I have been a Winamp user for couple of years and can only say one thing. Winamp Rocks!!! Now, the upgrade to 3.0 is ok if you want to be in style but not necessarily. I reached this conclusion because of
Winamp 3 is now official. It isn’t a beta release anymore and I didn’t experience any bugs. The equalizer works.
There is a new inclusion called Thinger. Its got an Advanced Visual Studio (AVS) which gets you as close to a disco at home. Turn of the lights, play some beats, turn on AVS, set to fullscreen mode and you’re on a roll. Pretty amazing stuff.
Winamp now got a crossfade option. Your songs now don’t need to end for the next one to start. They just get playing continuously without interruption. Now don’t get surprised when playing your songs for the first time cuz by default, crossfade is enabled. When throwing a party, match AVS with crossfade and get a blast.
WA3 can now play mpg and mpeg’s (right). You can watch your personal video mpeg’s and avi’s. Pretty good. The clarity of the picture is great and no less than what I get from windows media player. It can also play .avi files. Compare that to media player. Most of the time it’s got a codec problem with avi’s and even if you have one, picture quality sucks big time.
Winamp has always got nice skins. But WA3 skins rule. Skins no longer need to be rectangle shaped. They can be anything. Not convinced? Check out at the skins section in winamp.com. The Austin Powers in Gold Member skin is particularly impressive.
As you can see, all these cool things are not necessary if you just want to hear music and in the old fashioned way.
Now, for the negatives
Try doing this in WA2. Check the shuffle and repeat options on, start playing a song, and then delete the song from the playlist window. The song still continues to play. Ok, now add another song using the menu options for adding a new file. The new song plays automatically after the current one ends. This was one feature I use a lot. But, do this in WA3, and you have to play the new song again. Imagine the inconvenience when you are busy with something else. Sucks.
The new playlist window in WA3 get me a lot confused at start. Its got both files and playlist boxes within that one. This thing was like a divided box and I couldn’t see my file names completely. But not a big problem. Click on the uncheck button to the left of the playlist and your file list will be as good as you desired.
Sucks again when you want to add your own IDV3 tags. No support for tabs in the IDV3 window. Means you have to click with the mouse to proceed to fill the next field. Another big inconvenience.
When checked on, the automatic option in the equalizer adjusts your settings to default for every new song though you select a preset. How could they forget that?
Having said that, I still think that the above inconveniences are just a matter of time. After all, WA has been entertaining me for years. No player I used comes as far better as it and in my experience, X.0 versions of any software are always not so good. I shall wait for WA 3.1 to get these fixed. Hail Nullsoft for making us such a great media player.