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OMO v0.4
Todd Cope
Member #998
November 2000
avatar

We have just released a new version of our music organizer and player, OMO. This version has many improvements and new features including:

  • Implements cloud tags submission and retrieval.

  • Improved detection of changes in library folders.

  • Fixes for MP3 codec handler on Windows and Linux.

  • Fixed many crash issues.

OMO is designed to be the best player for your obscure music files, including playback of various modular music formats like IT and XM as well as emulated music formats like SPC, NSF, and VGM.

OMO supports playback of music files in these formats: MP3, MP2, MPG, MOD, S3M, XM, IT, 669, AMF, MTM, OKT, PSM, PTM, STM, DSM, AMF, WAV, OGG, FLAC, AY, GBS, GYM, HES, KSS, NSF, SAP, SPC, VGM, and VGZ. Additional support for MP4, M4A, AAC, and MID is available on MacOS. MID support is also available on Windows.

Here are a few things that you can do with OMO:

  • Open music stored in archives such as ZIP and RAR files.

  • Use it as a simple music player to play back your music files, or scan your entire library so you can easily browse your music by artist, album, and song title.

  • Tag your obscure music files and share those tags online so others don't have to duplicate your efforts. Your library tags are automatically synced, so other OMO users will have the latest tags available to them as soon as you hit Okay in the tags editor.

  • Keep track of and listen to individual songs even if there are multiple songs stored in a single file.

  • Create profiles, each with their own library settings. Each profile has its own library folder and filter settings. You can easily switch between profiles to quickly get to the music you want to listen to.

  • Quickly open music using the command line or drag and drop music onto the OMO icon.

  • Quickly queue up songs by artist or album. Double-clicking an artist in the library will queue up all songs by that artist. Double-clicking an album will queue up that specific album, sorted by disc and track number if that information is available.

Here are some links:

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

{"name":"611296","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/8\/c812615f8474da51fdad1b891725b5e2.png","w":758,"h":133,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/8\/c812615f8474da51fdad1b891725b5e2"}611296

I tried to install the Ubuntu package, but my package manager GUI did not appreciate the MIME type apparently... :-/ Seems odd, but likely stupid GUI software...

Append:

Worked when I installed with dpkg so I imagine the GUI is just stunned (as usual).

Append:

So far I'm unimpressed, but I certainly wanted to be.

  • I loaded my free format library into it, and it is displaying filenames instead of metadata. When I tried changing from the "basic" layout it still shows file names, but all on the 4th pane. The first 3 panes are blank.

  • The "+" button doesn't seem to understand folders (I assume it's to either add to the library or the current playlist, but it's stupid if it can't load entire folders).

  • The .desktop file for *nix is defined in the "Games" category which unless I'm missing something is horribly mislabeled. I had to list the files in the package and read the desktop package to even find OMO in the menu.

It holds promise, but so far it doesn't seem to deliver (unless it's meant for a very niche market).

Append:

Also, GUIs are shit for this kind of thing, so I strongly encourage you to think of the UI from a human<->computer perspective instead of just the screen and be sure to map very powerful keyboard shortcuts to do everything. If I have to reach for my mouse to pick a song with ease you've failed.

Todd Cope
Member #998
November 2000
avatar

Thanks for trying it out.

bamccaig said:

I loaded my free format library into it, and it is displaying filenames instead of metadata.

What formats are your music files in? Any music files with embedded metadata should have their metadata loaded from the files after they are queued up.

Quote:

When I tried changing from the "basic" layout it still shows file names, but all on the 4th pane. The first 3 panes are blank.

The library view won't show anything unless you set up some library folders. Click Library->Add Library Folder and select a folder.

Quote:

The "+" button doesn't seem to understand folders

You can access the folder selector by holding Shift while pressing the + or ^ button in the player. Not sure if there is a such thing as a file selector that can open files and folders. I don't think Allegro's file selector supports it.

Quote:

The .desktop file for *nix is defined in the "Games" category

That's something I forgot about. I typically work on games so my build system automatically files packages under games. This needs to be fixed (I never noticed this on Ubuntu because Unity doesn't show you the category).

Quote:

Also, GUIs are shit for this kind of thing, so I strongly encourage you to think of the UI from a human<->computer perspective instead of just the screen and be sure to map very powerful keyboard shortcuts to do everything. If I have to reach for my mouse to pick a song with ease you've failed.

