My only complaint about it so far is that the random play option doesn’t seem to be sufficiently random. When I have it on for extended periods of time day after day, even with only 200-300 songs in it, there are certain songs that just keep coming up, and other songs that never get played. I haven’t actually kept a formal tally, so I guess it could simply be my perception, but I wouldn’t completely rule it out.
I also hated it. I found it to be pretty damn slow. I never had a problem with 2.81, so that’s what I continue to use.
As for skins, I’ve always found the majority of them to be unusable. “I know! I’ll make it dark gray on black!”
Another complaint about the so-called ‘shuffle/random play’ option. I’ve tried setting the slider just about everywhere between ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ and it STILL picks the same songs over and over and over and over and over…
One night it was fixated on ‘Dad Threw Up on Christmas Day’, ‘Walking Around in Women’s Underwear’ and ‘Big Balls’. I decided I did not want to know why.
<< Do something amazing… accomplish work on the computer! >>
Add me to the list of people who think it sucks (though I’m still running it). Here’s my short list of complaints:
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It no longer tells you the total length of the playlist, which was always handy for me because I could use it to test CD track listings without launching my burner software.
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Only one icon. I always used one of the extra icons because I didn’t like the stock lightning bolt.
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The playlist shuffle does completely suck.
If my old HD hadn’t crashed, I’d reinstall 2.81 and use it.
-brianjedi
Yes, I forgot about the last of total time on the playlist. That sucks, as I used it in the same way.
You can still get 2.81 off their site:
http://classic.winamp.com/
Heh. I’m positive there’s a phrase in the jargon dictionary that describes this: “Cruft” or something?
Fenris
how about the fact that in xp you have the “play all” or the Play selection" options right there in the window, but with winamp 3 if you chose either of these options you get an error message that basically says winamp 3 will have a seizure if you try this, of course if you hit do it anyway it does indeed have a seizure as it trys to play all of the songs AT ONE FRIGGING TIME!
other than that it sucks ass.
I do like some of the skins like the corner amp and the transparency features but things like the above and the fact that even when its set on random it plays the first song in the list first EVERY time drive me batshit, I mean whats the point of a 2000+ song playlist if your’e going to hear “beer star” by 45 dip each time it starts?
I don’t care for the new improved version 3, it can go suck a lemon. sticking with 2.8
For all of you complaining about the skins, I strongly suggest going to Deskmod.com and downloading the MMD Skin. Why Winamp didn’t come up with a user-friendly skin like this I’ll never know. Wait, I do- they’re owned by AOL.
My big complaints are the aforementioned missing total playlist time and the fact that there’s currently no feature to crossfade when converting to .WAV, like Winamp2 had with the SQRSoft Diskwriter plugin.
Yep, made my system slow down terribly (hey its an older PC), reinstalled 2.something, works fine again.
I tried it for an evening and hated it. I found the interface to be clumsy and I didn’t like the way it seemed to slow down my system. You can go to http://www.oldversion.com/, and get any of the older versions of Winamp.
I’m using version 2.79, and it does everything I need it to do.
I know about WinAMP 3’s transparency thing, but it sucks compared to the plug-in I have. The plug-in I have has a fade-in/fade-out effect for when you move your cursor over it or click winamp. Much nicer than the constant transparency that WinAMP3 has, because I like my WinAMP barely visible when I’m not paying attention to it, but opaque when I’m fiddling with its controls.
Firagon: that sounds cool. Can you post the name of the plugin?
Fenris
It’s called “TransparentFX”, and you can find it at http://www.draconpern.com/TransparentFX/index.html
Another flaw:
In their desire to make Winamp a cross-platform application (um, what does the “Win” stand for again?), the authors have removed all inter-process communication support from Winamp 3. There is no DDE, no COM, no SendMessage API.
My freeware application, Visual IRC, includes a nice script for Winamp 1.x/2.x that shows a toolbar with the song title, elapsed time, and control buttons. Users can type simple commands to go back and forth through the playlist, announce their music to the channel, etc., all without switching programs.
But, of course, it doesn’t work with Winamp 3. Instead, I’d have to write a plugin, which means learning Winamp’s “WASABI” framework and probably buying a different compiler. No thanks!
I tried version 3 recently and didn’t like it either. But mostly just because it wasn’t what I was used to.
But I’m running 2.78. Is 2.81 much better?
(only asterion appears to be using an older version, and besides us, it looks like only brujo uses anything other than 2.81 or 3.)
All the WinAmp’s pretty much suck, along with most of the other mp3 players. I don’t know how people can use those things. First of all, on most skins it’s difficult to tell where the buttons are, let alone what they do. The few skins that seem to have text on them have this teeny text in low contrast. It’s unreadable.
Plus, the whole way it’s designed is ridiculous, with the bitmapped graphics and all. It should be a normal windows application, with a normal UI. That way it can adjust appropriately to resolution, etc. This is why ITunes is usuable, but WinAmp isn’t.
The playlists on Winamp drive me crazy, because I also play music by browsing in explorer and just double-clicking on them. But when I do that, it always erases the last playlist I was using! So then I have to reload it from disk. There may be an option to change this behaviour somewhere, but I haven’t found it. Terrible design.
Way way slower (especially for movies: even WindowsMP is much fsater). However, there are some great windowshade skins available that minimize screen real estate. Hopefully, as time goes on, they’ll fix.
Whadda want for free?
I don’t know how to do this in 3, but in the older 2.x versions, go to options-preferences, and in the preferences window, go to File Types (under Setup). Check ‘Enqueue as default action’.
Back on topic, I haven’t downloaded winamp 3 because I’ve heard it uses up a lot of system resources, and I like Winamp on in the background while I’m doing all kinds of resource intensive stuff. And I don’t need too many features on my mp3 player.