Winamp sucks... I've known this for a long time but haven't gotten around to looking for something new. I'd like a player that has a decent shuffle/randomizer. I've got tons of songs that I never put into a playlist of their own and never listen to them because my randomizer just jumps over them all the time.
I'd like to avoid i-tunes. I'd like to find something that remembers how many times a song has been played and adjusts it's shuffle priority accordingly. Suggestions?
Quote from: erkishhorde on January 27, 2009, 10:21:46 AM
Winamp sucks... I've known this for a long time but haven't gotten around to looking for something new. I'd like a player that has a decent shuffle/randomizer. I've got tons of songs that I never put into a playlist of their own and never listen to them because my randomizer just jumps over them all the time.
nothing beats winamp for simplicity.
you should be able to find a good shuffle/randomizer plugin for it, too.
Quote from: erkishhorde on January 27, 2009, 10:21:46 AM
I'd like to avoid i-tunes. I'd like to find something that remembers how many times a song has been played and adjusts it's shuffle priority accordingly. Suggestions?
and yet, itunes does exactly what you're looking for.
Quote from: derby on January 27, 2009, 10:29:13 AM
and yet, itunes does exactly what you're looking for.
I know... [roll]
Randomizer plug-in... I didn't think of that (obviously). Hmmmm....
edit: tried a handful of the randomizers on the winamp site and all of them crashed. ??? I guess they don't like my non-english file names/tags. :-\
I don't like Winamp either and I pretty much loathe iTunes, as capable as both of those apps are. I like something a bit more stripped down, since I organize my folders to my liking, and don't really use all the built-in "features" of iTunes. No, I don't want to import all of my music, connect to iTunes, subscribe to podcasts. It's like the overattentive waiter that ruins your meal. Just. Play. Music.
[end of screed]
A good non-iTunes, iTunes-like app is Songbird. I think you do what you want with the randomized list, by creating a smart playlist where "number of plays" is less than one or two.
Check it out http://getsongbird.com/
I've run the gambit and not found anything better than winamp, but I'm curious to find out what everyone else is using (if you EVEN say Windows Media, I will hunt you down). Have you tried different skins? I probably wouldn't use it if it weren't for the MMd3 skin. It just sticks the whole player up in a tiny strip at the top of your screen from which you can access your playlist, visualization (if that's your thing, i don't really care), etc. It took me a while to find a plug in so that it will play .avi files but if you're looking for something with a wide variety of support, try VLC media player.
That being said, i guess it depends on how you listen to music. I have some friends that just build itunes libraries and put them on shuffle which works wonders, but I tend to pick and choose whatever's playing on a daily/hourly basis, so the mass library system doesn't really float my boat. It's TOO random. Here's a quick screenshot of that skin
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y239/Jervisaurus/screen.jpg)
i use winamp, and have since, uh... i don't know. a long time ago. since sometime in the 1.xx version time period.
most of what itunes does, i don't really want to bother with...
gonna have to check out that MMd3 skin.
you might want to check out EphPod http://www.ephpod.com/ if you're looking for an iTunes replacement that can work with iPods and other MP3 players.
if you want something cross-platform that can play pretty much anything you throw at it, VLC is hard to beat http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
and another one I've had good luck with is Media Monkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/
one of those should be able to cover what you're looking for :)
Quote from: faolan01 on January 28, 2009, 11:17:13 AM
you might want to check out EphPod http://www.ephpod.com/ if you're looking for an iTunes replacement that can work with iPods and other MP3 players.
last i recall, ephpod was really just a conduit to get music onto/off of an ipod.
Quote from: faolan01 on January 28, 2009, 11:17:13 AM
if you want something cross-platform that can play pretty much anything you throw at it, VLC is hard to beat http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
no advanced playlisting capablity.
Quote from: faolan01 on January 28, 2009, 11:17:13 AM
and another one I've had good luck with is Media Monkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/
one of those should be able to cover what you're looking for :)
good organizer, but i'm not sure how good the random/shuffle works.