That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about making all the features available with keyboard only.

You can navigate the UI with the keyboard using the arrow keys and Tab, but if you aren't using the library features, you will certainly be reaching for the mouse when the file dialog pops up.

I'll keep the keyboard in mind when I'm working on the next version.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

- Does it support global hotkeys (configurable and/or media keys)? Because... I use those every day.

- Is it low resource usage? I use Winamp and it uses nothing plus nothing.

I like the look of your program. Does it support skins?

- Kind of a side Q but, any plans for mobile?

[edit]

- What about resuming long files at last played location? (Important for podcasts/audio books!)

- No mention of actual index and remaining of files. Cursor bar is kind of too long.
- No mention of file length in library.

That info can be important telling files apart when you have multiple tracks of a podcast that were on a CD, for example and they're just "Track 3/4/5/6".

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

Todd Cope said:

Thanks for trying it out.

Thank you for sharing it! :D

Todd Cope said:

What formats are your music files in? Any music files with embedded metadata should have their metadata loaded from the files after they are queued up.

I'm kind of illiterate when it comes to media formats, but the container is Ogg (originally I ripped to M4A using iTunes in Windows, and converted using ffmpeg, but these days I rip directly to Ogg using "Sound Juicer")..

When I load the library up in cmus (my preferred music player because it's console-based) it recognizes the metadata.

While I'm on the subject of metadata, one of my biggest gripes about music players is grouping music by "artist" instead of "album artist" (or just general fuckups with the artist data). For example, if I'm listening to an "Eminem" album I don't want the songs featuring other artists to be grouped separately. They should all be grouped together as a fucking album. I don't know who would want to listen to a particular artist + artist grouping separately. There's always playlists for doing that anyway. The general index should group by album/CD/distribution/primary artist.

If you can solve that problem better than other media players then I think you'll have a real "selling" point, even if you don't plan to sell it. At least you'll give people a reason to use it. With that in mind, a lot of people acquire (or at least used to) their music from "unofficial" steams that often had mislabeled or no metadata, but the metadata was usually available in the file names. Having a way to easily update the metadata from formatted filenames would also be another strong selling point. Nobody likes to edit metadata song-by-song. Ideally, the computer should be taught to infer it the same way people do, and then have fallback interactive measures for situations where the computer cannot figure it out or gets it wrong. Something extensible and dynamic allows the user to write their own programs to solve the problem. The easiest way to do that is probably to just allow them to shell out to a system command to do the work. A scripting language is another answer, but requires more work from you.

Todd Cope said:

The library view won't show anything unless you set up some library folders. Click Library->Add Library Folder and select a folder.

I don't really understand what the panes are so that's probably the first thing I need to learn. I'm finding it hard to find documentation for this though. Here's what I currently have (I assume this is added to the library because when I started OMO back up this is how it came up):

{"name":"611297","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/174df8f8c6a7760187f0117eb4eafa3b.png","w":2048,"h":1076,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/174df8f8c6a7760187f0117eb4eafa3b"}611297

I wanted to start "fresh" so I tried to delete all of these files. In cmus I can just hold down the "D" key ("d") and it will delete one by one near instantly until the entire library is empty (there may be more direct ways with a command line, but this is nearly instant anyway). In OMO, pressing "delete" appears to remove the currently selected song, but then it seems to lock up (or at least do nothing else) until I release the key. It should probably support a repeat mechanism that is intuitive (i.e., don't delete 100 files when I press it instantaneously, but if I hold it for more than say 250 ms then start deleting them faster).

I'm guessing the best way for me to start fresh now is to find its storage directory/file and remove it from the file system.

Todd Cope said:

You can access the folder selector by holding Shift while pressing the + or ^ button in the player. Not sure if there is a such thing as a file selector that can open files and folders. I don't think Allegro's file selector supports it.

I'm pretty sure I have used GUI software that would allow you to choose either. Probably an "archiving" tool would be a candidate for that since you might want to add a single file or a whole directory/folder to the archive. I don't know if Allegro's API supports it, but it might be something to extend Allegro (or might require you to write platform specific code if you want OMO to be the best it can be). :)

Todd Cope said:

That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about making all the features available with keyboard only.

You can navigate the UI with the keyboard using the arrow keys and Tab, but if you aren't using the library features, you will certainly be reaching for the mouse when the file dialog pops up.

