quickly forgotten.

Winamp does, and there's various ports and frontends of mikmod for virtually every OS imaginable. On the other hand, tracker modules were a very cool form of music, and it's a shame to see them begin to die after the community refused to adopt aa format that supported mp3-encoded samples....

You won't have any problem with iTunes, I assure you. However, there is a Winamp Plugin that allows you to not only browse and download music off of your iPod (something iTunes doesn't do because they think getting your own music back is piracy), but to add your own from the Winamp Media Library. It integrates well, though it doesn't allow you to add photos. To do that, you'll have to sync with iTunes.

Of course, WinAmp can be used to convert pretty much all audio into MP3 format, so, bye-bye DRM.

All you have to do is install Winamp, LAME and MP3 Output Plugin.
Then just play the audio file in WinAmp, with the plugin selected as the output thingy.

Of course, WinAmp can be used to convert pretty much all audio into MP3 format, so, bye-bye DRM.

All you have to do is install Winamp, LAME and MP3 Output Plugin.
Then just play the audio file in WinAmp, with the plugin selected as the output thingy.

The music is only part of the fun. Watching the musician entertain is the rest. Interaction between the crowd and the musician is what is good about live music. I mean if I wanted to watch a robot play music, I'd turn on Winamp with a plugin and go crazy with that.

The music is only part of the fun. Watching the musician entertain is the rest. Interaction between the crowd and the musician is what is good about live music. I mean if I wanted to watch a robot play music, I'd turn on Winamp with a plugin and go crazy with that.

What are you talking about? The iPod plays freaking mp3s not "iTunes music".

It can play MP4, AAC, and AA (Audible audio book file format) as well.

You don't even have to use iTunes, you can use EphPod (missing some features, like doesn't set the damn clock on the ipod, doesn't preserve Audiobook bookmarks (fucking required)), or that new winamp plugin.

As a sworn user of Winamp since back during the 1.x, I'll defiantly d/l a copy.

Link to winamp download: http://winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=138888

You can get the source from the sourceforge CVS if you want. To compile it, you'll need the winamp SDK, avaliable in the winamp development section of http://forums.winamp.com/ Dump the source in \gen_ml\ml_ipod\ and it should work.

There are other products which can support the iPod, depending on the OS you use. Not sure on the Mac but with regards Windows:

* With the normal iPods, there are various freeware apps including a good plugin for Winamp that let you control / update the iPod. Link for that here.

* With the iPod shuffle, you can download a small freeware app which allows you to just drag and drop MP3 / AAC files onto the player and run the app to rebuild the database on it - nice and easy :) Link for that here.

So no real need for iTunes unless you want to buy / convert music.

But the whole evolution of Microsoft's UI in the last 10 years has centered around stealing screen real estate for useless chrome, unnecessary widgets or information of no utility.

WMP 10 ... uses up as much space with stupid buttons, goofy widgets of questionable use, some Photoshop flunkie's shiny excretions and other useless noise, as the actual content itself (for videos obviously).

But WMP is just imitating other media players, all of which seem to devote an absurd portion of their design effort to making themselves skinnable. I belive the idea originated with WinAmp, which supports thousands of skins, ranging from the clunky to the absurd. They all seem to contribute to some strange sense of esthetic among users -- but they actually detract from the usability of the product.

Alas, usability, is just not a priority any more. It's the original reason for the switch from command lines to GUIs. But now the main purpose of a GUI seems to be to look kewl and help sell the product. Even Apple, which literally wrote the book on the subject of usability, seems to consider prettiness a higher priority.

Anyway, I don't consider a info bar to be a major GUI design flaw. It's darned handy to get file details without having to bring up a properties box.

But the whole evolution of Microsoft's UI in the last 10 years has centered around stealing screen real estate for useless chrome, unnecessary widgets or information of no utility.

WMP 10 ... uses up as much space with stupid buttons, goofy widgets of questionable use, some Photoshop flunkie's shiny excretions and other useless noise, as the actual content itself (for videos obviously).

But WMP is just imitating other media players, all of which seem to devote an absurd portion of their design effort to making themselves skinnable. I belive the idea originated with WinAmp, which supports thousands of skins, ranging from the clunky to the absurd. They all seem to contribute to some strange sense of esthetic among users -- but they actually detract from the usability of the product.

Alas, usability, is just not a priority any more. It's the original reason for the switch from command lines to GUIs. But now the main purpose of a GUI seems to be to look kewl and help sell the product. Even Apple, which literally wrote the book on the subject of usability, seems to consider prettiness a higher priority.

Anyway, I don't consider a info bar to be a major GUI design flaw. It's darned handy to get file details without having to bring up a properties box.

