Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Switched to mac -- missing winamp

T

tonhe

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 9, 2008
21
0
After buying my new macbook pro, the only thing I seem to miss really is winamp. (Ok, I admit, its going to take time to get used to not having SecureCRT too)

The main reasons I prefer winamp is, its skinable, which easily makes it very small and unobtrusive. It also works really well with large collections, I've taken great care to convert my music collection to MP3s... thousands of albums, over 250gig of music. All sitting on a raid array on my linux box on the network. Winamp could scan this in the background for updated music and add it to the collection. I could also rip 320bit mp3s, and burn cds from the interface, which was nice. Most of all, it integrated with my iPod and did a good job copying music to it..

So, I've read through the threads here some, and found no real suggestions for a true winamp replacement... any new suggestions?

Songbird is what I'm using currently, but it wont keep my music up to date on its own, and it seems to want to rescan my music for duplicate tags and such... which is annoying..

anyway, thanks in advance !

-Tony
 
I just downloaded iTerm -- haven't checked out the session bookmarking yet.. been too busy playing with Quicksilver...

Any suggestions on the winamp replacement?
 
there has to be something... i mean.. what is everyone using ?

Seems like a huge gap in the whole switch to apple market, never thought i'd have this much of an issue trying to find a decent mp3 software player..

-Tony
 
Umm, everyone uses iTunes. It works, and works well. As far as automatically adding the music you add to the RAID, that won't really work, but even though it's not skin-able, it does shrink to a nice unobtrusive miniplayer unless you need the full window open. Definitely try to see if it'll work for you.

jW
 
I never really evolved beyond Winamp 2.x years ago. I heard they added a Media Library but I never had the time to railroad Winamp into handling 1,000+ songs when iTunes handled it without a learning curve.
 
iTunes on a mac is superior to the PC version, and you should definitely check it out. I bought WinAmp for the PC and loved it, but on a Mac I much prefer iTunes. That said, Songbird is a good alternative that acts like a combination of iTunes and Winamp. Another alternative would be to use something like Cog, or VLC, or some small player and just play MP3s and keep everything manually updated or use iTunes to import your new music to the RAID array and then play it back with another player.
 
lack of developers on the mac :(

Amarok is coming to mac/windows, but they havent ported the auto-file scanner yet.
 
Huge Winamp fan here as well, been using it for probably 8 years if not more.

The one maybe possible way for it to work on Mac is to use Crossover Mac. I have contemplated it myself but have just used iTunes and it seems to work quite well. You do get a certain attachment to Winamp for some reason tho!!! :)

EDIT: Its not pretty but its running!!

230983985_d831f37b3f_b.jpg


Another one looks a fair bit better, think they got a good skin on it, possibly a newer version of Crossover as well.

winamponosx.png
 
iTunes is pretty unobtrusive. If you hit the green plus button, it shrinks to a small window. You can click the Previous, Next, and Play buttons and it won't steal focus from your current application. You can use SizzlingKeysForiTunes or Butler to map keys to those three buttons (I use F1-F3). Once you've done that, you could hide it entirely. I also have F4 mapped to display the current song automatically.

iTunes supports ripping 320 kbps MP3s. Go to <b>iTunes->Preferences->General->Import Settings...</b> then by <b>Import Using:</b>, select <b>MP3 Encoder</b>, then choose <b>Custom</b> from the <b>Setting</b> dropdown, and the menu that pops up should be self explanatory.

The RAID issue I'm not to sure about. Try this: In <b>iTunes->Preferences->Advanced</b> you can change your iTunes Music Folder location, which should allow you to choose a folder on your network (although I've never done so.) First uncheck <b>Keep iTunes Music folder organized</b> if you don't want it to change your folders. iTunes should then have a list of all your songs.

iTunes integrates pretty well with iPods, as Apple makes them both.-

Hope this helps. :)
 
iTunes is pretty unobtrusive. If you hit the green plus button, it shrinks to a small window. You can click the Previous, Next, and Play buttons and it won't steal focus from your current application. You can use SizzlingKeysForiTunes or Butler to map keys to those three buttons (I use F1-F3). Once you've done that, you could hide it entirely. I also have F4 mapped to display the current song automatically.
Click to expand...
Why do all that when you have iTunes controls on your Apple keyboard?
 