I'll keep the keyboard in mind when I'm working on the next version.

The best way to do it (though it would probably require quite a lot of work upfront) is with a command interpreter and command line. Once every function of the UI is implemented with a command interpreter you can easily expose all functionality to the keyboard without any custom keybindings. And you can also expose an API with the command interpreter to remap keybindings without having to develop a GUI to manage it. Which means somebody can map any key to any command (or combination of commands, if your command language supports it) to a single input [sequence]. Very powerful indeed.

No matter what bindings you think to implement by default, users will be used to different ones and want to remap them. For example, I'm used to vi/Vim so I would love to move through the library using hjkl and /regex or something along those lines. An Emacs user might prefer Ctrl/Alt chords. And individuals might want to automate repeated tasks with custom keys that no other user would want.

A mouse and GUI are good for graphics, but the keyboard is the most accurate and efficient input you can get from the user currently. Sound doesn't really benefit from visuals as much as graphics do. Make the keyboard powerful and you'll make manipulating your music playback (and metadata editing!) efficient and powerful.

Append:

On second glance of that screenshot it looks like OMO might be displaying the metadata after all, but probably I assumed they were filenames because it's all just strung together. Separating the artist from the title may or may not help, but it's not clear what you're trying to accomplish with the panes. What I'm used to is cmus:

{"name":"611298","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/1\/019ee206fecb92ef9377ad4194ac9957.png","w":1017,"h":495,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/1\/019ee206fecb92ef9377ad4194ac9957"}611298

{"name":"611299","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/3\/53db026367fd07d7d66d0ece66696719.png","w":1017,"h":493,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/5\/3\/53db026367fd07d7d66d0ece66696719"}611299

I think it's easier to read the metadata when it's separated. I'm not sure what those 4 panes in OMO are for, but I wonder if it's wasted screen real-estate for nothing.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

Oh my gosh fix the icon!!!

You can't even see it in Windows 10 with a black background! :) Add a white lining to the outside.

Also, be sure to add images to the git.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

As a side note, the albums that I've recently ripped with Sound Juicer in Ubuntu appear to be grouped properly by album artist instead of just artist combos so that particular frustration might actually be iTunes' fault (no surprise!). That said, it's still a problem that could be solved by the media player/re-tagging software after the fact.

Append:

I found the persistent storage in ~/.local/share/t3-i/OMO in Ubuntu Linux. The t3-i must be like your "organization" or something. In any case, I removed that whole tree and started over again. When adding a folder to the library it still only populated the 4th pane. The first 3 are blank and I don't understand how to use the app. The "Clear Library" menu option doesn't appear to do anything, at least as far as I can understand. It shows promise, but it needs more polish. Keep it up! :)

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

Found a bug.

One, it stretches weird at weird proportions in Windows but it's still pretty good.

But, if you have a LONG file (again, no index!) and click the cursor, it will jump to the mouse so not only do you have no index, but you have to FIND where you WERE before you then add some movement to skip ahead.

Also, right-clicked for fun. ... On the playlist... it restarted my 30+ minute playback to zero. >:(

[edit]

I may fork or contribute to your project to "make it my own" if you're willing. I'd install Winamp (if you don't have it) if I were you and check it out. It's basically "the best" player in the world. It scales well with "1-3 tracks" or "entire folders/library". It works on low and high DPI screens (although that could definitely be improved for winamp!). It supports plugins but those aren't necessary. The interface, while ugly by today's standards, is very much FUNCTIONALITY driven over aesthetics. The RAM and CPU usage are almost ZERO. Like, seriously, <16MB of RAM to run Winamp with an MP3.

Here's an old photo of mine demonstrating just that:

{"name":"ZjA2AcC.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/a\/aa25738e728e93fe62fd7bb936e0976a.png","w":1164,"h":579,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/a\/aa25738e728e93fe62fd7bb936e0976a"}ZjA2AcC.png

TEN. MEG.

What I've long wanted was basically "Winamp" that runs in both Linux and Windows. Minus the extra useless junk that AOL added for "media aware" crap.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Todd Cope
Member #998
November 2000
avatar

Thanks for all the feedback!

Does it support global hotkeys (configurable and/or media keys)? Because... I use those every day.

No, it is strictly using Allegro right now. I will look into adding a cross-platform module for handling global hot keys.