To test yourself / your computer's sound system, try in_tone.dll for winamp. Just drop it in your plugins directory, and copy the below to a .m3u file. I can hear 20k, but just barely. Hard to say if it's the actual tone or some weird subharmonics thing going on.

--- begin tones.m3u ---
tone://20,10
tone://25,10
tone://30,10
ton e://35,10
tone://40,10
tone://42,10
tone://45,1 0
tone://50,10
tone://55,10
tone://60,10
tone: //80,10
tone://77,10
tone://110,10
tone://120,1 0
tone://156,10
tone://220,10
tone://311,10
to ne://440,10
tone://622,10
tone://880,10
tone:// 1200,10
tone://1800,10
tone://2600,10
tone://35 00,10
tone://5000,10
tone://7000,10
tone://1000 0,10
tone://11000,10
tone://12000,10
tone://130 00,10
tone://14000,30
tone://15000,30
tone://16 000,30
tone://17000,30
tone://18000,30
tone://1 9000,30
tone://20000,30

for winamp there is a dsp plugin called tomsteady which does exactly this. i use it when i play mp3's at night.

This plugin for winamp does what you are talking about. It automatically moved the volume up and down to maintain and constant volume. It works quite well, but I'm not sure how much you can fine tune it.

This plugin for winamp does what you are talking about. It automatically moved the volume up and down to maintain and constant volume. It works quite well, but I'm not sure how much you can fine tune it.

I've used normalizer plugins in both XMMS and Winamp. They aren't perfect, but they're generally alright.

Check out http://volnorm.sourceforge.net/ for an XMMS plugin, or one of the many Winamp plugins here.

Thanks for the suggestions. The RDC is a good idea, but as you mention, I'm not positive that it can handle the framerate of video. You could also use the laptop as a RDC server and transmit the audio to the client/desktop - not sure if that works well, either. Still, it seems like the only viable solution that isn't platform specific.

The outplug stacker is interesting, although I don't see how it helps solving the issue - you need another plugin that facilitates transmitting the audio over ethernet and reproducing it on a target computer. The stacker simply enables you to send it somewhere and listen to it locally at the same time. Still, I never knew such ethernet tunneling plugins existed for Winamp - that said, I don't own any standalone device, but a desktop computer should be able to look like one to Winamp. The output stacker plugins were in fact removed from Winamps DB, under a ban of Streamrippers, see discussion here and here. Somebody was nice enough to post it to some web board (shame that /. doesn't allow file uploads ;).

The USB sound card doesn't really help in my situation - the laptop has got a perfectly fine (stereo only) audio out, and the internal sound chip is good enough for casual listening. But I don't want to connect it to my speakers every time I come home - the constant re-connecting, especially considering that my desktop is connected to them with something like 4 cables for surround audio would be extremely painful. And with wireless ethernet, the only cable that I grudgingly am willing to accept at home is a power cable.

I'm really kind of surprised there isn't an elegant solution already - I always figure it's a problem many people would like solved. But then again maybe that's what you always think about your own problems. :)

Thanks for the suggestions. The RDC is a good idea, but as you mention, I'm not positive that it can handle the framerate of video. You could also use the laptop as a RDC server and transmit the audio to the client/desktop - not sure if that works well, either. Still, it seems like the only viable solution that isn't platform specific.

The outplug stacker is interesting, although I don't see how it helps solving the issue - you need another plugin that facilitates transmitting the audio over ethernet and reproducing it on a target computer. The stacker simply enables you to send it somewhere and listen to it locally at the same time. Still, I never knew such ethernet tunneling plugins existed for Winamp - that said, I don't own any standalone device, but a desktop computer should be able to look like one to Winamp. The output stacker plugins were in fact removed from Winamps DB, under a ban of Streamrippers, see discussion here and here. Somebody was nice enough to post it to some web board (shame that /. doesn't allow file uploads ;).

The USB sound card doesn't really help in my situation - the laptop has got a perfectly fine (stereo only) audio out, and the internal sound chip is good enough for casual listening. But I don't want to connect it to my speakers every time I come home - the constant re-connecting, especially considering that my desktop is connected to them with something like 4 cables for surround audio would be extremely painful. And with wireless ethernet, the only cable that I grudgingly am willing to accept at home is a power cable.

I'm really kind of surprised there isn't an elegant solution already - I always figure it's a problem many people would like solved. But then again maybe that's what you always think about your own problems. :)

Try RadioToolBox for php based or mod_mp3 for apache module based.

Or if you can write some php code, it's not so hard to write one up yourself.

