Second best? (Winamp)

Member Name: chrishill105

Product:	Winamp
Date:	16/02/02 (283 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good downloadable 'visualisations', Good downloadable 'skins', FREE

Disadvantages: Not very easy to use, Poor standard 'skin'

Winamp has been around for a while now and has established itself as the leader of the PC music player world. But now Microsoft have released their new Windows Media Player (7) and although it only works on Windows 98 and above it has much to rival Winamp. I'm going to compare both of these players in this review so you can decide which is best yourself. Both are excellent and are problably the two leaders at the moment, so here goes.

Media Player contains more of the 'Visualisation' thingy which are sort of videos which react to the music you playing to make pretty patterns. However, Winamp has a much greater variety of these things to download in the long run. Other than this the two are very similar.

Windows Media Player and Winamp can both play the same music types, but Media Player can also play videos. This is why I say Media Player is best if you’ve got Windows 98 or greater because it comes as standard for video etc. on Windows 98 machines. Keeping Media Player (MP from now on because its shorter) means you've got a single program for everything rather than having several if you were to download Winamp to replace it. However Winamp is the best option if you don't have Windows98 or greater because its close second to MP, and the only second option a you can't get MP7 with machines not running Windows 98 or greater.

MP and Winamp both boast a huge variety of 'Equalisation' options and presets and this is pretty good, but to be expected now. Winamp led the way with these providing perfect integration into their system. However Microsoft soon caught up and there's now little to compare between the two, and with other similar programs. MP however has several extra 'SRS WOW' effects which sort of add a crazy echo and all sort of enhancements to the bass etc. which adds a new dimension to music, but for me just gets a bit annoying.

Both MP and Winamp have extensive websites to
download extras like 'Skins' these change the whole look of your player to your taste. Its arguable which skins are better, I sort of prefer the user made Winamp skins, yet Winamp only has square skins. MP7 has all sort of different shapes. There is however a much greater range of Winamp skins running into thousands, Microsoft don't come close. The websites are also linked intro the player via a sort of window in each, no comparison there. Both also have a 'Radio' option. These come from the internet. MP has a greater selection of links but all the radio stations both in MP and Winamp's partner sites are pretty poor non-commercial stuff, and unless you've got a really fast connection (alot above 56K), they sound pretty poor anyway no matter what's being played.

Winamp and Media Player also both have the option to load songs from CD into MP3 form etc. However MP is much more user friendly for this. In Winamp's you'll find yourself reading through pages of information off the net and also experimenting a good bit before you get it working right. MP is much more user friendly, just check a few boxes press a few labelled buttons and that's it.

Finally MP has one ore benefit above Winamp in the portable music player world. If you have a MP3 player MP works very well with it to download music directly through a inbuilt interface. Very helpful unless, like me, you don't actually have a MP3 player. Also I suspect most MP3 player come with their own software and so you don't really need this anyway, but I cold be wrong there.

So how to decide, here's a summary:

Microsoft Media Player:

~Has more visualisations
~Has less extra visualisations to download
~Has more skins
~Has less skins to download and they're generally worse than Winamp's
~Has different shaped skins
~Has good portable music player support
~Has slightly better equalisati
on
~Has video playing support
~Doesn't work, at all, with anything below Windows 98
~IS FREE WITH Windows 98 AND ABOVE

Winamp:

~Has virtually no standard visualisations so you'll need to download them
~Has a huge selection of better quality visualisations than MP on its site.
~Has a rubbishy standard skin on download, and nothing else
~Has a massive selection of skins probably better than MP's in general
~Has no extra portable music support, but do you need it?
~Has good equalisation support
~Works no matter what Windows version you've got
~Is not that user friendly, but a bit of effort on your part and you'll soon be familiar
~Has no video playing support
~FREE from winamp.com

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OK.

Personally I thought Winamp was simply the best when I first got it. But then having got Media player later I decided there was little between them and didn't bother downloading Winamp for my new PC. But it’s up to you from he above. But really its MP if you have Windows 98 or above, and Winamp otherwise. Neither will disappoint.

Summary: