Alternatives to Winamp

[Funk]

Been using Winamp for years with no complaints at all. However, it's started crackling and stuttering badly and there appears to be no fix. The Winamp forums are not very forthcoming. Suffice to say I've been through every single thing I can think it would possibly be, and to no avail.

So can anyone recommend a nice, lightweight, good-looking audio player that's also a complete format-we when it comes to things like FLAC, ape etc?

Many thanks!

[zac510]

Seems odd that the software would be to blame for this.

[Funk]

Doesn't happen on Windows Media Player or playing back in Media Player Classic. Neither are particularly neat to have running in the background, and I like the customisation of the interface on Winamp; it runs discretely at the top of my screen.

I've tried all manner of driver updates, CPU prioritisation etc - no dice.

[blank]

Have you tried Songbird or VLC?

[Funk]

Nope, will take a look. VLC I've used for video but not heard of Songbird. Was also going to have a look at Foobar.

[lestag]

Funk said:

Doesn't happen on Windows Media Player or playing back in Media Player Classic. Neither are particularly neat to have running in the background, and I like the customisation of the interface on Winamp; it runs discretely at the top of my screen.

I've tried all manner of driver updates, CPU prioritisation etc - no dice.

Just in case you don't know (unlikely) there is the windows media player toolbar that runs in the taks bar when media player is minimised

[Funk]

lestag said:

Funk said:

Doesn't happen on Windows Media Player or playing back in Media Player Classic. Neither are particularly neat to have running in the background, and I like the customisation of the interface on Winamp; it runs discretely at the top of my screen.

I've tried all manner of driver updates, CPU prioritisation etc - no dice.

Just in case you don't know (unlikely) there is the windows media player toolbar that runs in the taks bar when media player is minimised

I had a look for that, but I'm on Win7 and WMP seems like a stripped-down version on here..

[lestag]

Funk said:

lestag said:

Funk said:

Doesn't happen on Windows Media Player or playing back in Media Player Classic. Neither are particularly neat to have running in the background, and I like the customisation of the interface on Winamp; it runs discretely at the top of my screen.

I've tried all manner of driver updates, CPU prioritisation etc - no dice.

Just in case you don't know (unlikely) there is the windows media player toolbar that runs in the taks bar when media player is minimised

I had a look for that, but I'm on Win7 and WMP seems like a stripped-down version on here..

a quick google , looks like you have to downgrade to wmp11
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-get-windows-media-play...
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/15888-windows...

now of course if you have wmp pinned to the task bar and hover over it

[Rusty Arches]

If you like a simple player with no fluff, but the ability to completely customise it: http://www.foobar2000.org/

The only time Winamp every crackled with me was because it output sound was running through software rather than direct sound out, also your buffer might be too small. (Plugins > Output)

[Funk]

Thanks for the recommendations so far folks, i'll be downloading those apps tonight to play with. Re. using the soundcard by name in Winamp rather than 'primary sound device' that's already done as well as playing about with read-ahead buffers etc. Selecting the soundcard in Winamp also brought huge gains in quality too.

The system shouldn't be struggling; it's an i7 860, 4gb, 512gb 9600GT gfx, 128mb Creative Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty X-Fi.. it's also only Winamp that it does it with.

Edited by Funk on Wednesday 24th March 09:31

[plg101]

Funk said:

Thanks for the recommendations so far folks, i'll be downloading those apps tonight to play with. Re. using the soundcard by name in Winamp rather than 'primary sound device' that's already done as well as playing about with read-ahead buffers etc. Selecting the soundcard in Winamp also brought huge gains in quality too.

The system shouldn't be struggling; it's an i7 860, 4gb, 512gb 9600GT gfx, 128mb Creative Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty X-Fi.. it's also only Winamp that it does it with.

Edited by Funk on Wednesday 24th March 09:31

Seeing as Winamp ran happily on machines with a 100th the power of that, it's unlikely...

Any beta drivers installed or any other software running in parallel?

[Dave^]

I use foobar, uses very little resources... (Currently 2,568k!)

I didn't bother with any customising, just straight out of the box...

You just need a plugin for last.fm and another one to scrobble... job done!

[Mr_Yogi]

Another vote for Foobar2000, the interface is very flexible, especially with the ui_columns plugin.

[killsta]

iTunes?

[Funk]

killsta said:

iTunes?

I swear I will cut you.

[Funk]

Well after MUCH arsing about with everything tonight, I *think* I've found the problem. I downloaded Foobar and was still getting the same issue (weird it didn't present in WMP). So NOT a Winamp issue after all..

So what the hell was it..? After much internet-sleuthery, uninstalling, reinstalling, rebooting and such, I determined that it appears to be a shoddily-written Creative driver under W7. There's a guy who goes by the username 'Daniel_K' on the Creative forums who's single-handedly re-written most of Creative's drivers in an effort to try and help people out; Creative were refusing to recognise there was an issue.

What thanks did Daniel get? A lawsuit from Creative. Not to mention that he's fixed literally thousands of peoples' machines for FREE, and in plain sight on Creative's own forum. This isn't some kind of skulduggery, this was genuine intent to help where the company who make the damn things would not. Anyway, after making a LOT of public noise about it, Creative have backed down and he continues to update their stty drivers. Top man.

The soundcard wasn't cheap when I bought it, around £180 iirc. I'm not prepared to write off a perfectly good soundcard just because Creative can't sort their drivers out in W7. I'm now running Daniel's patched-up versions and so far - touch wood - everything sounds brilliant again. Let's hope that really was the problem and it's now fixed. I did also suspect that something on the Windows side may have a memory leak as it seemed to get worse after I'd been out for the day leaving the PC idling, only time will tell with that. I just hope that when I fire up the tunes in the morning, it's all still clear and crisp...!

Now I need to go and apologise on the Winamp forums for saying their software wasn't working. Actually, I'll do that tomorrow. I need bed now.

Edited by Funk on Thursday 25th March 03:22

[Funk]

**..Update..**

It wasn't the graphics card after all; when the problem still presented, I dug deeper and decided to take a look at the DPC latency. I was getting horrific spikes which coincided with the glitches in the sound:



I started working through the Device Manager, turning devices off and on again. I got to the Realtek Gigabit NIC Controller and turned it off:



Hmm. Wonder what's causing that then... Downloaded the latest driver for the NIC from Asus and installed. Same problem. Then I spot uTorrent running in the background and killed it. No latency issues. So the bottom line is that uTorrent is causing issues. I don't use it all that much, but may try another torrent program to see whether it's any better.

So; uTorrent ruined my audio. At least I know what it was now, it was driving me insane.

Edited by Funk on Saturday 27th March 15:50

[Rusty Arches]

What an odd problem

[Funk]

Certainly had me confuzzled for a few days..!