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I get to reverse my positioning on this player. For a very 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 tardily to use. About 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 equivalence with Foobar and XMPlay which IMNSHO are the Gilded Standards for audio quality in the genre. Eventide the memory rtequirements are on equivalence with the abovementioned programs.
Now, wholly is not sweetness and light. The program has several criminal bugs – I enunciate criminal because this thing is OLD and these bugs should get been long-since squashed. The include poor error checking hence that an errant plugin or skin can crash the player, and a display module (nscrt.dll) that can have a crash but by invoking CDDB for a newly entered CD with the playlist subject (I managed that six times in two instants – things got swimmingly if I but closed the playlist). Skin performance could besides be significantly improved.
This program is besides LOADED with Adware, something I intensely resent. I regard adware as malware and anything that prompts me to purchase music while I'm building a custom playlist or otherwise impinges upon my get should be expunged. I conjecture that's the malign influence of the AOL ownership – afterwards all, nix good has Always 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. Merely be sure to consult the Winamp install channelize (Google it) and avoid installing any plugins shipped with the plaer that stink of adware (I can consider of one promoinent plugin for the Media Library that fits that description).
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