Quote:

Is it low resource usage? I use Winamp and it uses nothing plus nothing.

I haven't really done extensive testing of this. Just now I compared it to Clementine, which was my player of choice before I started using OMO. Clementine uses ~35% CPU when the UI is open and music is playing. OMO uses ~25% under the same conditions. Clementine uses ~50MB of RAM while OMO uses ~60MB without the library feature. OMO uses ~130MB with my 60,000 song library loaded. Note: I am on Mac, not sure how these would compare on other operating systems.

Quote:

Kind of a side Q but, any plans for mobile?

I do plan on doing a mobile port.

Quote:

- What about resuming long files at last played location? (Important for podcasts/audio books!)
- No mention of actual index and remaining of files. Cursor bar is kind of too long.
- No mention of file length in library.

These are all good points. They have been noted.

bamccaig said:

In OMO, pressing "delete" appears to remove the currently selected song, but then it seems to lock up (or at least do nothing else) until I release the key.

This is a bug. I am using Allegro's keyboard routines, which support key repeat. The GUI code apparently doesn't handle the Delete key properly.

Quote:

I think it's easier to read the metadata when it's separated. I'm not sure what those 4 panes in OMO are for, but I wonder if it's wasted screen real-estate for nothing.

The first pane lists all the artists in your library. The second pane lists all the albums. The third pane lists all the songs. This setup is designed to give quick access to any song in your library with just a few clicks. If you want all Eminem songs, you just find Eminem in the first pane and select the song you want from the third pane. If you want to listen to a specific Eminem album, you click on it in the second pane. I based the layout of Winamp 5.

I'll look improving the list displays.

Oh my gosh fix the icon!!!

Yeah, I noticed it was hard to see when I tested on Windows. I'll have to do something about that.

bamccaig said:

When adding a folder to the library it still only populated the 4th pane. The first 3 are blank and I don't understand how to use the app. The "Clear Library" menu option doesn't appear to do anything, at least as far as I can understand.

Seems the library stuff is not working properly on your system. When you add a library folder, it searches that folder and all sub folders for compatible music files. If you have any files of the supported types, the library should be populated after scanning completes. The scanning process can take a while, though. You should see some activity in the status bar letting you know where it's at in the scanning process.

One, it stretches weird at weird proportions in Windows but it's still pretty good.

That is how Allegro windows stretch on Windows.

Quote:

But, if you have a LONG file (again, no index!) and click the cursor, it will jump to the mouse so not only do you have no index, but you have to FIND where you WERE before you then add some movement to skip ahead.

Are you talking about scrolling the song list or the seek bar? The song list jumps to the clicked position. The seek bar shouldn't respond until you drag the mouse.

Quote:

Also, right-clicked for fun. ... On the playlist... it restarted my 30+ minute playback to zero.

Right clicking shouldn't restart playback unless you double click. I'll probably change the double clicking behavior in my GUI code so double right clicking doesn't activate a selection. A single right click should move the focus to the clicked item so I can have a context menu for the item at the cursor.

Quote:

I may fork or contribute to your project to "make it my own" if you're willing.

By all means. It is GPL for a reason.

Quote:

I'd install Winamp (if you don't have it) if I were you and check it out.

Unfortunately the Mac version of Winamp is not great. When I was on Windows, Winamp was my player of choice. When I moved to Linux, there was nothing that compared. I just ended up using whatever was packaged with Ubuntu. Now I am on Mac, and there is nothing as good as Winamp there either.

I tried to use iTunes for a while, but it wouldn't let me manage my library the way I wanted. It required me to spend huge amounts of time just to get my Albums to show up they way I wanted. I gave up and moved to Songbird, and finally to Clementine.

Still, I couldn't play all the formats I used to be able to play in Winamp. That's the main reason OMO exists. I wanted to get all the functionality I had with Winamp in a cross-platform player.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

Todd Cope said:

This setup is designed to give quick access to any song in your library with just a few clicks.

I cringe at the thought of multiple clicks to do a task. I guess I'm just very anti-GUI. :) And anti-mouse. I am a pretty big first-person shooter fanatic (going on like 12 years of Counter-Strike), but I still find mice incredibly inaccurate for most tasks. And I can still frag pretty damn good when I'm on fire. Matter of fact, I've been awake for over 30 hours, and I just got finished pwning while my lowsy team did nothing and we lost. But I was tied with the other team's top fragger and had several highlights during the match. >:( Mice just aren't good UI. It's a good way to make the app easy to pick up for beginners, but if you use an app regularly you can learn keyboard tricks to do stuff more easily and more precisely.

