Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Winamp

Someday I hope to hit Steve Albini with a brick

dong_resin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:43:48 -0800

Is there a thing which works like RePlay Gain, but instead of volume tags it makes perceived but non-destructive embedded EQ settings? Failing that, is there a "set EQ setting per track" plug-in or 3rd party app for Winamp?

How to physically speed up MP3s for CD burning?

querty — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:28:05 -0800

How can I speed up the tempo of some MP3 files and burn them onto a CD for faster playback? For audio books / podcasts, I play them in Winamp with the Pacemaker plugin setting the tempo 20% ~ 30% faster as I can comprehend much faster speaking.

How can I do this for off-computer use? Specifically, make an MP3 disc to play in my car. I'm sure the MP3 file would have to be physically altered before it is burned onto a CD, so what tools are out there that will do this?

Here is one answer I found on the Winamp forum but it is not a viable solution because some the audio books I have are over 12 hours long.

What is the best old version of Winamp?

SouthCNorthNY — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:10:32 -0800

What is the best old version of Winamp? I like the Music Library feature, but it seems like the new versions run slower. If you know of any other resource-light mp3 players, please post them as well. The software will be used on an 1.33Gz Intel Atom Silverthorne.

Why won't my iPod play these particular tracks?

Joe Beese — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:14:12 -0800

Why won't my iPod play these particular tracks? I torrented an mp3 audiobook, added it to my WinAmp library, made extensive changes to the tags, then sent the tracks to my iPod Classic. I know the tracks were successfully sent because I can play those tracks from the iPod with WinAmp - even after deleting those tracks from the WinAmp library. But if I eject the iPod and try to play the tracks from the iPod itself, the playback remains stuck at 0:00 and won't progress.

I've tried deleting those tracks from the iPod and then reloading them. I've also tried resetting the iPod. Neither helped.

The problem seems to affect only those tracks. I have since added other mp3s to Winamp, sent them to the iPod, and played them from the iPod with no problem.

limitless playlist

NGnerd — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:12:34 -0800

Let's say one where to have over 100,000 songs they wanted to play randomly from a playlist, if Winamp has a 90,000 song playlist limit (approximate) before it crashes; what other software would you suggest that would allow for such an immense list while not stealing all your resources (sorry itunes!) So the idea of a terabyte gets me thinking, with an average 4mb song one could achieve over 100,000 songs on a drive...but how would you play them? Any large playlist folks out there have a suggestion?

Can't Rip CDs Except With iTunes

briank — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:56:41 -0800

I have several different applications on my PC, all of which can rip CDs: winamp, nero, dbpoweramp, windows media player, and itunes. Suddenly, itunes is the only one which will actually rip a CD, but I hate itunes and don't want to use it. Any suggestions as to why none of these other apps will rip CDs anymore but itunes will? Better yet, any suggestions of how to rectify the situation?

Did Winamp kill my iPod?

Joe Beese — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:24:51 -0800

Did Winamp kill my iPod? My wife handed down to me an iPod (3rd gen, I think) that she had managed from her PC using iTunes. When iTunes became irritatingly slow on my several years old XP machine, I switched to Winamp. I continued using Winamp when I replaced that machine with a 64-bit Vista a few months ago.

In my iTunes days, the iPod had needed restoring from iTunes a few times - but it eventually settled down into reliable functioning. Then not long ago I noticed that Winamp wasn't successfully removing some tracks from the iPod. About a week ago, the iPod would freeze in the middle of a track for no apparent reason and require a reset. Then it began ignoring attempts to scroll to the middle of a track and kept playing the track from the beginning. Last night I downloaded iTunes 8 for 64-bit machines for the sole purpose of performing another restore. Then as I was loading the iPod up again from Winamp, it soon gave me an error about the iPod being full [which I highly doubt] - an error that crashed me hard enough to require a power-button restart. [Which, for all the horror stories about Vista, is a rarer occurrence now than it used to be.] Now even a reset only brings up a "sad iPod" face.

My question is whether using a non-iTunes program to manage the iPod contributed to its demise. This comment gave me pause. Would it be needlessly paranoid to switch back to iTunes for the iPod Classic 6th Gen that's replacing the old player? Or sensibly cautious?

Assuming the latter, how best to avoid this? With what, in retrospect, appears a justified suspicion that Apple wouldn't let me escape so easily, after I switched to Winamp, I continued using the "iTunes Music" folder that iTunes had created to store all my shit. If I just tell iTunes 8 to look for music in that "iTunes Music" folder, will it create its library without any unpleasant surprises?

