Which music player do you use and why?

[c627627]

To setup the Visualization to show up on your second monitor in full screen mode when you double click on the Visualization window:
Right Click on Winamp border > Options > Preferences... > Visualization > MilkDrop > Configure button > Common Settings TAB > Next to FULLSCREEN settings, select the other Display Adapter and its Display Mode resolution > OK


Options > Preferences... > (Under General Preferences) Global Hotkeys > Click on the second 'Enabled' from top > next to Action, click on the drop down menu and select Visualization: Toggle on/off > Next to Hotkey press on the keyboard key you do don't use very often such as CTRL + `> Add > Close

CTRL + ` will make the Visualization turn on/off now. [Do not set it to any regular key like the Space Bar because that would make it turn on/off all the time.]


Click on MilkDrop2 in the task bar then use Space Bar or H to go to the next Visualization preset. Use Backspace to go to the previous preset.
Visualization presets change every 10 seconds. Press R to switch between Random and Sequential presets.

Press L to load a specific preset. Press 'Scroll Lock' key on your keyboard to lock in the current preset so it doesn't change. Press F1 for more options.


What's a good source of additional MilkDrop presets? http://forums.winamp.com/forumdisplay.php?f=84






I tested all the presets and found these four presets to be buggy:
Flexi + fiShbRaiN - operation fatcap I.milk
Flexi + Shifter - sublimal spaceship.milk
Flexi - fractal descent.milk
Flexi - fractals with a twist.milk

 

[c627627]

Resolved: These have been removed from the latest release 5.61.

This means that

New versions of Winamp do not contain Visualization presets which have been reported as bugggy. Hower, they do not remove them from previous installations. If upgrading from a previous version, before starting the setup, delete this folder:
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\Milkdrop2\presets

 

[poppedkernel]

songbird for me, user friendly, tons of add ons, i have mine set up to give me artist data, lyrics (including translations for all my rammstein lol), and nearby concerts

 

[Audioaficionado]

Resolved: These have been removed from the latest release 5.61.

This means that

New versions of Winamp do not contain Visualization presets which have been reported as bugggy. Hower, they do not remove them from previous installations. If upgrading from a previous version, before starting the setup, delete this folder:
C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\Milkdrop2\presets

Do you have a link to the best all inclusive preset collections of all the presets ever used? I'm downloading this one to try out.
http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mdpresetpack/mdpresets.exe

I never get that error message on my nVida card, but I have on my ATi. Is there a user setting that will force the error prone presets to stay within the allotted 64 shader limits?

 

[splat]

foobar2000 - its winamp on steroids. 100% customizable. plugins (components). columns ui is sweet http://yuo.be/columns.php
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components/Columns_UI_(foo_ui_columns)
screenshots - http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=63984
old columns_ui configs http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=31027

 

[c627627]

As Audioaficionado pointed out, Winamp's visualization appears to be superior, unless there are other visualization options for foobar?

Also, although it turns out you can modify foobar's skin or buttons, it appears to be too complicated and judging by the initial posts in http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=86099, foobar is more oriented for the minimalistic crowd who like their players small and out of the way.


I need them to allow me to quickly see the buttons and quickly manipulate them and for that I need them bigger. There is no simple import skin option in foobar. Also good visualization is a must because if you have your video card's second video output go out all the way to your Plasma - then the effect is spectacular. You're using your computer normally on the screen in front of you, meanwhile your large High Def screen is rocking out to the sound output.

I never get that error message on my nVida card, but I have on my ATi. Is there a user setting that will force the error prone presets to stay within the allotted 64 shader limits?

I have tested each and very winamp preset to isolate the three that gave errors on my ATi card. I then tried all workarounds only to discover that those three presets are present in v5.601 but not v5.61 which does not include them because they were buggy and are simply not used by Winamp any more.


However:


You must uninstall previous version of Winamp or delete the presets folder or else new versions of Winamp will not delete old presets - only add new ones! This is why I still had them. So then I simply uninstalled/deleted all traces of Winamp - installed newest-latest Winamp and tested all presets to keep the ones I liked and delete the ones I didn't.


So now I just have the backup of the presets folder containing the presets I like and can simply delete/replace the presets folder on all other machines so they all can have the presets I like. I will most definitely check out your link Audio, there are so many presets out there - it's hard to tell which ones are good but customizing default presets of the latest Winamp I think is still better then any other default visualization out there.

 

[c627627]

Do you have a link to the best all inclusive preset collections of all the presets ever used? I'm downloading this one to try out.
http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mdpresetpack/mdpresets.exe

OK. installed it and did a directory comparison. That thing appears to have all of 567 default Winamp presets and then adds about 30,000 (yes thirty thousand) more!

I have a 4 GHz i7 system which is faster then anything money can buy today at default speeds and scanning presets... message in the corner lasts almost ten seconds on account of how many there are. There's no way you can go through and select custom ones you like - it would take days!


_____________________
Intel i7 950 [200] BCLK x 20 = 4.0 GHz @ [1.4000] CPU Voltage & [1.35000] QPI/DRAM Uncore Voltage, Batch 3029A40
3 x 1GB G.SKIL DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) [DDR3-1691MHz] 10-10-10-24 @ 1.64 DRAM Bus Voltage
ASUS P6T Deluxe v.1 [LGA 1366 Intel X58] BIOS 2209
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT with 120mm Scythe S-Flex F fan
ASUS EAH4850 Radeon HD 4850 1GB DDR3 @ 625 MHz GPU & 1986 MHz Memory
OCZ Agility 60GB SSD
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Antec nine hundred case, two front 120mm fans, one back 120mm Fan, one top 200mm fan
Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W

 

[splat]

well, the beauty in foobar2000 is that it is 100% customizable and scriptable and still not bloated. I have a logitech elite keyboard with player buttons at the top of it so i never even touch the actual program except to change playlists.

there's tons of skins out there, even ones that mimic other players, like itunes: http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/media/foobar2000/?order=5#/d3f0w0r

want big buttons? http://fb2k.deviantart.com/#/d30wow3

most of thse come with an install so they are super simple to get working.