Just list the files in a music directory and create playlist(pls or m3u) upon click.

http://forums.winamp.com/attachment.php?postid=159 3266

Honestly, why is it so hard for people who post to add "<URL:" and ">" to the links they put up?

Cripes, people, how hard is it to type after?

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zsalMvFLX6QJ: www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php%3Fid%3D86033+wi namp+output+stacker+plugin&hl=en&client=firefox-a
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=3 5627
http://forums.winamp.com/attachment.php?postid=159 3266

Or even better, <a href=" before and ">A description of your link</a> after.

this is the PULLED page
where it can be found NOW
this contains the plugin

Cripes, people, how hard is it to type after?

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zsalMvFLX6QJ: www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php%3Fid%3D86033+wi namp+output+stacker+plugin&hl=en&client=firefox-a
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=3 5627
http://forums.winamp.com/attachment.php?postid=159 3266

Or even better, <a href=" before and ">A description of your link</a> after.

this is the PULLED page
where it can be found NOW
this contains the plugin

Cripes, people, how hard is it to type after?

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zsalMvFLX6QJ: www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php%3Fid%3D86033+wi namp+output+stacker+plugin&hl=en&client=firefox-a
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=3 5627
http://forums.winamp.com/attachment.php?postid=159 3266

Or even better, <a href=" before and ">A description of your link</a> after.

this is the PULLED page
where it can be found NOW
this contains the plugin

Cripes, people, how hard is it to type after?

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zsalMvFLX6QJ: www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php%3Fid%3D86033+wi namp+output+stacker+plugin&hl=en&client=firefox-a
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=3 5627
http://forums.winamp.com/attachment.php?postid=159 3266

Or even better, <a href=" before and ">A description of your link</a> after.

this is the PULLED page
where it can be found NOW
this contains the plugin

I don't listen to pop music (only Enigma, Eminem and a few others) - and I don't have the bandwidth to pull it off Napster. But how hard it is to really hook up something like Mp3 Recoder and do this with WMplayer (I record webcasts from clients).

Seems that many people don't know about this, but the latest versions of Winamp include something called the "media library", including a list of live television like streams. Nullsoft has pitched the NSV format, which works awfully well -- it is really mp3 audio plus VP3 for video. If this was improved to use ogg vorbis for audio and say ogg theora for video (theora is based on VP3), it would use even less bandwidth. My point is, if you browse through the media library you will quickly see that TV is gonna die soon. Streaming video works very well, there are already lots of streams available and by utilizing peer to peer to overcome bandwidth constraints we're going to see a heluvalot more public streams out there, with lots of interesting content.

Regular television offers us next to nothing, and everyone knows it.

This is a tangental question.

And, the killer, I want this tool to be open sourced on Linux, eliminating tools like WinAMP.

> They are loaded and indexed in an unusual fashion
True
> When iTunes copies the file onto the iPod, it does all this magic transparently, but it doesn't change the format.
Could you explain then why the file copied (I believe converted) to the iPod couldn't be played by WinAMP or VLC?

Here's my list of spyware/adware free apps, in no particular order:

Crap Cleaner - Cleans temp files, cookies, etc
P2P + Codec Packs - Kazaa Lite Resurrection, K-Lite Codec Packs, QuickTime Alternative, Real Alternative
Gmail Notifier - System tray icon that checks your google mail
Winamp - Media Player
Open Office - Office Suite
AbiWord - Word Processing
GIMP - Image Editor
Paint.Net - Image Editor
AVG Antivirus - Decent free antivirus
Everest Home - System diagnostics and benchmarking solution
Daemon Tools - CD/DVD emulator
Zone Alarm - The free version is a decent firewall
CWShredder - Removes CoolWeb adware

When you install winamp an option to install a component into the machine's MBR may have been chosen in the default full install. This enables a WinAmp [Boot] Agent to load itself before calling the ntldr, thus allowing the machine to be configured to play a MIDI, AU or MP3 stream at the splash while the machine boots. Also, there was a security advisory for WinAmp 5.03, if that has anything to do with it.

Cheers, HTH

Does anybody else out there see the irony of Winamp.com featuring Fatboy Slim's Slash Dot Dash video on the day of getting slashdotted?

for me. Once I tried foobar2000 there was no going back.

Features
* Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
* Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC
* Audio formats supported through official addons: FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR, 7-ZIP & ZIP archives
* Full Unicode support on Windows NT
* ReplayGain support
* Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
* Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
* Highly customizable playlist display
* Customizable keyboard shortcuts
* Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)

If you've ever tried writing a plugin for Winamp you'll fall in love with the fb2k SDK, its like heaven compared to the other player. ;-)