A couple of months ago, I got so fed up with iTunes and its unstable nature that I completely abandoned it as my primary music player. iTunes was giving me all sorts of problems: it would crash unpredictably, it would halt podcast downloads without reason, it would require my processor’s full attention for extended periods of time, and the list goes on. All of these problems slowly but surely built upon my existing contempt for Apple’s often hailed piece of junk. Apple tries to have iTunes perform all sorts of functions, but unfortunately it fails to please on almost every single level – I’m sure I’ll piss off at least one Apple fan, so don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or two.

After ridding my hard drive of any and all things Apple, I hit Google in search of a replacement for iTunes. After a few quick searches it quickly becomes clear how tight Apple’s stranglehold on music playback is – practically everyone with an iPod uses iTunes, and most are completely unaware of exactly how lackluster this combination really is. Looking through the queries, it was nothing but Apple this and iTunes that. There has gotta be something out there that doesn’t suck…

After a few more searches, I finally found something that I had almost forgotten about: Winamp. Developed by Nullsoft, Winamp has been faithfully reproducing audio since 1997. In fact, the guys over at Nullsoft have just released version 5.5 to commemorate the player’s 10^th anniversary – ironically, this latest version was released on the tenth day of the tenth month of the player’s tenth year of its existence.

Winamp vs. iTunes: A Battle of Philosophies

Apple’s most identifiable mantra is simplicity. Designing software with this philosophy in mind has its fair share of advantages, as well as drawbacks. For example, one of the things that Apple is fond of doing is binding multiple functions to a single button. The play/pause/stop button is a good example of this practice; it keeps the interface clean, possible aiding new users in finding desired functions, but it also pisses off more experienced users. One of the things I hate most about this practice is that it means that I can’t always pause or stop a song or podcast from my current location in the interface — I might, for example, have to switch from the podcast directory to my music library in order to pause the song instead of completely stopping it.

Another drawback of “simplicity” is that it inherently cripples functionality and, by implication, also the ability to customize. Every instance of iTunes conforms perfectly to Apple’s cookie-cutter ideal; in all probability you’ll never find anyone whose iTunes is black instead of white, or whose ID3 tags display any differently than yours. Again, this might be fine for the average user, but every once in a while it’s nice to able to change things around, especially when the mold that you’re being forced into simply doesn’t fit.

Apple, with its simplicity, is at one end of the spectrum, while Winamp is far more towards the center, offering a wider range of functions and settings, without being too complicated. Winamp isn’t in the least bit shy about is capabilities, and as such, it places every commonly used function right on the dash. The interface might look a little more intimidating than that of Apple, but at least everything is right there in front of you.

Winamp’s Look ‘n Feel

I wrote quite an extensive article on why I got extremely fed up with iTunes a months ago, right after it happened; as such, I won’t burden anyone with repeated arguments and explanations. Instead, I’ll try to focus more on that Winamp does and why I ultimately like it better.

Winamp does a nice job of balancing simplicity and functionality without losing customizability. By default, Winamp 5.5 will display three major information panes: Right under the menu bar is a horizontal pane featuring all the major controls, as well as all of information about the file being played. Now if this were iTunes, that would be the only thing displayed here, but it’s not; depending on your needs, you might want to use this pane to display visualizations, playlists, or perhaps, equalizer settings – all of which can also be displayed elsewhere if you so please.

Positioned directly underneath the playback/information pane, you’ll find the directory and media navigation pane. This pane has been vertically split into two parts; the leftmost part lists all the available music, podcast and video directories on your machine, while the right hand portion of the pane displays a more detailed list of the contents of each directory. This part of Winamp, I suppose, is actually quite similar to its iTunes counterpart, save for a few (embarrassing) differences. As much as I had wanted Winamp 5.5 to be perfect, there are still a few minor things that I think iTunes does-dare I say it-better. For one, it would have been nice to see a little more information in the directory listings pane. Don’t get me wrong, detailed library information, like the album name, track number, genre, rating and play count is available, but you’ll have to venture over to a different part of the interface. Perhaps I’ve conformed to Apple’s mold a little too much, but I’m of the opinion that this should available from within the playlist.

Onwards, though. On to the last pane: All the way on the right of the display is what ha s been dubbed the “Playlist Editor.” Occupying all vertical space on right side of the screen, the editor displays all songs currently in the playlist, along with their item number and play time. At the bottom of this pane is a series of buttons which allow you to add to, remove from, and otherwise manipulate the playlist. This feature comes in quite handy when you want to dump a new album directly into a playlist.

A Few More Things Winamp Does

If you haven’t read the preceding paragraphs, you might have missed it: I’m not a big fan of iTunes. One of the things that I hate most about iTunes, and by association also Quicktime, is the general lack of formats that it supports. I happen to like high-fidelity audio reproduction; lossy MP3’s don’t always do it for me. As such, I’m a big fan of high quality, open source formats, such as FLAC, which-you guessed it-Apple doesn’t support. Winamp on the other hand, does support FLAC, along with a whole list of other formats. It’s small things like this that matter to me.

In similar fashion, I also enjoy the fact that I can have Winamp look and behave how I want it to. As I’ve already stated, I consider Winamp to be somewhere towards the middle of spectrum when it comes to functionality. It might not be as customizable as Foobar2000, for example, but simply having a variety of skins to choose from is very nice. Skins don’t just change the look, but they also affect the feel of the player; some skins are really elaborate, some are only about the essentials, while still others might be completely modular.

Additionally, Winamp’s Preferences menu reads like Tolstoy’s War and Peace in comparison to its anemic counterpart in iTunes. After using iTunes for an extended amount of time, the number of options and variables open to change in Winamp is astounding: Would you like to see the splash screen on startup? Do you want to allow multiple instances of the program? How about a scrolling the ID3 tag information in the taskbar icon? Or perhaps you’d like to automatically convert underscores into spaces when reading song names? Winamp even solves of the biggest nuisances in iTunes: you can set it to keep an eye on specific music folders so that any chances in the folder (like the deletion of a song, for example) will automatically reflect in playlist – so no more stupid exclamation marks!

And if there’s something you think Winamp ought to do but doesn’t, there’s always a vast plugins library available. There are plugins that’ll do everything from managing your playlists and post-processing your music, to enabling support for your favorite MP3 player-yes, that includes iPods.