Gibber-gabber
Hey Rob! About media players and why Winamp is so cool
beingzoe about 4 years ago

While I wrote this for Rob, it might be useful to a whole lot of other people out there. In this story I will be discussing my preferred media players and cd ripping software along with some of the concepts involved. All material is PC-centric, linux and apple users may have different and better solutions (but itunes isn’t one of them).

• Winamp My preferred MUSIC media player (the best in my opinion).
• VLC video player My preferred video player.
• CDEX audio extractor aka a CD ripper, but it so much more.

Choosing a media player and cd ripping software is not always as easy it seems. There are lot of considerations that the neophyte might not even be aware of to consider.

audio player

For me the biggest strength of a media player, especially for music, is the quality of it’s library functionality. Every modern media player is going to have play controls, playlist functionality, cool visual fx, and third party services like purchasing music and acquiring album art. And while they will all have some kind of library to browse and sort your music, not all media libraries are the same.

For me and my friends, we tend to have so much music that the limited browsing and sorting abilities of Windows Media Player or iTunes leave something to be desired. For most folks I am sure this less of an issue, but as your collection grows, so will your desire to search your collection.

Winamp excels at this. They have a superior library functionality to view all artists, albums, and songs with ease. Whether you are viewing a single artist, several artists or your whole collection you can always search what is selected to fine tune the results. And even with over 3000 artists, 5000 albums, and 50000 tracks it does this with ease and grace.

The latest version of Winamp goes even further and seems to improve upon all features and appearance.

I am big on using and supporting open source solutions whenever possible. Unfortunately Winamp is not open source, but on the plus side, they are a hip community oriented company with features and functionality before profit. More importantly they are not riding the DRM fanaticism that Windows Media Player or iTunes is on. It supports rights management for music, but is not contributing to the big brother totalitarian state that Apples iTunes, Windows Vista, and the record and movie companies are trying to move towards. While the average user probably isn’t paying much attention to the DRM movement or the implications that DRM is going to have on the future of digital media, it is always an important consideration when choosing solutions.

Video player

While Winamp is a superior audio player that bills itself as video player, I have never enjoyed the video interface (thought I will probably be giving it another chance with the new version of Winamp 5.5).

Just like an all in one DVD/VCR surround sound combo package isn’t going to be as good as a component system, the same is often true of software. The devoted specialty application is often going to be superior.

For video I use VLC (video lan) player. It isn’t the prettiest software, but it is open source and gives you the most control over video playback. Since I have a projector at home in place of a television this is even more important as I may want to adjust the viewing quality depending on the source and VLC excels at this.

VLC also offers easy ways to control and fix audio syncing issues that happen from time to time as well as many advanced features that can improve the quality and enjoyment of your videos.

VLC admittedly is a little more complex and less fancy than other media players, but the control it gives you is worth it.

CD ripper / Audio extraction

My biggest complaint about the cd ripping features in most media players is that they tend to default to whatever proprietary (not open source) format they are pushing for their own gain. This only contributes to lessened compatibility, getting locked into a particular product, and the DRM nightmare that is growing.

However, most media players do have facilities to control the settings and choose the format and do the job just fine, it just bothers me that the default settings are often, in my opinion, not necessarily the best for the person using it. This applies both to format (e.g. mp3, wmv, etc…) and quality of compression being used.

So extending on the component system analogy I mentioned for the video player/music players applies the same for cd ripping.

I use CDEX, which is an audio extraction tool, built for converting or extracting audio from one source to another. This translates for most people into converting from compact disc to mp3 (or some other compressed audio format). And CDEX excels at this. And it accomplishes this with high quality and control.

Like VLC this program is definitely more advanced in it’s use and will have a small learning curve, but I always view that as a plus, because if you understand what it is doing and how to use it, you are also going to understand more about your computer and how it works. So often people don’t bother to learn the most basic aspects of their computer and it’s operating system. The concept of file formats are entirely lost on most folks and thus it is impossible to even explain the difference between a wmv, mp3, and an ogg vorbis file.

I won’t get into the ins and outs of using CDEX or all of these programs in this post, but don’t hestitate to respond if you have questions or comments on anything covered here.

Hope this helps both Rob and everybody else.

Oh and Rob: One other thing for the record, while I detest iTunes, and even speak badly about the iPod from time to time, the iPod is a superior music appliance, but it is the intrinsic relationship to iTunes and proprietary DRM related garbage that bothers me. There is no denying that the iPod, like most Apple products are sublime both in design and functionality.