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Alright, bear with me, but if you like your music on your PC, this may be worth reading.
On my media PC (Asus mid range board, AMD 5050e dualie 2.4Ghz, Nividia 256Mb 7300GT grafix; Asus Xonar D2X pci-e Soundcard; 2Gb 800Mhz DDR2 Memory) The onboard storage drive crashed about three months ago.
I had all the audio and video backed up on an external hard drive and replaced the onboard faulty drive and transferred all files back from external to internal. This was a somewhat lengthy transfer, seveal hours. In between I upgraded Winamp to the latest version and I have done ever since.
I have used Winamp for probably about 10 years now. I have also used another freebie software prog, dbPoweramp, for about ten years as well to convert audio files to mp3, both have always worked perfectly and I've always liked both.
When I played back audio files after the transfer, basically, they sounded crap. Present on lots of them was a kind of oscillation, a kind of 'pulsing' of the audio signal, but I couldn't listen to it.
I thought the lengthy transfer had corrupted the files so bit the bullet and wiped both audio partitions, both internal and externall and set about the lengthy process of converting around 1200+ albums from cda to mp3. So far I'm up to 'G'.
On playing back a few albums, I noticed the same effect, the oscillation. Disappointed, I endeavoured to find the source of the problem. I replaced the lead from the computer to the amp; tried a different channel on the amp (Cambridge Azure 640A 80wpc btw) and carried out a lot of analytical listening.
Some converted albums were ok, but most were not. Those recorded from vinyl at a lower audio level seemed best suited to playback.
So this evening, using Winamp, I transferred some of the bad sounding aalbums to my I-Pod and played them back through my Hi-Fi through the I-Pod dock. They sounded fine.
Then it occurred to me to play some music back through a different media player, an option which I hadn't considered before as I've trusted Winamp for nigh on a decade.
First I used Windows Media Player (within Win XP Pro) and all was good.
Everything I played back sounded great within I-Tunes.
Nero Media Player also played back audio files just fine.
Winamp made most everything sound awful.
So what am I to surmise?
I will have to do some more tests with Winamp on other machines but it is looking as if somewhere along the line Winamp may have fouled up when they upgraded.
This fault may, of course, be peculiar to my motherboard, I will have to try and pinpoint the anomaly.
I also have versions of Winamp going back at least five years so can try older versions.
I'm disappointed a great deal, as I really like Winamp's layout and user interface, but something is amiss.
Above all though, I'm glad I have decent audio quality again, I was getting really quite worried.
I'll report back if I find out anything else about this issue.
In the meantime, can anybody recommend a good audio player taking into account I already have I-Tunes; Real Alternative Player; Windows Media Player; Nero Media Player.
On my media PC (Asus mid range board, AMD 5050e dualie 2.4Ghz, Nividia 256Mb 7300GT grafix; Asus Xonar D2X pci-e Soundcard; 2Gb 800Mhz DDR2 Memory) The onboard storage drive crashed about three months ago.
I had all the audio and video backed up on an external hard drive and replaced the onboard faulty drive and transferred all files back from external to internal. This was a somewhat lengthy transfer, seveal hours. In between I upgraded Winamp to the latest version and I have done ever since.
I have used Winamp for probably about 10 years now. I have also used another freebie software prog, dbPoweramp, for about ten years as well to convert audio files to mp3, both have always worked perfectly and I've always liked both.
When I played back audio files after the transfer, basically, they sounded crap. Present on lots of them was a kind of oscillation, a kind of 'pulsing' of the audio signal, but I couldn't listen to it.
I thought the lengthy transfer had corrupted the files so bit the bullet and wiped both audio partitions, both internal and externall and set about the lengthy process of converting around 1200+ albums from cda to mp3. So far I'm up to 'G'.
On playing back a few albums, I noticed the same effect, the oscillation. Disappointed, I endeavoured to find the source of the problem. I replaced the lead from the computer to the amp; tried a different channel on the amp (Cambridge Azure 640A 80wpc btw) and carried out a lot of analytical listening.
Some converted albums were ok, but most were not. Those recorded from vinyl at a lower audio level seemed best suited to playback.
So this evening, using Winamp, I transferred some of the bad sounding aalbums to my I-Pod and played them back through my Hi-Fi through the I-Pod dock. They sounded fine.
Then it occurred to me to play some music back through a different media player, an option which I hadn't considered before as I've trusted Winamp for nigh on a decade.
First I used Windows Media Player (within Win XP Pro) and all was good.
Everything I played back sounded great within I-Tunes.
Nero Media Player also played back audio files just fine.
Winamp made most everything sound awful.
So what am I to surmise?
I will have to do some more tests with Winamp on other machines but it is looking as if somewhere along the line Winamp may have fouled up when they upgraded.
This fault may, of course, be peculiar to my motherboard, I will have to try and pinpoint the anomaly.
I also have versions of Winamp going back at least five years so can try older versions.
I'm disappointed a great deal, as I really like Winamp's layout and user interface, but something is amiss.
Above all though, I'm glad I have decent audio quality again, I was getting really quite worried.
I'll report back if I find out anything else about this issue.
In the meantime, can anybody recommend a good audio player taking into account I already have I-Tunes; Real Alternative Player; Windows Media Player; Nero Media Player.