{"name":"1q1jpb.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/9\/19ba7ef20f50fe2e30ed19f6b9beff12.jpg","w":364,"h":242,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/9\/19ba7ef20f50fe2e30ed19f6b9beff12"}1q1jpb.jpg

Quote:

Seems the library stuff is not working properly on your system. When you add a library folder, it searches that folder and all sub folders for compatible music files. If you have any files of the supported types, the library should be populated after scanning completes. The scanning process can take a while, though. You should see some activity in the status bar letting you know where it's at in the scanning process.

OK, now I see that it's working down there. I would suggest the status bar should be more prominant. The whole point is to see what is going on. I didn't even notice it until you directed me to it. Perhaps theming can help with that. I do notice a theming menu entry, but theming isn't really my cup of tea. If I change a theme it's usually one time and I forget about it. :)

Quote:

Unfortunately the Mac version of Winamp is not great. When I was on Windows, Winamp was my player of choice. When I moved to Linux, there was nothing that compared. I just ended up using whatever was packaged with Ubuntu. Now I am on Mac, and there is nothing as good as Winamp there either.

On a side note, my favorite Linux GUI music player is Amarok 1.x. 2.x is a clusterfuck, and 1.x is probably not maintained anymore, but back in the day it was great (for me at least). I don't think it has much to teach you, but you may want to just experiment with it anyway. I'd also suggest giving 'cmus' a taste (if you're comfortable on a command line). It might inspire some ideas for OMO.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
avatar

The interface, while ugly by today's standards

Love winamp, still using it with my old woodskin....

{"name":"611301","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/e\/8e70002063d80651d29a355711ee5329.jpg","w":548,"h":346,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/e\/8e70002063d80651d29a355711ee5329"}611301

---
“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
avatar

bamccaig said:

but I still find mice incredibly inaccurate for most tasks.

While I'm not very accurate with a mouse, I'm even less accurate with a keyboard. I've used one every day for nearly fourty years now, and I still can't type without looking at the keys. And even then I make a lot of mistakes.

So for me most tasks are quicker to do by mouse than keyboard.

I do prefer keyboards for data entry. Quick repetitive keystrokes I can do ok, so I don't like to touch the mouse while I'm entering data. Both the programs I'm writing at the moment can also be entirely keyboard controlled.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

LennyLen said:

I'm even less accurate with a keyboard.

!??!?!

Todd Cope said:

Are you talking about scrolling the song list or the seek bar? The song list jumps to the clicked position. The seek bar shouldn't respond until you drag the mouse.

The seek bar definitely felt like malfunctioned when it was an hour long file. I'll see if I can replicate it.

[edit]

Missing Feature: Remember the last playlist! Because:

BUG: OMO crashed when I changed Windows resolution / hit Win+P ("projector") which changes between one screen, two mirrored, or extended, or only the secondary screen.

Missing Feature: Does Windows version (or all?) not support drag-and-drop? That's essential!

I also definitely agree there needs to be keyboard shortcuts. Control-O for open--especially with no drag-and-drop!

[edit] OMO just crashed when I hit Play Files (which should be "Open Files" really?) and selected two MP3s. But, the second time I did it, it worked...

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Dizzy Egg
Member #10,824
March 2009
avatar

Worked ok on Windows 7, although I do lose the button icons if I go from fullscreen to minimised.

{"name":"611304","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/6\/86406443f03cc1aa43dde254dbafb03c.png","w":681,"h":580,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/6\/86406443f03cc1aa43dde254dbafb03c"}611304

----------------------------------------------------
Please check out my songs:
https://soundcloud.com/dont-rob-the-machina

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

As a side note, typically GPL should be in a file called COPYING in the root of the project (or COPYING.txt for Windoze losers). Additionally, all files that are protected by the GPL should contain a copyright header at the top of the file. I have a hack of a project (that hasn't been maintained in years) to do this automatically. With a clean working tree you may want to give it a try: https://github.com/bambams/apply-copyright

Append:

OMO just crashed running idle for 12+ hours. I'm going to try to build from source with debug symbols so I'll know what happened next time. >:( It was apparently a double free though.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

I'm a Windoze user, what's this got on WMP? Nothing personal, I just don't really need anything else. All music files are wav, ripped to the hard drive from CD, except for some random downloads like tracks from djellisdee.com . Anyone know any good DJs that spin ambient, electro, or space, or maybe sort of like dubstep but better and in more dynamic ranges??

