Winamp does everything you’ve just listed. You need to get Winamp 5 though. If you’re still on Winamp 2 it won’t do video without a plugin. And it can rip CDs, although the free version rips quite slowly, but I’m sure with a little searching you’ll find a way to get a hold of the full version.
I third the iTunes suggestion. I love it, it is extremely intuitive, robust, rips CDs into a number of different formats/compressions, handles audiobooks etc.
Personally I didn’t like iTunes. The ID3 support for international charactersets was shoddy, it took up too much screen real estate, and it just generally didn’t sit well with me. Nice features and pretty GUI though. Just not my taste. And unless they can get the ID3 thing working properly for CJK codesets I won’t be trying it again.
Try out jetaudio, it supports pretty much any format of audio or video; even streaming realplayer, quicktime internet radio etc. Personally I hate realplayer so it’s damn good. It’s got a much lower resource drain than other players, very stable, had intergrated CD ripping, CD burning and file conversion.
Only two downsides:
Whilst it supports skins, skin support is pretty slim. I just have it sitting in the icon tray.
CD ripping and file conversion is only TO free formats such as OGG and WAV although it converts from mp3 etc. This is only in the free version of Jetaudio, if you register it then it fully supports mp3, aac etc.
Just to throw another choice in the mix - - Nero 6 Ultra.
Its simple and feature rich.
I have been relying on my computer for music since I haven’t fully unpacked in my 11 months here.
I like all thew ones mentioned so far - iTunes, WinAmo(really nice) and Jet Audio.
But Nero 6 Ultra so far does everything they do and more.
It doesn’t have a video/tv viewer, but for music its very good.
For getting Chinese to work, you gotta convert the ID3 tags to Unicode. There are programs that do that: Chinese Rewriter for the Mac and I forgot what for Windows.
I currently use WinAmp 5. To clarify, I don’t need something that plays video.
I have problemns with winamp. It’s slow to start up and open the media library windows etc. Also the media library and playlist windows don’t seem good.
So for people who have used both - just what is better about iTunes (or worse).
I’ve used Winamp, iTunes, Napster to Go, and Musicmatch. There is nothing easier, simpler, more efficient, and less uncluttered than iTunes.
Some people don’t like it. That will always be the case. Apple’s design philosophy is to “take complex problems and make them usable for mere mortals.” So it won’t contain every feature ever invented but will have the most important things designed to be easier to use than any software ever created.
I like Itunes however I find it a bit system heavy and it can really lag when playing cds. If i put a cd in I usually open it with Windows Media Player.
true, iTunes does use more resources on the PC than Mac.
I’d really recommend just trying it out. It doesn’t hurt to play with the programs.
The most recent one I tried was Napster To Go. buying songs and trying to organize stuff with it. I can’t believe how bad it is. I don’t put up with bad interface design these days.
If you try iTunes, go to preferences and uncheck copy music to music folder. iTunes keeps music in \documents and settings\yourusername\my documents\my music\itunes… It will auto copy music you add to that folder. So uncheck it if you’re just trying it out. But if you decide to keep it, it’s nice it automatically organizes all your music by artist\album.
Really it doesn’t take a lot of time to try 'em all out. Try playslists, smart playlists, and CD burning. They’re very simple.
It’s very nice to create smart playlists, have them automatically based on criteria. Anything: playcount, genre, last played, rating. So I can have top 20 playlists, jazz or chinese playlists, 5 start rating playlists, anything you want based on any ID3 field or any other field iTunes uses.
Bri, I forget - what’s your computer like spec-wise? If it old and slow enough that WA5 is loading slowly on it, iTunes will probably cause it to crap itself as well. I tried out a few lightweight, free alternative media players a while back, I’ll see if I can dig up the details - they were generally much easier on the resources than the big name stuff, and ran pretty smoothly even on my old shitheap, which was a Celeron 2 400MHz with like 128M RAM.
As for the better/worse comparison - iTunes takes up too much screen real estate, sucks balls at handling Chinese tags for music, and felt too restricted to me. It does excel as an organizer though, and the playlist features are good. It also does CD ripping pretty well. WA5’s media library is a bit awkward to use, and I generally don’t bother with it (I have all my MP3s sorted by directory rather than having everything just lumped into one, so I don’t need any sort of organizer or library function anyway). If you run WA5 in Modern Mode (I think that’s what they call it) it eats a lot more system resources with unnecessary bells and whistles. In Classic Mode it’s better, although on a slower computer may still chug, the Windowshade mode with Always-on-top is excellent, and if you make playlists just by artist or album or directory, the drag-and-drop functionality on the playlist editor is outstanding (assuming you have things set up like me). It also handles Chinese/Japanese/Korean tags and filenames much better than pretty much any other media player I’ve used. The plugin ability for it is also great, and I’m sure if you look through the plugin section on their website there’ll be one that’ll do proper CD ripping.
As for others - Windows Media Player is tolerable, but resource heavy, bloated, and crippled. Sonique is bloated and a pain in the arse. MediaMatch Jukebox, I haven’t used that in a few years now IIRC, but I thought it was pretty much mindblowingly shit. RealPlayer is the spawn of Satan. Media Player Classic is good for video but a shitty choice for an audio player. MediaMonkey is passable, has good editing features, but is a little hefty overall. Foobar2000 is a reasonable player, but the playlist functionality is limited and the sorting function is bordering on arcane. Those are all I can remember right now, but I’ll see if I can find anything more from the depths.
Tetsuo, as for Chinese and iTunes, I said you need to convert tags to Unicode.
As for all other software, trying inserting pictures or tables into Word. Sure you can do it but it’s so far from as easy and managable than it needs to be. How much do you need to know Word to create a really nice looking document? It takes work. It’s easier in InDesign and Quark.
All software needs to change. You can disagree if you like.
Took my time about it, but I got iTunes a couple of days ago. I really like it. Much better than WinAmp IMO.
I really like the way it organises, and it seems very easy to use.
Tetsuo, you raised a couple of issues. Screenspace - I like it big so it’s not cluttered. WinAmp seemed to squashed. The minplayer’s perhaps a bit big, but up the top of the screen it doesn’t get in the way, and even if it does, I’ve got buttons on my FoxyTunes and on the keyboard, so I don’t even really need it up.
Chinese ID3 tags. I’m not sure what you’re saying. I had no problem putting Chinese characters onto the tags.
So, thanks for the recommendations guys, and I’ll add my vote to iTunes. I realised that I do about 95% of my music litening on my computer now, so organising my music has been good, and a half-decent pair of speakers was somthign I really should have done long before today. Now, I’m loving listening to it.
Bu Lai En, maybe it’s too late, but I recommend Musikcube. musikcube.com/
It has an interface sort of similar to iTunes, but without the bloat or having to install Quicktime. There are no skins, just a simple interface. Anyways, check it out if you’re not satisfied with iTunes, or want to compare.
WMP, Real Player, Quick Time, Winwap, etc, etc. How do you choose a media player? I’m used to WMP and it broke just recently. I got the newer version installed and fixed today and I’m happy with that. While googling my problems, I read about other players and I wonder what the differences are? What do you use and why? What is good about it?
I like WMP because I’m used to it, I got like 500 tunes in my library and it’s set as my default player so it’s easy to manage my new songs and my playlist. Am I losing on something?
bobepine
Note:(The poll is not great but I don’t know many media players)
