itunes vs winamp

[binkgle]

from the title, you can probably tell that I have an ipod. I recently learned that winamp has a plugin available to interface with ipods, which i dled and found to work quite nicely. has anyone ever had a serious problem with this plugin? does winamp do the job as well as or better than itunes?

i have also heard that the itunes mp3 encoder is very poor, and that i can get the lame mp3 encoder for winamp (how exactly do i get the lame encoding to work? i want to rip my cd collection as lame mp3s @ 192kbps). how superior is lame? can ipods handle lame?

in general, how stable is winamp? for me itunes can be quite unstable, and if i close it i have to close it again in the task manager then wait five minutes to be able to open it again.

i don't often use the itunes music store, so i won't miss it.

[username]

for winamp you have to pay to rip with LAME, yes the mp3 encoder in iTunes is GoGo which is poor, also winamp has the LAME presets which are tuned for transparent VBR encoding while iTunes is CBR only (at least i think)

[bukowski]

@username iTunes is also VBR. But i think audio cds sound better when ripped in AAC

[giga Veteran]

I'd say that the organization of iTunes is what I like best. As well as the fact that everything requires only 1 window, unlike winamp. But then again, iTunes is pretty large on the resources, but it doesnt matter to me with my 1gb ram.

[binkgle]

yeah, i've only 512 mb of ram and when i'm listening to music i'm normally multitasking.

i'm trying not to use aac anymore, i did some comparisons and didn't like it next to mp3s at same bitrate.

is it worth using vbr instead of 192 cbr?

edit: oh yeah, and my brother bought a winamp pro license a few months ago and recently decided that he didn't like it, so i'll use his. if lame is that much better, i definitely want to use it.

[CrimsonBlur]

Ripping to MP3 is at this point useless unless your portable player does not support AAC. AAC IS superior to MP3, period. MP3Pro is a joke. I wouldn't worry too much about iTune's MP3 encoder because AAC is a superior format. However, if you have a player that can't support AAC (but since the thread starter has an iPod, this point is null for you), then that sucks, and you probably should not use iTunes to rip your music if you're going for the best audio quality (for MP3).

Anyway, to answer your questions about Winamp, as far as interfacing directly with your iPod nothing will work as well as iTunes, but using the plugins for Winamp will work just fine. Winamp is very stable at this stage (the previous version was not), but I have to say I have never run into any stability issues with iTunes for some time now. The original release was buggy, but it's totally stable now. Granted if you look at my computer specs I have a pretty speedy setup, but having less RAM and such should not make iTunes crash all the time...

[username]

Ripping to MP3 is at this point useless unless your portable player does not support AAC.  AAC IS superior to MP3, period.  MP3Pro is a joke.  I wouldn't worry too much about iTune's MP3 encoder because AAC is a superior format.  However, if you have a player that can't support AAC (but since the thread starter has an iPod, this point is null for you), then that sucks, and you probably should not use iTunes to rip your music if you're going for the best audio quality (for MP3).

585859284[/snapback]

no it is not, MP3 LAME supports VBR encoding for constant quality, AAC does not (which may real soon but for now, it does not)

Sure aac is better than mp3 at constant bitrate, but if you want quality, mp3 lame preset is still the way to go

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Ripping to MP3 is at this point useless unless your portable player does not support AAC.  AAC IS superior to MP3, period.  MP3Pro is a joke.  I wouldn't worry too much about iTune's MP3 encoder because AAC is a superior format.  However, if you have a player that can't support AAC (but since the thread starter has an iPod, this point is null for you), then that sucks, and you probably should not use iTunes to rip your music if you're going for the best audio quality (for MP3).

Anyway, to answer your questions about Winamp, as far as interfacing directly with your iPod nothing will work as well as iTunes, but using the plugins for Winamp will work just fine.  Winamp is very stable at this stage (the previous version was not), but I have to say I have never run into any stability issues with iTunes for some time now.  The original release was buggy, but it's totally stable now.  Granted if you look at my computer specs I have a pretty speedy setup, but having less RAM and such should not make iTunes crash all the time...

585859284[/snapback]

AAC is not better than MP3 in all cases. In fact, most experts agree that AAC is an inferior compression format. At low bit rates, WMA is king. At higher bitrates, both WMA and MP3 prevail over AAC and Ogg.

To the original poster, if you're encoding to 192kbps MP3 and happy with it I see no reason to change. 192kbps MP3 from a CD is quite acceptable even to most of us audiophile-types for most uses, especially for a portable device.

