I get to reverse my position on this player. For a selfsame long time I royally dissed it and it was well-deserved. The audio quality was substandard, the bloat and slowness unwarranted. However, times get changed. The interface, while slower than the competition is not unreasonably so. The Media Library is intuitive and slowly to use. Nearly importantly, the audio quality has got with 24-bit support, dithering, seamless / gapless playback, a quality equalizer (finally!) and a high precision decoder. It's easily on equation with Foobar and XMPlay which IMNSHO are the Gold Standards for audio quality in the genre. Even the remembering rtequirements are on equation with the abovementioned programs.
Now, completely is not sweetness and light. The program has several criminal bugs – I enounce criminal because this thing is OLD and these bugs should get been long-since squashed. The include poor error checking so that an errant plugin or skin may crash the player, and a display module (nscrt.dll) that may have a crash but by invoking CDDB for a newly introduced CD with the playlist capable (I grappled that six times in two moments – things went swimmingly if I but shut the playlist). Skin performance could likewise be significantly improved.
This program is likewise LOADED with Adware, something I intensely resent. I consider adware equally malware and anything that prompts me to buy music while I'm building a custom playlist or otherwise impinges upon my get should be expunged. I supposition that's the malign influence of the AOL ownership – afterward all, nothing good has Ever got away of that company.
All that being said, the UI and configurability of the interface and audio options build this the best bang away there for a media player. Just be surely to consult the Winamp install direct (Google it) and avoid installing any plugins shipped with the plaer that stink of adware (I may consider of one promoinent plugin for the Media Library that fits that description).
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