Edit
Bamkeg, your post is 5 screens tall!

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

I'm a Windoze user, what's this got on WMP?

WMP is pretty crappy, but if you don't do much with your music it should suffice. I don't think OMO has anything to offer you yet, but since it is written in Allegro you could learn from it and develop your own features that you like and contribute back! And could just help the developers shape its future. And ultimately, it could be made to be better than WMP for your own purposes! >:(

Quote:

Anyone know any good DJs that spin ambient, electro, or space, or maybe sort of like dubstep but better and in more dynamic ranges??

This is the only thing related to those categories that I know of or like:

video

8-)

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

I'm a Windoze user, what's this got on WMP?

Good. God.

Try Winamp. Try it now. And feel what you could have had... in 1995.

Also, FYI, QMMP is a Winamp lookalike for Linux. But it uses way more RAM and CPU compared to the insanely optimized (for 486s!!!) Winamp.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
avatar

Try Winamp. Try it now. And feel what you could have had... in 1995.

I have to agree with this. There was something else I tried for Kubuntu that was rather good, a Winamp look alike that was pretty nice, but I forget the name now.

Since Winamp went under, the full version has been available and works well. And I like my woodamp look too much. :)

---
“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Hey, gimme a break, I've used WinAmp before ;P xD

I don't like it's floating player at all. I just want something integrated into my taskbar like WMP does. In Windows 10 (which I can basically bsod on demand now), you hover over the taskbar icon and it shows a little player control or you can click on it to open the full window. Although, windows update likes to reset my settings on my default view and playlist visibility :P .

Instant BSOD Win10 :
Press an important key like a control key with a regular key next to it, and at least half the time you can get the keyboard driver to crash on an EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED BSOD. Loving Windows baby. :/

Try It Now!TM

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Honestly I never understood the appeal of winamp. I hated the look of it. It was always way too busy for my taste. I also don't really think "skinning" applications is very useful. Maybe if you skinned them to stand out and be visually distinct it would be useful, but otherwise it serves no purpose and is just distracting. The optimizations are reason enough to use it, but then again most people have ample amounts of CPU and memory for things like a media player. The resource hogs these days are Web browsers, not media players. I believe I used QMMP in Linux before I discovered Amarox 1.x which was much more featureful and pleasant to look at, but QMMP was good at its job before that (I think it wasn't until it went away that I found Amarok).

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I agree about how Winamp can be too busy looking. The default appearance when you first install it is annoying and way too much. But you can shut down the features you don't want. When I run it now, the screenshot below is what I see. It has the equalizer, the playlist window and main window for playing. Not too busy, just what I need and I like the wood look skin.

{"name":"611305","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/4\/a4da76adbf31121d747fc1973866e546.jpg","w":548,"h":346,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/4\/a4da76adbf31121d747fc1973866e546"}611305

And on my main taskbar, when winamp is playing, if I point at the icon for it (Windows 7) it shows play buttons in the little popup window that appears.

{"name":"611306","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/e\/2e8558a53e266ace2caf54c1744ebe57.jpg","w":676,"h":299,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/e\/2e8558a53e266ace2caf54c1744ebe57"}611306

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Todd Cope
Member #998
November 2000
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Dizzy Egg said:

Worked ok on Windows 7, although I do lose the button icons if I go from fullscreen to minimised.

I'll have to do some more work on the Windows port, it seems. I was dealing with that bug before, but I thought I got it fixed.

I'm a Windoze user, what's this got on WMP?

I'm not really trying to compete with any of the standard media players. I'm trying to make the best player for obscure music formats. That's the primary focus.

Most people don't need anything other than support for MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. There are plenty of great players for those types of files. I just happen to be one of those people who used to download music from BBSes on my 2400 baud modem in the early 90s. I've been listening to music in obscure formats for a long time, and most players don't support those formats properly.

Winamp was the best player for me due to its support for a wide array of formats through various plugins. The interface was good enough, and with OMO I've modeled the UX after my own experience with Winamp.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I've bookmarked this thread and will be referencing it when working on the next version.

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