I’ve got a small collection of MP3’s, and I’ve recently decided to get back into the world of peer-to-peer file sharing (I’ll mention no program names - don’t want to get locked up here).
What I want to know is whether or not I should download Winamp (or any other MP3 player for that matter).
The program I’m using to download MP3s has a player but it’s nothing special.
Other than that I have Microsoft’s Media Player, but I’m not really all that pleased with it’s organizational capacities and procedures. On the other hand if Winamp is equally as clunky, then I’ll just stick with what I got.
But I would encourage you to get Winamp. It’s a very cool program, with decoding and encoding properties, neat skins, and awesome visual and audio effects if you know how to use the program right.
I love Winamp. It’s one of those nice little programs that does what it set out to do and does it right. It’s not bloatware, it’s not got a ton of bells and whistles (it has some, but they can be disabled) and other than an obnoxious habit of trying to take over all your media files when you first install (just uncheck everything but MP3) it’s almost transparent.
I have to second (or third, or whatever) the reccomendation. Winamp is a huge favorite of mine, because it runs in the background perfectly, and doesn’t take up too many system resources (unlike a certain Microsoft product I won’t name). When I play music, I don’t want to have to wait half an hour for the program to load it’s news-acquiring features. I WANT TO HEAR THE FREAKING SONG!
Let me throw in a “me too” I love Winamp. Works great and is small and unobtrusive. Check out Winamp.com too. The internet radio is really nice as well. No constant “buffering singnal” like Realplayer.
Speaking of P2P progams stay away from Swapnut and Kazaa. Both are spyware and download other hidden programs. I know Swapnut is a huge resource waster, not sure about Kazaa.
Let me throw in a plug for EMusic, it’s affiliated with Rolling Stone magazine. It is a pay site, $10 a month but all the artists get paid too. You can get some old and rare stuff you just can’t find anywhere else. I use it a lot and DL’ing is a piece of cake. You can do whole albums at once if you want.
Winamp is the shit. I’ve never looked to replace it once.
One caveat when you get it (and you will): it always seems to be running in the background. So, when you scandisk or defrag you’ll have to ctrl-alt-delete to stop this.
I have no idea what it does in the bckground; I have no idea if this happens to everybody. But that is my single beef with it.
Yeah, I got it. I was up until 2 o’clock in the morning last night, downloading music and skins. I’m easily amused.
It’s pretty cool. I like that I can add which directories I want to include in my play list. I hate that I can’t scroll through it like other Windows programs. When I put my cursor on the scroll bar and click, instead of moving down “one page” it goes to that point in the list. That makes it a little hard to navigate if I wnat to resort things.
But all in all I like it. Windows Media Player gets all jammed up with every wav, mp3 and whatever the hell else on my system. And I set up personalized playlists but that just clutters things up more, listing the same file in seeral places.
Now all I need is broadband so I can download a song in less than 20 minutes.
I don’t know who told you it only takes 20 seconds to download a song on broadband. I recently got RoadRunner (cable) and sometimes it takes me as long as 45 seconds to get the entire song.
I agree that WinAmp is the bombdiggity, but the only thing that it doesn’t do that I wish it did was rip CD’s/Cassettes/Records. I have a ton of old records I would love to make into CD’s. Perhaps someone knows of a program to do that?
OT: Jack, I am sure you will love WinAmp. It is the single most used program on my computer besides Internet Explorer.
Granted I’ve only been a Winamp user for about a day, but I think I’ve got it down. Here’s what I did …
I created a directory - “MP3 Library”. Within that directory I have two more directories - “These Tunes” (my top list, as it were) and “Those Tunes” (more obscure things - commedy clips and the like). Whithin each of those directories I have even more directories set up by genre - Rock - Alt - Classic Rock - Comedy - Classical, etc. And then I just sorted all my MP3’s accordingly.
So I use the Add Button at the bottom to add which ever genre I feel like at the moment as a play list. Or I can just add “These Tunes” to get all my favorites.
The other thing I did was to standardize how all my MP3’s are named (Band - Title.mp3) so they’ll sort the way I want.
Rob There’s no easy way to rip records direct to your computer. If you really have a bunch of records you want to save, I strongly advise buying a stereo-CD burner. It hooks into your stereo system and burns cds from your records, tapes, etc with far better quality than piping the sound through your sound card. If you want to clean up the sound, you can always take the CD, rip it to your HDD and re-burn the cleaned up stuff.
I had the same problem (tons of old records that’ll never be re-released on CD) and I’ve gotten about 60 albums ripped.
Ok first go to your local Best Buy or whatever and buy a 2 to 1 y connector that will jack into your turntable and the other end goes to your line in jack. The resident geek that that they keep chained up behind the counter should be able to help you with this.
I am able to play my LP’s on my computer this way.
I haven’t done this yet but I’m told that Cool Edit(by syntrillium) is the best program for actually recording and editing your music. My first intention was to actually convert all my Lp’s to digital but now I find it’s easier to just use the album for reference and download all the songs on it and then just burn them to CD. I don’t think I am violating any copyright laws because I have actually purchased the music. YMMV.
Go, instead, to Radio Shack. They will have all that stuff there, know how to use it, have any other accessories you’ll need and you’ll save a few bucks.
[nitpick]
Ummm… with all due respect the procedure you have just described is unlikely to be successful with the large majority of magnetic cartridge turntables (a category which comprises over 90%+ of the component, hi-fi turntables manufactured in the last 30 years or so) because (among other issues) their output is too low to be successfully amplified with any degree of fidelity by jacking directly into the line in of a sound card. In most cases you will need to come from the “line out” or “tape out” of the amplfier to which the turntable is attached, not directly from the turntable itself. Some older turntables use ceramic cartridges which have a much higher output level and would possibly work as you have described.
Astro I have a Technics 48022 turntable, about 5 or 6 years old that actually hasn’t been used much since the advent of CDs. I can play my LP’s like I said but the sound quality was not great enough for me to want to record them like that. Perhaps I will try hooking it up like you suggest.
thinksnow nitpick away. I actually only possess only enough knowledge to get me in trouble when it comes to technical stuff. I think I’ll stick to talking about a subject I’m really good at—like me, my opinions, my job, my pets, my health. From now on it’s gonna be nothing but me.
