The reason for asking this comes from ../community/index.php/topic,51.0.html due to some thoughts that have come up from looking into getting a replacement for Gracenote support for audio CD ripping.
Obviously removing the support for a feature that has existed since 2003 isn’t good (though you had to ‘go pro’ to make it properly work) but with better standalone burning software out there, is keeping this beneficial?
I have to ask as over the last few days I’ve been looking into getting a basic replacement audio CD playback plug-in working (which due to how Winamp’s ripping support works would still allow for audio CD ripping to work).
However the audio CD burning support (there’s no means to burn data CDs via Winamp) is dependent upon a library (the Sonic engine) which was last updated in 2009 (and since deprecated by Rovio) and based on some of the things I’ve seen other users posting doesn’t seem to work too well on recent versions of Windows.
So my idea is to replace the existing native CD playback plug-in (in_cdda.dll) with one that is not dependent upon the Sonic engine for CD playback / ripping by directly using Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) which is supported by the versions of Windows that WACUP is aimed at (i.e. Windows 7 and newer).
Additionally I’d want to look into replacing the native library plug-in (ml_disc.dll) to just provide a means to handle viewing / ripping audio CDs & not implementing a burning mode alternative (which would have to use a different burning engine or even try to use the native Windows support). This plug-in is on my hit list as it can cause Winamp to be noticeably slower to load when enabled even if there are no audio CDs detected.
Please leave thoughts & comments below or on the community forum on whether this seems reasonable in that I replace the native audio CD support to only provide playback / ripping support & drop burning support.
-dro
I personally never used it because, as you mentioned, there’s much better software out there for the job (That and I tried using the ripping portion of it only once).
I’m with Andrew - I wouldn’t spend time on this.
I always felt it was an option for people that really didn’t “know what they were doing” as such. I think the people that go to the effort to download the WACUP are probably more Power Users and are thus aware of Exact Audio Copy and other such solutions.
The only function I think should be kept with regards to Physical Media (CDs) is playback.
I still buy cds and the first thing I do is rip them using Winamp, but don’t mind how as long as the fuctionality works at a reasonable speed
Reading the responses, I feel like there is confusion about what is being proposed with CD support
To simplify things
CD Playback would STAY
CD Ripping to any format currently supported would STAY
Using WACUP to use MP3s that are on your hard drive to make a physical audio disk from a blank CD would be GONE
The votes have been falling in line my my thinking so far, but I want to make sure it is fairly and accurately represented.
just my two cents.
CD Playback/Ripping: Would still love to have that.
CD Burning: Very low down on my wish list, I have not burnt a music cd in years and there are many other options available when needed.
Auto Tagging: even higher than Cd Ripping, would also love the ability to search multiple openDb’s musicbrainz , freeDb (extensability)
Having all my music functionality in one place is really great.
Something that could even be better than CD Ripping is to convert music form Youtube to any supported format. (Just thinking aloud)
Thanks for the comments so far.
From what I’ve seen so far there seems to be roughly a 50/50 split between views on here vs those from the facebook page / community forum on whether burning support should be kept or not.
I’ll be keeping an eye on further comments here and elsewhere and will also do a bit more research to see if there’s anything free & viable that can be used to if needed provide burning support in any replacements I make. Though everything so far has either been old &/or costly to get a license to be able to use it.
-dro
In my opinion all CD-related stuff can go.
I will keep using EAC and fre:ac anyways.
It’s a non-core feature.
I’m pretty much with Schalk.
I use Winamp to rip and sometimes listen to CDs, but pretty much never to burn CDs.
To me any CD functionality could be removed, as I use winamp purely for managing my mp3 collection. CDs run on the dedicated CD player not on PC. For ripping I use EAC.
The feature can be dropped; never used it in the many years of being a Winamp user.
I have been using winamp for 10+ years and never used the CD burning feature. And I don’t even have a CD-ROM on my current PC… CDs are gonna go away just like floppy discs.
I vote drop CD features, focus on optimizing core features which made winamp the greatest ever.
I have newer used Winamp to burn CD’s. I use better EZ CD Audio Converter to rip and burn.
So that feature in Winamp is useless to me and should be dropped.
Having an all-in-one app that can also burn to CD could be rarely handy, but I can’t say it would be fair of me to ask you to spend time on burning functionality for as little as it would be used.
If you could keep CD reading (and online look-up of artist, title, etc), it would be very much appreciated by those of us who still have and add to a CD collection.
The Ripping would also still be handy as it’s just so easy to do from within Winamp, but I can let go of having that functionality as I can use other 3rd party rippers if needed.
(I do actually still purchase music CDs and do sometimes actually still play them in the computer and so having CD lookup to show album, artist, and song title is nice. I do generally rip them to computer but there are some that may never get ripped to my computer. I can buy an entire physical CD cheaper that buying that same album digitally many times (and I have a physical, best-available-quality backup).
In 10+ years since the (Technics) CD changer stopped playing without skipping - I’ve not serviced it and (all of the) CDs are packed (somewhere!) around the apartment; but I -honestly- have no idea whether *younger* people and others may still use ‘em; not a feature which I’d need: no CD burning, of any sort, going on here. :)
Does anyone still burn CDs? Files are so much more convenient. I haven’t burned an audio CD in a few years. Stick hundreds of tracks on a $9 USB flash drive or transfer to my phone, etc. etc. I think I used CD burning through Winamp once, maybe never. For burning I use Imgburn. I use/used CD ripping fairly often but not much since auto-tag support ended. I use Exact Audio Copy almost exclusively for that. However, it is common still today for me to play a track or 2 from CD mixed in the playlist with files. I’d love to see CD playback support continued but ripping features are not necessary. If they are to be included some tagging feature is required. Yes you can do it without such feature but why would you when there’s other good choices? I’ve had good luck with freedb and musicbrainz. They aren’t quite Gracenote but pretty good and getting better. I use Heidenreich’s MP3Tag (which is absolutely awesome and indispensable) for handling audio files, tagging, sorting.
Back in the day I used winamp every day to play back my mp3 collection, but I never used Winamp to rip, burn or play CD’s.
I used to rip/burn with Nero Burning Rom before it turned into a bloat. I remember that I used Winamp’s “Go to file-plugin” to open directory, then drag and drop mp3-file to Nero.
Ripping and tagging would be great, but burning is not necessary imo.
GOOD