makin' some noise

While I enjoy most Microsoft products, I found that the Windows Media Player isn’t my favorite. It performs well enough for most people, but I’m a little pickier. My newest machine is now four and a half years old, so any gains in performance are delightful to me. I’ve elected to switch back to Winamp as my default music player. The price is right too – you can get it for free.

The biggest drawback to Winamp are the hoops you must jump through when installing the application. First, the opportunity to choose the wrong edition (say, one that costs money) is quite easy. Second, during the installation the manufacturer (AOL) makes several attempts to hijack the user’s home page and other preferences, as well as install extra software. These assaults are easily avoided by geeks, but since they are the default options I’m sure normal mortals will fall prey to them.

Winamp plays my MP3 collection more cleanly that Windows Media player and supports “plug-ins” that allow the user to customize their experience. For me, there is a plug-in that I really adore: Stereo Tool. The simple name belays the coolness. The plug-in was developed by a fellow named Hans van Zutphen and is designed to moderate the differences in volume between different songs. Hans gives the plug-in away – pretty cool. Be warned: some of those previously save performance gains are lost with the use of the Stereo Tool. For me, the ROE (return on enjoyment) is well worth it. If there is one failing of Stereo Tool, it would be the incredible flexibility available in the plug-in - which is needed by radio broadcasters.

Here’s more detail about how Hans’ plug-in works for the geeks. Stereo Tool uses the same concepts used by commercial radio stations to get consistent loudness – multiband compression and limiting. The heart of the plug-in is a ten-band compressor/limiter (which has separate compressor and limiting functions) to provide a very good approximation of the radio station experience. If you’d like to learn more about the geeky details, feel free to drop me a line, or check out Han’s website.