By Julio Franco, TechSpot.com Published: May 30, 2006, 2:20 AM EST
When it comes to media players there is no doubting on the popularity of Winamp. Its ease to use and extensive customisation via plug-ins have made it quite a legendary piece of software, being one of the most downloaded programs ever.
This guide will take you through the various aspects of Winamp, with a special emphasis given to the customization of the most relevant plug-ins available in order to enhance your playback experience.
Yeah, basically try it & see. Don't associate Winamp with any media files, that way iTunes will still be the default media player. Matter of preference really - iTunes offers pretty much everything you'd need but there's no room for improvement/customisation with it. Winamp & foobar2000 offer significantly scope for setting the media player as you wish it.
So right offa the bat I download WinAmp 5.22 using my dialup fueled computer cause you see I was quite excited with trying the WinAmp tweaks.
But it was not to be -- you see I stalled out right at the start line after spending half an hour trying to find the "Shibatch mpg123".
What, say you? Well the problem is that the link you provided is a Japanese site and I'm ashamed to say I can't read [or speak for that manner] Japanese.
So after spending more time trying various Google searches only to have Google also let me down I came to the conclusion that even though MAD decoder isn't updated at least it is easily available.
And -- now that I think about it my current untweaked 5.1x setup ain't to bad as is.
But it was not to be -- you see I stalled out right at the start line after spending half an hour trying to find the "Shibatch mpg123".
What, say you? Well the problem is that the link you provided is a Japanese site and I'm ashamed to say I can't read [or speak for that manner] Japanese.
The links under #3. (Which is linked at the start of the page as "http://otachan.com/in_!mpg123.html#DOWNLOAD"
They're 7-zip files. If you can't open them, IZArc will work.
Yeah, the links on the page linked too in the guide. I'll updated it with the #Download link above.
I just worked on the assumption people would scroll the page [Edited by ThomasNews on 2006-05-31 08:37:39]
One of the biggest complaints I had about WinAmp for years is that it didn't have support for 5.1 surround sound. A couple people tried to make plug-ins to do this, but most of them were quite horrible. A couple weeks ago I ran across one that finally does a pretty good job! I found it on the WinAmp website, but they still host an older version of the plug-in. The developer's website, http://www.andrewlabs.com/ has the most recent version, and the author is very active at updating when needed.
One of the things I like about this plug-in compared to most others is that it is an output plug-in, not a DSP. This output plugin then allows you to feed it through another output plugin, such as DirectSound or waveOut, so you can still have the benefits of the settings contained within those.
It has some other features too of course, but I'm just happy to finally get surround sound via WinAmp out of my 5.1 speakers!
I've updated the instructions for installing the Otachan (mpg123, etc) plugins. Got an email about it & yes, they're right, if you've not used them before installation is confusing, hopefully this'll clear up any confusion caused. My bad
quote: The developer's website, http://www.andrewlabs.com/ has the most recent version, and the author is very active at updating when needed
Hehehe. You found this plugin also. It was made for foobar only for a long time. (Which was why I stopped using Winamp)
He's adding new features almost every weeks and I'm happy with that! He restarted to be active in the development. (Just a few months ago, his site was dead, the plugin wasn't updated for a year, and some features weren't working.)
Well, if there's any recommends for the next revision (As regards additional Plugins & the like) be sure to add them here.
I think the core options are fairly well covered next so I'm planning to move onto additional areas now.
There are 12 additional user comments, 