Making Winamp's shuffle smarter

Bleusman — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 06:32:21 -0800

Is there any way to make Winamp's shuffle smarter, i.e. closer to iTunes? I don't like using iTunes. It's got a huge memory footprint and very few features. One thing I do like, however, is its awesomely customizable shuffle. You can remove tracks from shuffling without removing them from your library. You can set exactly how random you want your shuffle to be. You can see what songs are coming up, and set them to skip in advance if you wish.

Why is it that Winamp has nothing close to this? When I'm indecisive, I know what I don't want to listen to, usually, and the features of iTunes let me not listen to it. I have a LOT of tracks by The Mountain Goats, who are good in small doses, but start to wear on you when you hear them every other song. There has to be some extension that gives me this control in Winamp. So I turn to you, MeFi: is there one?

Syncing podcasts to an iPod using two different computers

tapeguy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:41:39 -0800

How can I sync podcasts to my iPod from my main PC and my laptop? I've a 5G iPod, which I manually manage using iTunes 8 on my main Windows XP PC. I've also got a brand new netbook laptop, which also runs Windows XP.

I'd like to be able to download podcasts whilst away from home using the laptop and sync them to my iPod, without wiping the rest of them (or my music) already on the player. Then, on my PC at home, be able to download and sync only 'new' shows that haven't already downloaded.

Would it be as simple as installing iTunes on the laptop and subscribing to the same shows in its podcast library? Some googling found this forum post, but there didn't seem to be a definitive answer.

Alternatively, is there a Winamp plugin that could achieve the same effect? Do the iPod management plugins for Winamp also manage podcasts? I'm not dead set on using iTunes to manage my iPod on my main PC, so being able to set up Winamp for a music library, podcasts and manual Ipod syncing on two computers would be ideal.

I would preferably like to be able to do this without installing iTunes on the laptop - which doesn't have enough disk space to hold my entire music library.

Google hasn't been much help, although it did bring up this previous - though crucially different - Ask Mefi question.

I feel like the Flash at a disco.

Shepherd — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:05:07 -0800

Why is MP3 playback sssuuudddeennllyy gggrriiinnddiinngg doowwnnnn? Until about six months ago, give or take, I could listen to MP3s on my computer pretty much regardless of whatever else I was doing. I did a pretty routine wipe everything/reinstall everything (XP Pro, upgrading from SP2 to 3 after the reinstall) back in May.

Recently, the MP3 player has started to grrriiinnnddd when I do pretty much anything on the computer. I've gone from WinAmp to QCD to Billy to try to minimize the program's CPU "footprint," but it persists. The songs start to stretch out, like HAL at the end of 2001 but with more digital artifacting. The MP3 players never crash, but stutter and grind to a halt, then slowly get up to speed, then start staggering again.

This happens when I open a program, or a document, or save something, or copy a file from one folder to another, or check my e-mail, or load a Web site like MetaFilter, etc. etc. Pretty much everything other than typing or moving the mouse -- and sometimes it just starts to spontaneously stutter as well.

I have an up-to-date Avast!, Ad-Aware and ZoneAlarm (free versions of all) showing no viruses, malware, etc. on my computer.

I've used the Ctrl-Alt-Del resource manager to see what's hogging resources, but the open programs like Firefox, Celtx, Thunderbird, etc. all clock in about 25K for CPU resources, and this "grinding" often happens when I'm running at about 50% of CPU in use.

Nothing on my computer has changed in terms of hardware since before and after this big reinstall and the consequent MP3 grind. No major software changes, either. It's really danged irritating. Is it SP3? General resource creep making all the programs that used to not kill my system resources suck up all my system resources? The difference between six months ago and now is extraordinary: I used to be able to just listen to music while doing whatever, and now everything makes playback stutter and stall.

I've reached the limits of my knowledge. Insight, folks?

Downsampling to an ipod

woolylambkin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:49:31 -0800

I'm looking for a program that lets me do on-the-fly downsampling to my ipod. Right now I'm still using my trusty 4Gb Ipod mini so I like to downsample my mp3's from 320kbs/lossless to 160kbs so that I can get a few extra albums on. I don't believe Itunes or Winamp has a plug-in to allow downsampling during transfers but I might not have looked hard enough. Right now I'm using a trial version of Sveta portable audio but it seems really cumbersome to me considering that I have to find a folder album and wait for that one folder to transfer before I can even start to look for another folder to queue up which means that I'm stuck transferring one album at a time over the course of a night instead of being able to queue up everything at one time and then just letting it run over night. I also can't seem to get Sveta to work with some of my media files which is also frustrating me though I'm sure that's more my fault than Sveta's. (Then there's the fact that you can't effectively run Sveta in a window which aggravates me to no end because I can't stand any window being full screen [I don't even watch dvd's at full screen on my pc].)