[giga Veteran]

no it is not, MP3 LAME supports VBR encoding for constant quality, AAC does not (which may real soon but for now, it does not)

Sure aac is better than mp3 at constant bitrate, but if you want quality, mp3 lame preset is still the way to go

585859291[/snapback]

Ever heard of Nero?

[username]

Ever heard of Nero?

585859362[/snapback]

yeah and what is your point oh wise one?

[binkgle]

why is vbr superior to 192 cbr, for instance?

[bigl523]

superior in the amount of data it takes. for instance, if there was silence in teh track, the bit rate would drop dramatically while at cbr (constant bitrate) it would be encoding this blank section at 192 kbps wasting space.

[CJ33]

whatever.. i hate ppl that will sit there and like something lame cuz they are too arrogant to admit that it sucks. I like to think that itunes sucks like ****. but to each his own. I prefer winamp's library, thus i use the plugin, not itunes.

[binkgle]

about the lame plugin for winamp (out_lame)... i can't figure out how to work it. i want to rip my cds using lame with vbr, but can't figure out how it works.

[bigl523]

cdex uses lame and its free and it does vbr :p

[binkgle]

cdex uses lame and its free and it does vbr :p

585859478[/snapback]

i tried cdex today and found it to be the least intuitive program i've ever used. i dunno. sometimes alledgedly easy programs don't make sense to me (after two years only now can i make a graph in excel. and i've been taught about ten times by multiple people)

[jamend]

Well codecs aside (I just listen to my music in whatever format I "get" it in), this is what I think of both players:

iTunes:

+ Music library, playlists, auto playlists, song ratings, etc.

+ Easy to find and manage songs

+ It's pretty

+ Native iPod support

- Interface is too spread-out and overly simplified

- No skinning

- Can't sort by both artist and song name (:pinch:)

- Takes up way too many system resources for a music player

- Almost everything lags

- Does not handle problematic MP3 files well (ex. incomplete or partially corrupt files will lock it up or crash it)

- Has a few minor bugs

Winamp:

+ Takes few system resources

+ Very fast and responsive

+ Good intarface (compact, functional)

+ Great skinning and plugin support

- Somewhat ugly by default

- No library/playlists (at least in the version I still swear by)

- No native iPod support

[TmasterT]

i use winamp mainly because i dont need a HUGE music store/library/other junk all in one. iTunes is nice but i dont really need it. i also LOVE winamps global hotkeys ( great for when playing games, etc)

[metro]

iTunes is bloated for the purpose that it serves. I hate the fact that it runs services in the background and eats up memory for that purpose. Winamp has a similar agent, but it can be disabled during the install. For me, Winamp has always been my media player of choice and I tried to go with Windows Media Player to cut back on installed programs but it didn't last too long.

For mp3 encoding and ripping, I use CDEx and LAME with HQ VBR. I don't understand how someone would have issues with the interface of CDEx, since to me it is pretty black and white in terms of navigation and setup. Perhaps it does have a lot of different configurable options but I would rather have too many options as opposed to too little.

Winamp does have a pretty nice library built into it, and the other features are so win. Visualization, skinning, plugin support, etc... It is a very versatile and customizable app for playing music. I can't really think of much that it cannot do when it comes to different formats of music files, even for the ones that require a 3rd party plugin for playback support.

[Galley]

The future is MPEG-4. AAC is based on MPEG-4. DirecTV is switching to MPEG-4. I choose AAC.

[jamend]

The future is MPEG-4.  AAC is based on MPEG-4.  DirecTV is switching to MPEG-4.  I choose AAC.

585860835[/snapback]

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

[SapUMBC]

AAC > MP3

And though iTunes has a crappy MP3 encoder, their AAC encoder is top of the line.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...tid=141&tid=181

(The website of the original test is broken, /. will have to do)

[lammmetak]

iTunes:

pro:

looks sweet

works sweet

sorting your mp3

smart playllists

normal playlists

easy to use

easy to adjust things

u can find things to adjust:)

cons:

a bit bigger then winamp

Winamp

pro:

looks clean

skinnable

cons:

every freaking time i select a mp3 i lose my mp3 list grrrrrr

no sorting

not a good apple skin

its a hell to change settings

small buttons and stuff

lots more:P

i choose itunes couse it looks good and its a clean layout

and i love my ipod:P

[ThunderRiver]

i use winamp even though i use itune to sync with ipod.

itune is evil

[username]

i use winamp even though i use itune to sync with ipod.

itune is evil

585861336[/snapback]

ever try ml_ipod

http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=138888

tranfer files to ipod both ways with winamp

[PukiMan]

I like winamp, just because of this little thingy (InternetTV) :D