I miss winamp, and its visualizations, what cool stuff can I do on my Mac?

[theLemur]

Hopefully many of you will remember good old Winamp the mp3 player. It always had some great visualizations to watch while listening to music.

I figure that the Mac should be able to do some impressive things, visually. Is there anything similar I should check out?

Impress me haha

 

[HLdan]

I read your other thread, you've really gotta drop your evils about iTunes, its a great program, what's so bad about it?
We solved your burning question in the other thread so here's your visualization answer. iTunes has some impressive visuals and one or two of them are Mac only, you can run them within the iTunes application or full screen.
With iTunes open (and playing a song) go to the menu bar and choose "View", choose "Turn on Visualizer". 3 different visuals are built into iTunes, to change them choose "View" then choose "Visualizer" and change the theme. My favorite one is Stix.
In "View" you can also choose full screen. You can also download many different iTunes visual themes from the web, some free some shareware.

Personally I never found Winamp to be anything special.

 

[theLemur]

I read your other thread, you've really gotta drop your evils about iTunes, its a great program, what's so bad about it?
We solved your burning question in the other thread so here's your visualization answer. iTunes has some impressive visuals and one or two of them are Mac only, you can run them within the iTunes application or full screen.
With iTunes open (and playing a song) go to the menu bar and choose "View", choose "Turn on Visualizer". 3 different visuals are built into iTunes, to change them choose "View" then choose "Visualizer" and change the theme. My favorite one is Stix.
In "View" you can also choose full screen. You can also download many different iTunes visual themes from the web, some free some shareware.

Thanks, I will try this out now. My problem with iTunes that I can never get it to do what I want it to do. Winamp was simple to use and made sense. With iTunes I have to use libraries and playlists... I just want to click 10 songs and have them play in order and then stop. iTunes continues to play more songs after those end. For as simple and intuitive as the mac is, i think much is lost on iTunes.

 

[alphaod]

I still use Winamp on my Vista. I paid for it.

 

[Cameront9]

Thanks, I will try this out now. My problem with iTunes that I can never get it to do what I want it to do. Winamp was simple to use and made sense. With iTunes I have to use libraries and playlists... I just want to click 10 songs and have them play in order and then stop. iTunes continues to play more songs after those end. For as simple and intuitive as the mac is, i think much is lost on iTunes.

Have you tried party shuffle? It's essentially a way for you to queue songs like you describe

 

[TBi]

I miss Winamp too... even though i use Vista on my home PC. I spent so much time setting up great playlists in iTunes for my iPod that i don't want to go to all the trouble of setting them up in Winamp now. Plus i was annoyed by the fact that when i liked a song playing in winamp i had to open iTunes, find the song and then move it to a playlist i wanted.

I just gave in and started using iTunes instead.

I wish i could use Winamp with my iTunes library and i wish i could use Windows Media center with my iTunes library too...

 

[theLemur]

Have you tried party shuffle? It's essentially a way for you to queue songs like you describe

it sounds overly complicated. i just don't have the time to devote to learning itunes in and out. this library crap annoys the hell out of me.

 

[TBi]

this library crap annoys the hell out of me.

It grows on you. Instead of picking files in explorer, you pick them in iTunes.

What i did is make smart playlists which work on ratings, like all songs with 3+ stars or 4+ stars. Then if i like a song i give it a rating and it's automatically in my playlist. That way all my favorite songs are in a playlist so i can play them whenever i want. If i get bored of a song in the playlist i change the rating down and *poof* it's gone.

I also made playlists of my favorite Good, Fast, Slow songs for my different moods.

I'd just love if i could access all these through Winamp without iTunes, in other words if changes i made in iTunes were reflected in Winamp and vice versa.

 

[theLemur]

It grows on you. Instead of picking files in explorer, you pick them in iTunes.

What i did is make smart playlists which work on ratings, like all songs with 3+ stars or 4+ stars. Then if i like a song i give it a rating and it's automatically in my playlist. That way all my favorite songs are in a playlist so i can play them whenever i want. If i get bored of a song in the playlist i change the rating down and *poof* it's gone.

I also made playlists of my favorite Good, Fast, Slow songs for my different moods.

I'd just love if i could access all these through Winamp without iTunes, in other words if changes i made in iTunes were reflected in Winamp and vice versa.

If I had all day to play around with it, that would be fine, but I have a very busy schedule. I already have my files organized on an external drive, and that's how I like them.

I just want to be able to highlight a group of songs in finder and have it play, IN ORDER, until there are no songs left, and be easily locatable in that giant library window. I'm just not going to use it anymore. VLC is easier to deal with.

 

[TBi]

If I had all day to play around with it, that would be fine, but I have a very busy schedule. I already have my files organized on an external drive, and that's how I like them.

I just want to be able to highlight a group of songs in finder and have it play, IN ORDER, until there are no songs left, and be easily locatable in that giant library window. I'm just not going to use it anymore. VLC is easier to deal with.

I feel your pain. Sounds like you will be better off with VLC. It's no winamp though

How do you have the music organised by the way? Could you just choose an album to play (try clicking the 'eye' in the bottom right of iTunes) from the library?

I felt the same way as you. I had all my music organised perfectly. Artist - track number - track name. In folders for artist and album, plus folders with my favorite songs.

However the more i used iTunes, the more its way of working won me over.

Although i'm a firm believer in
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

 

[0098386]

Heh, I used to miss Winamp too. Even tried googling for a "Macamp" but now I just use iTunes. If I want to loop just 10 songs I'll make a little playlist of them, and if it gets played for long enough I won't delete it.

 

[Consultant]

I miss people who are logical enough to actually take 15 minutes to learn something superior.

There is a reason iTunes is the most popular music player. Instant search results and smart play lists are extremely powerful.

The things you want to do, such as to play certain songs, there are many ways to do them. If you know how, you can set it up in a second or 2.

 

[0098386]

Don't you just select the songs with CTRL+Click and then press the "+" button on the lower left of the window? Or am I thinking of iPhoto...

 

[Cameront9]

I miss people who are logical enough to actually take 15 minutes to learn something superior.

There is a reason iTunes is the most popular music player. Instant search results and smart play lists are extremely powerful.

The things you want to do, such as to play certain songs, there are many ways to do them. If you know how, you can set it up in a second or 2.

I have to say I agree....Using Party shuffle to queue songs is easy. Right/ctrl click on a song, select "Add to party shuffle"

If you could take the time to come here and inquire about it, you could take the time to learn something new.

I used to be one of those people that had everything organized just so in folders, etc. Now I just let software do it for me, and I can spend more time actually listening/viewing music/photos instead of organizing them!

 

[Cameront9]

Don't you just select the songs with CTRL+Click and then press the "+" button on the lower left of the window? Or am I thinking of iPhoto...

I believe it's Cmd+click to select songs, but yes....

 

[dnguyen]

i miss the OLD winamp from about 2 years ago, now it'a pretty bad, well at least the last time i tried it about 6 months ago.

 

[TBi]

i miss the OLD winamp from about 2 years ago, now it'a pretty bad, well at least the last time i tried it about 6 months ago.

I still use winamp 2.9x whenever i use it. Might try this new version but the whole point of winamp was that it was light weight and low on memory usage, well that's why i used it.