Am I just Sveta wrong? Or does anyone have a program that makes downsampling a breeze? Or should I bite the bullet and make a separate directory of 160kbs mp3's for ease of use?

iTunes, iPod, Winamp, Zune... let's call the whole thing off

Muffpub — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:35:44 -0800

Zune, iTunes, and Winamp: is an (apparent) lack of support a deal-breaker? I'm a PC and Winamp user trying to decide between the 80gb iPod and the 80gb Zune. I can't figure out from the internet whether there is at least limited flexibility (3rd party software, hacks) that would allow me to continue using Winamp with a Zune or not, as opposed to the iPod winamp plugin that I hear about. Plus, I may switch back to iTunes one day if I buy a Mac in the future, and I'm having trouble finding out from Google if a Zune would work with iTunes either.

So does this mean no Zune for me? The reviews made it sound like such a refreshing change from the iPod, but I'm not sure if I can handle all these possible compatibility issues. If anyone has experiences to share I'd be grateful...

Why won't my mp3s and videos play?

champthom — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:48:35 -0800

Why won't my mp3s and videos play on my computer...at all? The other day, I load up Winamp to listen to an mp3, except nothing happens. It still stays at the 00:00 mark. I figure maybe it's because I need to update to the new Winamp so I upgrade but still, nothing happens and the mp3 won't play.

I try playing the mp3 in VLC, Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, and iTunes but no luck in any of them. In Windows Media Center (I'm running Vista), I got an error message saying it's an "unknown audio error." I have a similar problem with videos as they won't play in Winamp or Media Player.

There's nothing wrong with my speakers or anything like that, as I still get sound just fine (like I have no problem getting sound from Flash video).

I haven't toyed around with any of my codecs and frankly, I'm not sure what the problem is, especially since they won't play on any program, and frankly, I'm out of ideas.

How do I shot dsp

cellphone — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:57:50 -0800

Does anyone know a good linux/freebsd dsp plugin besides the sc_trans one from nullsoft? It does what I need, which is take a list of mp3s and shuffle them, but it won't play nice with id3 tags. I just need a commandline dsp plugin that'll shuffle a bunch of mp3s and send the title (based on id3) to the shoutcast daemon. Any ideas? The point of all this is to get around needing to have a real copy of winamp streaming crap to shoutcast all the time. Thank you in advance!

Windows Vista mp3 playback errors

Ikazuchi — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:07:46 -0800

I've installed MS Vista on my shiny new computer and everything works. Except mp3 playback. Whenever I play an mp3 file, be it in Winamp, MediaMonkey, or Media Player 11, songs 'skip' and screech every few seconds, mostly during louder or more complex passages, and as a vast majority of my collection is heavy metal and rock, that is almost all of the time. I've done Google searches and everything keeps pointing to turning off sound enhancements in the Vista Audio control panel. I've tried that and I've even tried updating the bios of my nice little Shuttle xpc. I've updated the Realtek drivers. I'm at a complete loss. Has anyone either run into this and fixed it or know of a solution?

Why can't I see song titles of tunes streamed to me by internet radio stations in Winamp?

bitterkitten — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:56:02 -0800

Why can't I get song titles to display when I listen to streams as a user in Winamp (for pc)? Googled like mad, checked Winamp forums..most of the info pertains to people who are dishing out the streams, not playing them back. Right now I'm using the brand-spankin' newest version, but I've had this problem for years, I guess, with various versions. Even totally clean installs on other pc's get this result, with a variety of streams (different stations, countries, you name it - all I see is the ip address of the station, ever!).

Surely this is configurable by the Shoutcasters, and I figure they can't ALL be opting to turn this off (or not turn it on). Don't see any setting in Winamp that I can adjust to make this happen.

As an aside.. I have used the Streamripper plugin in the past to record streams, and it seems to be able to identify tunes with little to no problem. Hm.

Thanks!

Why's my old school winamp broke?

Sonic_Molson — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:34:24 -0800

My winamp (v2.95) has just started to do something strange; it's creating id3 tags on it's own! For the last few days I've noticed that some mp3's in winamp are now appearing in this format: " - Artist - Title" compared to the previous (and desired) "Artist - Title"

None of my mp3's have(..or had) id3 tags.

But I noted that these files with the weird naming are files that have an id3 tag, and removed the tags and just thought that I had missed them in the first place...until it started constantly happening, and then I realized that *as soon* as a song is played, the id3 tag is generatated, and then the song takes on the annoying " - Artist - Title" format.

What's causing this? I searched through the options for winamp and found nothing that would suggest to this, I also haven't changed any options myself and have been using this same version of winamp for months.