I know that I have gotten used to iTunes. Before I had a Mac I used MediaMonkey. That was one slick piece of software. I feel your pain. I used to manage the file names since I am particular as to how I wanted to the names to be. I still miss that control. All that said, as long as you let iTunes control the music it works fine and works great with the iX devices. I would just iTunes. It is the best out there and I have read reviews that support that statement. In the worst case, you might be able to write a script in shell or use automator to scan and add music automatically.
 
Yeah uh... Welcome to the world of Apple, where you can do anything you want, as long as it the Apple Approved ® way:mad:

OS X has iTunes, WMP7, and Real Player. So basically only iTunes.
:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
Eidorian said:
Why do all that when you have iTunes controls on your Apple keyboard?
Click to expand...

Well, I like to see the little iTunes controller. Also, I have an older Apple Pro Keyboard. I hate the layout of the new one. Absolutely no reason for a full-sized keyboard to require a Fn key. I may eventually get the new one anyway, as I've figured out how to remap the F16-F19 buttons to Volume and Eject.

Also, once again using Butler, you can create your own iTunes Controller with the Docklet/Menubar/Context-Menu by adding play/pause, prev, next, info, and library, which will be rather tiny. (Butler does lots of wonderful things)
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Yeah uh... Welcome to the world of Apple, where you can do anything you want, as long as it the Apple Approved ® way:mad:

OS X has iTunes, WMP7, and Real Player. So basically only iTunes.
:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
Click to expand...

... Any developer is free to make an iTunes alternative on Mac OS X. It isn't Apple's fault that there is no version or port of Winamp on Mac OS X.

I hope I am just missing your sarcasm.
 
XnavxeMiyyep said:
Also, once again using Butler, you can create your own iTunes Controller with the Docklet by adding play/pause, prev, next, info, and library, which will be rather tiny. (Butler does lots of wonderful things)
Click to expand...

I've been using butler to control my music and it's I can't live without it. Instead of using the docklet I assigned a series of shortcuts that launch programs just for butler. I use the modifiers 'control-option-command' (easy since they sit next to each other) and assign buttons, like:

M - opens/brings iTunes to focus
Left key - beginning/previous song
Right key - next song
Space bar - pause music
S - safari
+others

It might seem like a lot of buttons but (for me at least) it works without strain or a stretch for my fingers.

That was probably a bit divergent from the original point of this thread so...you get attached to WinAmp, it is pretty simple and slick and is probably a more power-user type program, but if you give iTunes a chance, you might find it does everything you need your music program to do.
 
any news of winamp for mac?

i listen to house techno, i have 100s of dj sets (each one is avg. 120 min), so for me winamp is better, as i can drag the whole folder, and listen to the music, and im constantlin addin new music. itunes i find it great to organize my music (eg. separate all the 320kbs from the rest), but winamp is better for playin music in my case.
 
morenazo said:
any news of winamp for mac?

i listen to house techno, i have 100s of dj sets (each one is avg. 120 min), so for me winamp is better, as i can drag the whole folder, and listen to the music, and im constantlin addin new music. itunes i find it great to organize my music (eg. separate all the 320kbs from the rest), but winamp is better for playin music in my case.
Click to expand...
Virtual machine it or Boot Camp for best results.
 
Downloaded cog, likin it, its quite like winamp. the only frustrating thing is that i have various folder alliases on my desktop, and i cant drag the folder to the player, instead i have to go exactly where the folder is located.
 
If you love Winamp, have an Intel Mac, and want to run it without having to buy a copy of Windows, I have good news for you. Winamp 2.95 runs perfectly inside Darwine. I haven't tried Winamp 5 yet, though.
 
Part of your problem is that OS X is pretty much designed so that apps control your files. This is especially the case with iTunes, iPhoto, etc. Frankly I can see why Apple has chosen this route. There is really no need to have perfectly named folders/files anymore as was needed in the old days of Winamp as modern apps display much more metadata than file managers (Finder, etc) do.

On a personal note, I was a huge Winamp user back in the Winamp 2x > 3x days. Once it was sold to AOL and became Winamp 5x and iTunes matured and was ported to Windows I completely left it. In my opinion, iTunes just handles my library better. Even when I controlled my folders myself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back