 

[c627627]

Yes, thank you for those links. That was my primary concern and it does appear you can customize foobar.


The other matter is one of having dual displays, one of which is a large screen Plasma. With that setup, it is hard not to appreciate the power of visualizations.

Visualization is what ended up clenching Winamp over foobar for me. Does foobar have visualizations which can be compared to Winamp MilkDrop? If it does - I will consider switching to it right now. If it does not then I will consider switching to foobar when and if it does in the future and if it's better than Winamp MilkDrop.

 

[habbajabba]

No offense but visualizations are a waste of resources similar to screensavers. When I play music or watch a video the last thing I need is a 'visualization'. BTW, vlc is great unless you need directx video acceleration which is still experimental in vlc and SUCKS. I stick with MPC-HC standalone (tyvm) and all it's plugins. Plays absolutely anything I give it aside from a few youtube flv's which I hand to vlc just for that purpose. All my media players are standalone. Xmplay by default and foobar and mpc-hc by choice. The only thing I even ever used winamp for was so I could steal one of it's plugins. Other than that it doesn't exist. And as for wmp, I haven't opened it not even once with this build and never will.
I anything is pure garbage. The next time someone says help me with my Iwhatever, it'll be done on their pc. I don't have the time to dance with crapple ware.
I also run TapinRadio v1.35.2 for web radio. The stations are updated once a week (mondays) and as long as you stick with 1.35.2 or below it is completely portable. It's great as I don't own a stereo system atm and it allows me to listen to local stations as well as not so local.
Tapin w/winamp enhancer plugin on the left and xmplay w/multipass skin on the right.

Now all I need is a decent sndcrd so I can use asio output. My mobo has hidef audio but no asio support. Interestingly, Tapin will record the KPOA WMA stream but xmplay will not. I think I need to go back to total recorder if I can. These stupid embedded snd cards that come with mobos can't record squat which is quite pathetic IMO.

 

[splat]

of course there are visualization plugins for foobar2k. there's even a winamp plugin wrapper so http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9/Shpeck_(foo_vis_shpeck)

and projectM http://projectm.sourceforge.net/

 

[c627627]

Is that MilkDrop for foobar?


I thought Audioaficionado said MilkDrop was exclusive to Winamp?

 

[Audioaficionado]

Yeah I also have that foobar version, but my ATi card won't run it, however my nVidia cards have no problem.

I have noticed MD2 eventually repeating presets after awhile. With that archived 30k+ batch, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore LOL.

@habbajabba: To each his own, but we love to listen to our music in a darkened room tripping out on our Milkdrop visualizations syncopating to the beat and volume of the music on our friggin' huge 1080P TVs and high-end sound systems with potent sub-woofers for an awesome experience. Total A/V/P mindmeld immersion

 

[splat]

i used to use milkdrop as my screensaver in college.

 

[c627627]

Individual preset only lasts a few seconds so they are bound to repeat if you just have the default 500 or so.


I also notice that Winamp has MilkDrop v2.21 whereas splat's links are for earlier versions. Is there a difference? I'm now trying to figure out whether to look at foobar again but really, foobar didn't look simple to me to set it all up custom like with Winamp where you simply click on skin to select it and visualizations come built in by default. I mean the entire point appears to be that foobar = simple & minimalistic and Winamp = fancy, big and customizable by clicking on the many options available at initial install. I would not use Winamp's default settings but once I wrote-up the how to - it's a quick custom install from there on all other machines.



And +1 on what the visualizations are for. I don't ever use them on my computer screen, they run separately on the big Plasma w/o interfering with computer usage at all.

 

[Audioaficionado]

You weren't kiddin' about the sheer size of all those. It took a solid 5 minutes on my 3GHz Q6600 machine to install 'em.

Yeah the foobar version is older, but those 30k presets are mostly old ones anyway and should work.

 

[c627627]

Your 30,000 appear to include all 567 presets that come with latest Winamp 5.61 anyway. Therefore that is not the difference b/w MilkDrop versions.


Does anyone know what is the difference b/w old and new MilkDrop plug in version?

 

[splat]

http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html

The 2007 update is called "MilkDrop 2" but is the same program. All MilkDrop 1 presets are compatible with MilkDrop 2. However, many new features were added. Foremost, the addition of pixel shaders allows dozens, even hundreds of complex instructions to be executed for every pixel on the screen, every frame. Other new features include jpg textures, gaussian blurring, a preset "mash-up" feature, and (finally) a prest "back" button.

 

[c627627]

Yes, they are both version 2.xx but the newest one is MilkDrop 2.21 I think and I also think they said it was exclusive to Winamp. So the question was how is v2.21 different from v2.0 which apparently foobar uses.

 

[splat]

foobar2k doesn't use milkdrop, it can use projectM which is an opengl version of milkdrop from what i see. But foobar2k does have that wrapper plugin that will allow you to use any winamp plugin with foobar2k

projectM is an LGPL'ed reimplementation of Milkdrop under OpenGL. All projectM requires is a video card with 3D acceleration and your favorite music.