Audio File Sequencing

Raybun — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:01:34 -0800

How do players such as Winamp or Media Player choose the sequence that they use to play MP3 files? I have classical MP3 files and recorded books that must be played in order. These players look at something very different from the way that they have been arranged (and numbered) in File Manager. Can the ID3v1 ID3v2 tags be used to control the playback sequence? I play these files on three separate computers plus my car radio via a flash drive and do not want the hassle of creating separate play lists. I cannot create play lists with my car radio. I am using, and much prefer, Winamp 5.094

Make Winamp work for me

schroedinger — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:13:27 -0800

Winamp playlist help. I have a bunch of playlists in Winamp, but frequent re-organization of my music directory has broken all the links. Is there a way for Winamp to find the new locations of the files so I don't have to re-assign hundreds of songs, or, barring that, is there a smarter music library program that will do the work and can import Winamp playlists?

Window fonts growing up.

Sonic_Molson — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 10:56:24 -0800

Windows font size messed up in specific applications. Screenshot and For the last few weeks I have been dealing with a rather annoying problem, the fonts in several applications have "grown". I have a picture here:

clicky

The applications shown are winamp preferences, ws_ftp preferences and Editplus2 preferences.

I know the font is not suppose to be that large because I'm very familiar with these applications, and well, the text doesn't fit the size of the windows in a lot of cases.

The only thing that I installed around the time this happened was Adobe Photoshop CS2, if that's any clue.

Windows XP SP2, Nvidia Quadro 280.

Thanks to all who reply.

How to convert WinAmp playlists for iTunes?

cowbellemoo — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:16:44 -0800

iTunesFilter: Easy way to convert WinAmp playlists for use in iTunes? Without a plug-in? I have a shoutcast radio station based off a playlist (in WinAmp) which I update exhaustively every few weeks. That runs fine, but when it comes time to fill my iPod, I'd love to be able to take the whole playlist with me. I've tried transferring files through WinAmp, but nothing seems to transfer. I've also tried this plug-in for WinAmp which seems to be out of date and nonfunctional:

http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=139248

My WinAmp is the actual internet radio server, so I'd prefer to convert the file rather than be straining WinAmp itself to do anything. If I can convert and open the playlist in iTunes and drop it onto my iPod that'd be great.

If no one knows an easy way, I could try and form playlists in iTunes first and then convert to WinAmp for the radio update, but I just did my radio overhaul and I'd love to fill my iPod now without duplicating my work.

(Gory details: Win XP, newest iTunes and WinAmp, iPod is 30gig video, playlists are around 40 hours/500 songs)

Display that tune

mezzanayne — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:56:01 -0800

I want my Windows screensaver to display the artist and title of the song that Winamp is currently playing. I'm in the process of putting together a stand-alone media player/music server and would like to have the current Winamp song information (from the IDv3 tag, if possible) displayed via screensaver.

I've searched for something OOTB but my Googlefu has failed me. Does such a screensaver exist? I know that Winamp offers an SDK so I could try to code one myself but I thought that I'd query the hive mind first.

My music is in ruins!

rosswald — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:41:12 -0800

Having read this thread, I downloaded several *awesome* box sets... but then I download Itunes which resulted in this annoying problem. What can I do?! Basically I just hate having eighty trillion artists listed when half of them only have one or two songs. I know that to find the boxsets you have to sort by albums, but this still frustrates the hell out of me, and seems counter-intuitive. Also note: I have an iPod, despite being a former winAmp user. Oh, and if an automated solution is possible for untangling this mess..... well then, an extra helping of desert for you! Thanks people!

Want smart playlists without iTunes

Orange Goblin — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:53:04 -0800

How can I get smart playlists in Winamp, or any other media player besides iTunes? I really like the idea of smart playlists, but I hate pretty much everything else about iTunes - the interface, the way the music is managed, the fact that I don't have an iPod and don't want to buy music online, the list goes on. Until recently I was using Winamp 2, so I downloaded Winamp 5 because it seemed to have what I want, but it doesn't. You can make smart playlists, but they don't auto-update - you have to constantly click on them to make them your current playlist. Is there anyway to automate this, or can another media player give me the same functionality?

What is the command string or path for forcing processing of local loop audio in Winamp?

loquacious — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:15:33 -0800

What is the command / string / path for piping local audio through Winamp? IE, I want Winamp to run whatever is being output through my soundcard, Multi-media soundsystem or DirectSound as wave through it's DSPs. I remember that it is something like \\: or :\ or something, and that you input this value into the "open location" dialog. People use this function to broadcast other sources via Shoutcast, or to run audio streams through various audio or video DSP plugins. (Say, DFX audio enhancer, AVS visualizations, diskWriter for writing out streams, or, as above the Shoutcast broadcast plugin.)