WinAmp Is Still Cool.
Yes itunes is the best, all hail itunes, blah blah blah. Seriously though itunes is an organizational masterpiece. I am an avid music collector and I like things all neat and tidy when it comes to it. One of the only facets of my life I need to be this way but it is what it is. I try to get every album artwork or pictures from the live shows, I like to make sure all the tracks are in the correct order and the bit rates are equal. No program in the history of music has made keeping these things that are near and dear to me in some kind of sane manor. If I want to add I drag and drop, if I want to burn I hit the obvious radioactive burn icon. The less thinking the better when your stuck in itunes. Whatever the easiest way to get there is is most likely the answer. It's like the physical device of acoms razor. There are however other good mp3 playing programs out there and WinAmp has always been one of them. Dare I say they even have itunes trumped in a couple of areas.
One area is it just looks like a cool player. Many skins are available but the basic ones are stellar. I have a feeling itunes tried to copy WinAmp in this department and did a nice job making it their own but to me music on my computer should look like this.Look at that picture! It's like a little slice of music playing future. Another area itunes can't touch is the visualization zone. itunes has a nice default one and some okay down loadable ones that are neat but don't really hold my interest. Even back in the day WinAmp had great visuals. I remember the first time I saw one full screen and was amazed by the lights dancing to the beats. Now the scripts are crazy intricate and involve even more creativity. There are also TONS to download so you can switch between them (within WinAmp's regular design) and offers smaller versions of the visualization window that you can place anywhere, something I dig a lot. It also has something called Active Desktop which projects your visualization as your desktop... thats right a moving desktop...SO COOL! (click on top animated gif to see it in action)
I recently started running a Dell 1920 X 1200 monitor and full screen WinAmp bad ass-ness is simply jaw dropping. I was listening to live Bob Dylan and then live Megadeth and the visuals adjusted perfectly.
To be honest other than simplicity, which I agree is most important, itunes doesn't do all that much that WinAmp couldn't. Play lists, advanced libraries, EQ options, even recoding audio file types. itunes just does most of them easier so with less headaches and more time to listen to music. But if you just downloaded that killer live Pink Floyd show and you want to revel in the warm glow of your HD monitor, or you want your mp3 player to look like a Cylon built it, WinAmp is still your man... er, machine... program. Itunes will always be my bread and butter, staple audio program and it replaced WinAmp for very good reasons but the original has still got some cool looking tricks up it's sleeves. I ended that lame but I don't care, I have some Hendrix to watch.
